Nobody Goes ‘So I Says to Him’ Anymore

My contention that the cuckoo bird goes “cuckoo,” rather than says “cuckoo,” is confirmed by several obviously literate readers.

You may remember that in writing erroneously about the predacious habits of the cuckoo bird, I pointed out what I took to be a simple, observable fact--that the cuckoo bird goes “cuckoo.”

Elizabeth A. Ross, a senior biology student at UCLA, not only corrected my errors about the bird’s predations (which are bad enough, in any case), but advised me that the cuckoo is a cuckoo, not a cuckoo bird , and questioned my use of the verb goes , asking if it had somehow replaced says .

Further, in response to my revelation that a big, glossy, black bird that goes caw is a crow, she observed that it might well be a raven, thus leaving me pinioned on three counts.

I replied that a cuckoo is indeed a bird; that goes is more appropriate than says for the sounds made by a bird (or any animal), and that she evidently was not aware that among the young, goes has indeed replaced says as a verb.

First, John Degatina comes to my defense: “Show me one half-way intelligent person who doesn’t know that ravens say ‘Nevermore.’ Do you think our great E. A. Poe would write a haunting, elegiac poem about a bird that says ‘caw?’ No way.”

Dr. Juliana T. Gensley of Calabasas says, “Jack, you were right! Crows say caw . Ravens say wac , pronounced walk .” Dr. Gensley also notes several other obvious differences between the birds. For one thing, she says, “Ravens seem to have a sense of humor.”

Oddly, David J. Flood of Thousand Oaks also says of ravens, “I believe that they have a sense of humor.” He recalls that last summer he saw a raven flying below a red-tailed hawk, trying to emulate the hawk’s “easy gliding flight. I could almost hear the raven saying to the hawk, ‘See, big guy, even a raven can do those lazy circles in the sky.’ ”

Flood disagrees with my defense of the verb goes , however. “We look to columnists of your ilk (or is it stature?) to keep the language pure and devoid of youthful aberrations.” He was right the first time. I have ilk , not stature .

Flood also says that ravens have brains “as large as dogs,” which I rather doubt.

Apparently by coincidence, Kenneth Green, counselor at Cal Poly Pomona, notes what he calls “a linguistic phenomenon most notable among high school and college-age young people--I refer to the frequent use of the verb to go instead of the verbs to say and to think .

“For example, a student might say, ‘So when he told me he had to break our date, I go, “Look, I’m getting tired of being treated like this.” He goes, “I can’t help it.” I go, “This is the last time he is ever going to do this to me.” ’ “

Green says he is never sure whether the student means says or thinks when he says goes .

We have no more than established the usage, however, than Bob Brigham of Manhattan Beach reports that “ goes is now archaic in teen-speak.” Hard to keep up with the in-speak of the young.

Meanwhile, Norman Felton of Malibu notes that what started all this, Nancy White’s questioning of a theory that the earth is an eggshell, with a chick inside, and that someday the mother bird will come to break it out, is derived from a story by Nelson Bond, in which astronomers spy a gigantic bird zooming in toward the Earth. He said it was often told by Nelson Olmsted on NBC’s “Story for Tonight” in the 1940s, which Felton produced.

(Ms. White made it clear that she had heard the story on radio. She did not pretend to have invented the theory herself.)

Ms. White, by the way, shows her own expertise on birds by quoting from a copyrighted book of limericks about animals that she is writing and illustrating:

The owl from his perch in the trees,

Doesn’t bother to prey on his knees;

Preferring instead

To rotate his head

Three hundred and sixty degrees.

And the literate owl goes “To whit, to whom!”