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Unlikely parallels
IF FORCED to pick my favourite part of the history of English, I’d be torn. There are so many to choose from. Would I pick the Great Vowel Shift, the mid-millennium change in pronunciation that largely explains English’s inconsistent spelling? Perhaps I’d turn to colonial times, when English vocabulary ballooned. Show More Summary
Juvenile Peevery
…has been featured in the last three Big Nate strips, starting with this one: Then: And today: This may go on all week. Some past LL commentary on the specific issues involved: "Dictionary Daftness, Dan Brown Style", 8/10/2010 (Comment...Show More Summary
Range
Lowell from Interlochen followed up on the word range, which is applied to an array of burners on top of an oven. His question was, how does the range plied by cowboys (Home on the Range ), fit in? The basic meaning of range is a row, line, or series, but many meanings have taken over from there. Show More Summary
Disclosure
"Citizen Hearing On Disclosure: April 29 To May 3, 2013 – Washington, DC": An event with historical implications will be held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC from April 29 to May 3, 2013. At that time as many as forty researchers and military/agency witnesses will testify for thirty hours over five days before [...]
Alternating currents
Q: I’m an Australian television producer. I keep seeing “alternate” used instead of “alternative,” as in, “If you would like to choose an alternate date and time, please contact our office.” Is the battle lost? Is “alternate” now anShow More Summary
The Power of Parts of Speech
Michael Yoshikami "JC Penney's Troubles: The Power of Adjectives", CNBC 4/30/2013: As you read news headlines and listen to and watch media reports on the market, it's important to recognize that language may have different meanings depending on your perspective. Just last week the media reported that J.C. Penney stock "soared" 11 percent—on the surface that [...]
Obama's "is is" redux
Betty Ann Bardell tweets: .@bgzimmer For those who missed the score from today’s W.H. Press Conf.: “is, is” 5 - “as best as they can” 1. swampland.time.com/2013/04/30/bar… — Betty Ann Bardell (@BettyAnnBardell) April 30, 2013 Last October, in my LL post "Obama's 'is is'," I considered Bryan Garner's assertion that President Obama is "addicted to 'is is.'" After [...]
RAMPS ET ALIA ALLIA.
Victor Mair has a post at the Log that is not only an impassioned ode to the Allium genus—"My uncontested favorite of all the Allium species, however, is garlic (Allium sativum)..."—but a treasure-trove of linguistic tidbits in both Chinese (he discusses ji?cài ??, "a kind of chive") and English. Show More Summary
The well-coordinated modifier
Q: What do you call a string of noun phrases that share the same noun? Example: “The English, French, and math teachers all have lunch together.” A: A construction like “English, French, and math teachers” is simply a noun (“teachers”) modified by several adjectives (“English,” “French,” “math”). Show More Summary
Morphosyntactic variation: Hamlet, Gertrude, Marshall, Bachmann
Over the past few days, I've come across two attempts at antique English verb inflection in a modern political context. One of them is from Josh Marshal, "Godzilla vs. Mothra", TPM 4/29/2013: This is wild. Bilious WaPo blogger Jennifer Rubin lashes out at “jerk” Sen. Ted Cruz, says he must apologize to GOP colleagues. And the popcorn [...]
The Sound and the Shapey 2
A variation of last week's post regarding the mapping between speech sounds and the visual shape of objects.
One of the above shapes is a takete and one is a maluma; which is which?
Please participate in the following poll only if you are not familiar with the experiment. Show More Summary
Switching languages = switching personalities?
Multilinguals often report feeling different depending on which language they are speaking. Learning to operate in a second or foreign language seems to have the ability to affect the behaviour of the individual, suggesting that learning...Show More Summary
SKALLEWAGG.
A Visual Thesaurus post by Ben Zimmer is an interesting exploration of the history of a great word, scalawag:My latest column for the Boston Globe tells how Nathaniel Sharpe, a 22-year-old amateur genealogist from a small town in North...Show More Summary
Ramps, chives, garlic, and other members of the Allium genus
Four days ago, I had never even heard of "ramps" (in the sense of a vegetable), but on Friday the 26th, I had a great revelation. That morning I went up to the Swarthmore COOP to replenish my larder, which had been pretty much emptied out before I left [...]
Preposition choice is hard
Today's Cul de Sac:
Multilingual in the West
STATES that have passed English-only laws aren't typically the sort to shower money on bilingual education. Utah, which declared English its sole official language in 2000, seems to be an exception. The New York Times recently reported that the state is expanding its langauge-immersion programs for young students. Show More Summary
On the lam
Q: Some time ago I wrote you to recommend an essential book for someone in your trade: How the Irish Invented Slang, by Daniel Cassidy. There you will find, among many hundred entries, his view of the derivation of “lam” from the Irish word “leim.” Alas, Danny has since died, and his extraordinary achievement has... ? Read More: On the lam
Why plural days and nights in Spanish greetings?
R.R. points out that many European languages have a greeting that means "good day" — German "guten tag", Dutch "goeden dag", Swedish "god dag", French "bonjour", Italian "buon giorno", Portuguese "bom dia", Catalan "bon dia", etc. — and asks why (only?) in Spanish, the corresponding phrase is plural: "buenos dias". And also "buenas noches", "buenas [...]
#TEDLesson – Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders
Sheryl Sandberg gave this TED talk in December 2010 and ultimately a book grew out of this speech. Her book, published in 2013, is entitled: Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. So what does ‘lean in’ mean? With these two words Sheryl Sandberg coined a new phrase. Show More Summary
HOCKEY IN PUNJABI.
A nice story by David Sax in today's NY Times about Harnarayan Singh and Bhola Chauhan, two Canadians who call NHL games in Punjabi: The weekly Punjabi broadcast of ?Hockey Night in Canada,? as venerated an institution for Canadians as ?Monday Night Football? is for Americans, is thought to be the only N.H.L. game called in a language other than English or French.[...]Show More Summary
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