Tag: language update
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Couldn’t be Spanish.
I heard the Ripley item about the mysterious Mexican president Comonfort again and got puzzled again. The Ripley audio is unclear, and the announcer didn’t always handle foreign words well. Google filled in the proper name after I typed ‘Mexican president Ignacio C’. Comonfort couldn’t be Spanish. Was it from the native tribes, or a…
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Growing and shrinking /r/
BBC has an article on dialect change. Final /r/, which has been absent from The King’s English for many centuries, persisted in isolated areas. Now it’s disappearing in the isolated areas as well. = = = = = START QUOTE: Accent change is often like a puddle: it dries up in most places and leaves…
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Is it prosody or epigenes?
This is interesting. Newborns respond preferentially to stories in the ‘mother tongue’ before they’ve had a chance to hear much talking through air conduction. Were they picking up intonations and prosody through the liquids in the womb? Or is the familiarity imparted through epigenes? The former possibility could be checked by using different languages with…
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Doozy debunk
We always learned that doozy came from Duesenberg, which was an especially impressive car. Halfway recalled reading a debunk of the origin. The Duesenberg brothers started out as engineers at Maytag, which made gas-powered washers before it switched to electric. They departed and created their own car in 1920. It would have taken a few…
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Meaningless word peeve
Political spammers keep asking me if I’m proud of Biden or proud of Trump or proud of America. In the first fucking place, I have nothing but hatred toward all excrescences of the national government, with the possible exception of Jerome Powell. In the second fucking place, proud can’t possibly apply to these entities, even…
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Mammary grammary
The internal evidence of language has always implied that our brains have separate ways of processing One, Two, Three, Four, Many. Languages have basic words or grammatical forms for 1 2 3 and sometimes 4. Beyond 4, the later developed numbers take over, but without any grammatical connections. A new study firms up the brain…
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Three rings
From Phonographic World in 1889, an article that rang several of my bells. 1. This may be the first letter from an Okie in any published journal. The eastern part of Okla was in the middle of the first Land Run at that moment, and the only Euros in the state were in missions and…
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Phats?
Reading an 1891 Inland Printer, noticed an odd modern word in a report of conditions in KC: = = = = = START INLAND PRINTER: The past few months have witnessed the lowest depression in all branches of the printing business ever known in this city. Retrenchment has been the universal cry and practice among…
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Non-orthogonal
After writing the slightly offbase word anytime in previous post, I got thinking about the non-orthogonal nature of the ‘logicators’ in English. some any every no Who? someone/somebody anyone/anybody everyone/everybody noone/nobody What? something anything everything nothing Where? somewhere anywhere everywhere nowhere How? somehow anyhow — nohow** When? sometime[s] anytime — — Why? — — —…
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Animist jargon
From the Old Postcards Facebook page. The crate is familiar, but the official jargon for the crate is new to me. Pop shells!
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Worthy reprint
Looking at the statcounter for the old blog. I haven’t changed it in 18 months, but the readers there are more varied and “purposeful” than the readers of this new WordPress version. I still don’t know why. Is it something about the format, or am I just dumbed down after three years of NAZI TORTURE?…
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Zit?
Elon has renamed Twitter to X, and adopted a new logo for X. More proof that he’s intentionally driving the company into the ground for an LBO. Brands that can’t be pronounced are guaranteed to fail. Remember “the artist formerly known as Prince?” Remember Latinx and Womxn? What’s the verb form? Instead of tweeting, will…
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Sequoyah was smart
A new article in Tablet makes a strong point. Hebrew is what keeps the Jewish tribe together. The author underestimates the specific linguistic power of Hebrew. (As opposed to just any generic shared language.) = = = = = START TABLET: To better understand this relatively unexplored contrast, we might refer to the distinction made…
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Words are reflectors
EnidBuzz asks “What’s a habit that makes people seem old?” The answerers interpreted it two ways: (1) Physical habits like naps and groaning that are automatic results of aging in any era; (2) Language or cultural habits specific to earlier decades, like writing checks or using landline phones. One of the latter caught my eye…
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Language update
Before 2010, I was listening to radio and TV, which provided plenty of material for new words and grammar forms. Since I threw away the TV in 2011 and the radio in 2020, I haven’t done many Language Updates. Finally we have two items worthy of mention. Both are verb forms. One has deregularized and…
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