Blog Profile / Fully (sic)

Razzin’ on the PM’s accent again

No pimping this ride, continued…

Thanks all for testing the smut filter and sending in your dirty foreign number plates — see the comments on the previous post. Mel Mistica has discovered that kiki is not the only Tagalog word that sets off alarms at the RTA. You can’t have bobo (‘dumb head’, ‘retard’) or butu (‘dick’) but it does [...]

No pimping this ride

An extraordinary story appeared yesterday morning concerning a minor dispute between the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority, and the owner of the personalised numberplate ‘Kiki’. Kirsten Perry, whose nickname is ‘Kiki’, was required to show ‘just cause’ for keeping her beloved plates on account of the fact that the word is apparently used to describe “part [...]

Who sent a whatnow?

ABC News posts this AFP news item with a headline ambiguity: Scottish football manager sent parcel bomb. I thought it was a much more interesting news item when I thought the the Scottish football manager had sent the bomb. When I heard it had been sent to him, I was a little disappointed. The ambiguity [...]

Australia’s Indigenous languages “Top 10 moments in the sun”

Every popular blog has to have a Top 10 list, don’t they?... here are my “Top Ten Moments in the Sun" for Australia’s Indigenous languages. (#10 are the Bush Mechanics... who took out the other nine spots?)

Angry phone conversations in 24 accents

The sociolinguist William Labov liked to elicit stories of extreme experiences. The theory was that his informants would get so swept up in the tale that they would lose their self-consciousness and speak in their ‘real’ voice. This impersonator seems to be applying a similar theory in order to inhabit the voices and accents of [...]

Migrants, black people and other bilingual freaks

...bilinguals and multilinguals are associated with migrant populations, Aboriginal people, language freaks and other nutjobs who don't quite fit in...

Minimus the Pythoness?

Maximus the Python is possibly the longest scrub python in captivity. Here’s the story for those who (like me) like snakes. What caught my eye was the last line of the article: ‘”He’s got a girlfriend out the back called Minimus,” laughed Ms Hill.’ The girlfriend’s called Minimus?! This will cause a giggle from those [...]

What linguists want you to know, part I

We are not translators nor interpreters. ASIO, one of Australia’s highest level defence and security organisations recently advertised for linguists. As I’ve been looking for some work (though I currently have some), it was suggested that I apply. I considered it for a few seconds, until I read the description: “As a linguist you will [...]

Guns, Germs and Gramophones

What did ordinary Indians get up to in their free time in the 1920s? Did they sit in the shade of a tree on hot summer days, and wonder how much longer George V would be Emperor of India, Dei Gratia? Or did they perhaps discuss current affairs – the massacre here, the riot there, [...]

Does Moomba really mean ‘up your bum’?

Piers Kelly writes: At Melbourne’s very first Moomba carnival in March of 1955, my father recalls Sir Reginald Dallas Brooks, opening the proceedings from the banks of the Yarra river. In his crown-appointed role as Governor of Victoria, he made a plummy declaration that ‘moomba’ is an Aboriginal word meaning ‘Let’s get together and have [...]

Pardon my French

Ingrid Piller from Language on the Move writes: My daughter attends a public elementary school in NSW where the children are taught French for one hour each week. In 2009, she was away from her school and did not receive any French instruction during that year. When she returned, it turned out that she had [...]

Spare me my life!

In the words of YouTube user kriss3d: Dear Japan. WTF. Sincerely: the rest of the world.

Cross-Continental Language Classes

Language teaching is taking a new (for me) and exciting step. Last year, the Australian National University offered students the opportunity to learn Mongolian from classes held at Indiana University (in exchange for our Indonesian lessons), a program set to continue, thanks to a recent agreement signed with the Mongolian Prime Minister. Now ABCNews tells [...]

Culturomics and Google Books

James McElvenny writes: As many of Fully (sic)’s readers will be aware, there’s been quite a bit of buzz lately about a project led by Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel at Harvard University that bills itself as the beginning of ‘culturomics’, a new paradigm for studying cultural trends using large amounts of textual data. [...]

Who did you verse?

I can’t yet come to grips with a new verb that has crept its way into young people’s English: verse (verb) – to compete against someone, e.g. in a tennis match...

Hearts and darts

Piers Kelly writes: On the 15 February, 1839, a full 172 years ago tomorrow, The Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser published the following: That the posties are described as ‘messengers of love’ with ‘flushed countenances and sweating brows’ suggests that their present reputation for hanky-panky has an impressive pedigree. But what of the ‘hearts and [...]

OzCLO – the Australian Computational and Linguistics Olympiad

In my years studying linguistics, I have found that few people arrive at a university thinking “I want to study linguistics.” More often, people say “What’s linguistics?”, and upon taking a course, discover that it’s the subject they’ve been looking for for years. OzCLO is helping to change that. The Australian Computational and Linguistics Olympiad [...]

Word nerds are the next national heroes

The academic field of linguistics is hardly something that leaps to front of Aussie minds when thinking of sources of national pride.  But based on the scorecards handed out to Australian universities this week, it really seems like Australia is punching well above its weight in linguistic research. The Excellence in Research in Australia (or ERA) [...]

Language teaching in the National Curriculum

The SMH and the Courier Mail are both discussing the teaching of language in the National Curriculum. There are three issues that seem to be important in these articles: - When should children start learning foreign languages? - How long should they be spending on them? - Which languages should they be learning?