Tag: language update
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Bit of syntax fun
Seen at substack, wasn’t meant to be funny so I didn’t snark it there. Word order is important, and singular/plural agreement is important! Some mayflies live only hours as adults, Kevin McMullen MD writes, after having lived for years as a nymph.
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Tabling vs tabling
New PM Burnham is starting right and speaking straight. We don’t know how far he’ll go, but he does have the backing of his party with a good majority in Parliament. He is proposing a new direction, which in Britspeak is tabling a proposal. Burnham says it’s time to “end rough sleeping”. US governments at…
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Headline words
Newspaper headlines and radio announcers had a vocabulary of short words replacing longer words. I was thinking about famed. It was standard headlinese, but it only saved one letter vs famous. It also saved a syllable, which must have been why it stuck. While pondering this deep philosophical conundrum, I noticed a headline in the…
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Are grammar toxic?
Substack has started carrying ads after claiming that it would never have ads. You’d think that an ad for PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, appearing in Onlyfans For Librarians, would be edited more carefully. I don’t expect or want the Upon whom shall one rely level of grammar, but I do expect basic noun-verb stuff.
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Another Martian dream
Odd parallel with a Martian dream last summer. = = = = = Today’s dream: I was attending an arts fair. Noticed an old lady selling typewritten manuscripts about her experience with Martians, who taught her their system of government called optothecy. I told her I was curious and asked to hear more. “Well now,…
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Lorem Ieepsum
One of my auto history books has a chapter of advertising for Willys variants in other countries. Willys covered more of the world than GM, and its foreign branches often developed totally original cars using their own talents and skills. This 1977 ad was a template provided by AMC during its ownership of Willys, letting…
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Is this the binary form?
Occasionally a dream reveals something about how the brain works. I was working at the desk of an auto company, listening to Hank Ketcham [cartoonist who drew Dennis the Menace] complaining that our cars didn’t hold up even though he was a perfect driver. After he left I said to the boss, “I must admit,…
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Three differences
Riddle posted by a Brit: Q: What do you call a group of men waiting for a haircut? A: A barbercue. This doesn’t work in American English for THREE reasons, not just one. 1. We call a waiting group a line, not a queue. 2. We pronounce the last r in barber. 3. We pronounce…
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Tyndale 500th
This spring is the 500th anniversary of William Tyndale’s bible. Working in and around language I often heard that Tyndale published the first vernacular English bible, but I never bothered to look up the whole story. The latest print edition of History Today tells the story with appropriate drama. He studied and wrote for ten…
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Language joke
This is a bit unfair but it gave me a much needed laugh on a hard day. 99 in French is quatre-vingt dix neuf, which translates as “We do not have a functional numbering system.”
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π Day
Keeping up a tradition… π Day again! Since I’m talking typography lately, I’ll hash and rehash a couple items from 2019. = = = = = Thinking about Trump as Pied Piper. When the metaphor first appeared in those DNC emails I didn’t quite understand it. After learning that Trump is Roy Cohn’s protege, I…
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Great phrase, why isn’t it used?
This show from Canadian TV features a carousel scheme designed to evade taxes by passing purchases around a circle of temporary fake companies. The purchases in this case were packets of “telecom minutes”. Carousel scheme is a wonderfully descriptive phrase but for some reason it hasn’t spread. Google leads only to this specific scheme, not…
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Random language note
Reading one of Burge’s pieces on the categories of non-religious people, churched vs unchurched, believing vs non-believing, praying vs non-praying, I thought: I’m a prayer, not a believer. I’m not sure if there are any gods, but I spend a lot of time and effort praying to them. Oops! Language isn’t logic. When you believe…
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Dammit, it’s not the output 2
Last week I noted that people were trying to sound “more human” by varying their vocabulary and grammar. I predicted that Altman’s coders would quickly counteract this tactic by adding more variation. A couple days later a Verge item revealed that Altman’s coders were already working on it. I’m more concerned with the input theft…
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Good question about learning
Quora sometimes has a question worth thinking about. Do people need to forget old things so they can learn new things (new knowledge)? First impulse: Yes, especially with skills. When you’ve mastered an inefficient process or poor word usage or poor posture, you need to abandon the old movements or shapes to get into the…
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