Blog Profile / Johnson
| URL : | http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Academics / Linguistics | |
| Posts on Regator: | 377 | |
| Posts / Week: | 3.4 | |
| Archived Since: | April 18, 2011 | |
Blog Post Archive
Portuguese for the perplexed
Inspired by a popular guide to Understanding the British, I've put together a few entries in a Foreigners' Guide to Understanding Brazilians. Portuguese speakers and Brazilianists are invited to add more in the comments. Hat tip to Brazil-based...Show More Summary
Of nations, peoples, countries and mínzú
DID Joe Biden insult China? The American vice-president has a habit of sticking his foot into his mouth, and in this case, the recent graduation speech he gave at the University of Pennsylvania inspired a viral rant by a "disappointed" Chinese student at Penn, Zhang Tianpu. Show More Summary
English atop the Eurovision pile, yet again
LAST Saturday saw Denmark win the Eurovision Song Contest, the country's third win in the contest's history. A prototypically apple-cheeked blonde (pictured) took the trophy for her country, but she did so with the rather un-Danish name of Emmelie de Forest and the equally un-Danish title, "Only Teardrops". Show More Summary
Setting the record straight
IT IS rare that Johnson is compelled to respond to comments. But my last post, about the fun parallels in the hybrid development of English and Dravidian languages, seems to have stirred the passions of our readers. Many of them commented, dismissing the post as (at best) misguided and (at worst) a piece of neocolonial rubbish. Show More Summary
The performing black folks next door
INTERNET memes rarely hit and then provoke counter-reaction to this fast. First, watch this video, whether or not you know the context. Now, the context. Three women had been missing in Cleveland for a decade. The man here, Charles Ramsey, rescued them after hearing a cry for help from a front door in his neighborhood. Show More Summary
Eurasiatic?
THE Washington Post reports today that linguists have discovered a handful of "ultraconserved" words, some 15,000 years old. These are said to include "hand", "give", "bark" and "ash". The Post buried the real news, though: what a new...Show More Summary
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
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
A man walked into a bar...
BEN YAGODA at Lingua Franca doesn't like the "historical present": the tendency to use the present tense to describe past (and literary) events, as in this example from a radio interview about Lawrence Wright's book on Scientology: At some point L. Show More Summary
Who's number 1? Really?
WHAT country's non-native English-speakers speak the best business English in the world? Try to think of five countries before reading on. Done? The answer, according to GlobalEnglish, is probably not what you think. (GlobalEnglish is owned by Pearson, which part-owns The Economist). Show More Summary
An ombudsman by any other name would still field complaints
"MAN is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." So wrote Rousseau ("L'homme est né libre, et est partout dans le fer.") Did he mean that just half the world's population, that half with a Y chromosome, was doomed to a life dans le fer? No, he meant everyone. Show More Summary
212 only
Mastrionotti: Fink. That's a Jewish name, isn't it? Barton: Yeah. Mastrionotti: Yeah, I didn't think this dump was restricted. AT THE Lingua Franca blog, Ben Yagoda describes a conversation Ruth Fraklin of the New Republic over anti-Semitic code language in America before and during the second world war. Show More Summary
Going (beyond) Dutch
FOR small European states, language policy calls for a delicate balancing act. Luxembourg has three official languages, Switzerland four, and Belgium three. In Luxembourg, the distinction is mostly functional: different languages for different social spheres. Show More Summary
Solitary linguistic confinement
ANY fan of cops-crooks-and-courtrooms dramas knows that solitary confinement is a treat reserved for highly volatile criminals, or used to punish inmates for various misdeeds. In 2011, after determining that more than 15 days without...Show More Summary
Words of war
"TARGETED killing". "Detainee". "Harsh interrogation techniques". Pity the New York Times. Activists will always try to get journalists to use their preferred language. But few outlets actually make decisions that matter. Britain's cutthroat newspaper market means that the papers seem to compete to use the most inflammatory words they can. Show More Summary
Tamil in the courts
LANGUAGES are a touchy business in India, with 22 recognised in the constitution. Hindi and English get prime status in the central government, but nearly every state has its own distinct policy. If providing adequate language services...Show More Summary
How black to be?
AMERICA'S National Public Radio has just started a new blog on race, and the title is a term from linguistics: Code-Switching. We've touched on code-switching before. Linguists typically use it to mean the instant and frequent switching between two distinct languages, like Spanish and English among many Puerto Rican New Yorkers. Show More Summary
A half-century in language change
ON THE pavement just outside The Economist's New York offices, I spied a small pile of books for the taking, and it happened to have a little treasure on top: "More Language that Needs Watching" by Theodore Bernstein, published in 1962. Show More Summary
Justicia más accesible
JOHNSON wrote last week that the international courts face hurdles in dealing with different languages. Some courts with limited linguistic purviews, like the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, deal well with language. Show More Summary
Words appearing in newspapers controversially
IN HIS 1991 book "Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World," David Rieff writes of the trembling racial sensibilities of the city's rich whites: So sensitive were liberal Angelenos to the possibility of appearing xenophobic that theyShow More Summary