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Why I’m a Humanist after a decade of serendipitous and wonderful travel experiences
I’ve hinted to it in various blog posts, and said it directly in my most recent travel one; I’m not religious or an “atheist”. Since the word atheist gets a little bad rep (it sounds to some like anti-theist or that your life philosophy revolves around opposing religion), the title I prefer is Humanist. This [...]Show More Summary
Wad
As a Michigan Commissioner of Services to the Aging, it was my privilege, on behalf of the Commission, to designate the Village of Bellaire as a Community for a Lifetime (i.e., elder-friendly). In explaining the significance of the award,...Show More Summary
CASTAGNA'S MALTESE.
Giovanni Bonello, "a recently retired, one-time judge on the European Court of Human Rights and gentleman scholar of all things Maltese, which he writes up for a popular audience with widespread curiosity," according to the reader who...Show More Summary
Check out the top language lovers of 2013! How to have a top-10 blog yourself
Once again Lexiophiles have released their list of top language blogs! Thanks so much for your votes! Fluent in 3 months made it as the 5th most popular “language lover” site, and the 2nd most popular language blog. The most popular language blog was Talk to me in Korean. The other top language 5 language [...]Show More Summary
Crazy long words
THE Wall Street Journal last week had a sweet article about non-Nordic Europeans learning languages like Norwegian and Finnish, the better to be able to sing along with their favorite Nordic metal bands: "It's quite a well-known phenomenon that students in Italy study Norwegian because they're interested in metal," Ms. Show More Summary
Drinking and dialect
There's a lot of cool research on intoxicated speech and I figured it'd be in the news as progress is made, but I didn't particularly expect it to come like this article called 'Hey, y'all!' Why 'yous guys' accents come back when you're drinking". Show More Summary
Long is good, good is bad, nice is worse, and ! is questionable
Sanette Tanaka, "Fancy Real-Estate Listing, Fancier Verbiage", WSJ 6/6/2013:
Savvy real-estate agents know it's not just what you say. It's how long it takes you to say it.
More-expensive homes go hand-in-hand with longer real-estate agents' remarks—the language written by the agent that supplements the house description and photos in a listing. Agents use a median 250 [...]
Bilingual education
Q: My Danish stepmother is completely bilingual, with one exception: she uses the phrase “not that I know to” instead of “not that I know of” when speaking English. It would be interesting to understand where this usage comes from. A: There’s a verbal phrase in Danish, kende til, that means to “know about.” But... ? Read More: Bilingual education
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General Tso's chikin
The following photograph was taken at a Springfield, Massachusetts restaurant named “Nippon Grill and Seafood Buffet”:
Preliminarily, we may note that the restaurant styles itself as "Nippon [not 'Nihon' or 'Japan'] Grill and Seafood Buffet", for which nomenclature see this recent Language Log post.
Although I've not been to the "Nippon Grill & Seafood Buffet", so I [...]
MELTED DOWN INTO CANONS.
I've spent my entire adult life fighting typos—first penciling corrections into books I read, then preemptively eliminating them from books before they get published (which gives me both income and satisfaction)—and it is a source of great displeasure that what were once well-edited periodicals now are increasingly slapdash about such things. Show More Summary
A capital offense?
Q: I’m a New Yorker working in China. I recently began studying Mandarin via the CCTV.com video series “Growing up with Chinese.” Now, I’m a bit confused about something. Shouldn’t the “up” in the title be capitalized? A: The capitalizing of words in titles is a matter of style, not grammar or usage. Different newspapers,... ? Read More: A capital offense?
Economist still chicken: botches sentence rather than split infinitive
I have commented elsewhere on the fact that writers in The Economist are required to write unnatural or even ungrammatical sentences rather than risk the wrath of the semi-educated public by "splitting an infinitive" (putting a preverbal modifier immediately before the verb in a to-infinitival complement clause). The magazine published a sentence containing the phrase [...]
ARPITANIA.
I'm finally reading Norman Davies's Vanished Kingdoms (see this post), and I'm in the middle of the (necessarily long) chapter "Burgundia: Five, Six, or Seven Kingdoms (c. 411-1795)." I'm fascinated by the extraordinarily complicated...Show More Summary
Growing pains
LANGUAGE learners must resign themselves to making very public, very silly mistakes sooner or later. It’s an occupational hazard. Regular readers will remember that I’ve begun dipping my feet in Dutch. After a few weeks, I can now get my most basic wants and needs across with little trouble. Show More Summary
Ask Language Log: "differ to"?
Trevor Butterworth, "Top Science Journal Rebukes Harvard's Top Nutritionist", Forbes 5/27/2013:
In an extraordinary editorial and feature article, Nature, one of the world’s pre-eminent scientific journals, has effectively admonished...Show More Summary
The rhubarb phenomenon
Q: Is there a term for the phenomenon of a word sounding completely nonsensical when you say it over and over again? That happens for me with the word “only.” I’d be interested if you folks have had the same experience. A: Yes, we too have had this experience. After we repeatedly think, speak, or... ? Read More: The rhubarb phenomenon
Revisiting New York department stores
- excuse me, where are ladies's shoes?- fourth floor Patrick-André Mather has recently replicated one of the all-time best known studies in sociolinguistics: William Labov’s classic New York City department store survey. Records show that as late as the 1890s New Yorkers did not pronounce [r] in words like car or guard. Show More Summary
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At the Movies
Over the weekend, Doug, Adam, the wife, and I went to see Now You See Me, and it was really good! It was so good that I let my wife go and get the family’s large bucket of popcorn refilled in the middle of the movie instead of doing it myself. I also never bothered […]
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