My mother, a musician, has always been sensitive to the sounds and music of Chopin’s romantic Ballades and the realist notes of everyday life.

Take the presence of the alphabet in American conversations since the 1990s. She constantly points out to me the pronunciation of newscasters, talk show interlocutors and the ordinary give and take of friends, acquaintances and the cashiers in grocery stores.

The sound “t,” says my mother, has disappeared from certain words in the spoken language of our compatriots. “Internet” becomes “innernet.” “Interrupt” becomes “innerupt.” “International” becomes “innernational.” “Interesting” becomes “inneresting.” “Interrelationship” becomes “innerrelationship.” Well, you get the picture.

I hadn’t noticed this contemporary phenomenon before my mother called my attention to it. As I was pondering the change in pronunciation, I thought how paradoxical it is that the disappearance of the “t” in words like “international” and “Internet” reflects, no doubt unwittingly, a larger phenomenon in American life today.

Many people write about, talk about, read about the fracturing of our society into small disconnected individual atoms. Many decry the melting away of community, neighborly and family ties. Isn’t it curious that the pronunciation of the prefix “inter,” meaning “between/among i.e., emphasizing connections, has been, in many people’s speech, changed into “inner,” the sign of the solo, I’ll go it alone philosophy that grips so many actions of our citizenry today?

When one is on the Internet, there is no longer a connection with other people in their live human form. Our society is moving from the “inter” to the “inner” mode.

When one is speaking on a cell phone on the street, one cannot interact with the other live representatives of the human race who are co-occupying the public space.

… Hm … “Inneresting,” very “inneresting”….

Ellen Chances is a professor of Russian literature and culture at Princeton University, and is a writer of poetry, fiction, essays and memoir. Her father, Ralph Chances, was a professor of economics at Bates College for many years, and her mother, Natasha Chances, teaches piano at Bates College and privately.

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