Wednesday, February 27, 2008
More than just a clever rearrangement of a previous Apodion post title, you might have seen Language Log or Language Hat comment on Nathan Bierma’s column about National Grammar Day, one of these tiresome celebrations of pedantry by the sort of people who get their kicks by bitching about how ‘decimate’ really means ‘reduce by […]
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Another Language Log post! This one quotes a review of a textbook, the review questioning some of the conventional wisdom within the field of linguistics about dying languages:
Much of the problem is apparent in the rhetorical stances of many of the authors in this volume. They are preaching to the choir in a […]
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Another Language Log quickie.
On the way back from the LSA meeting, having finished the light reading that I had brought with me, I bought Steve Berry’s The Alexandria Link. At pp. 418-419 we read:
These words were chiseled into the granite below.
[…]
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Finally, it is worth noting that despite common references to “a Bronx accent,” or “a Brooklyn accent,” no published study has found any feature that varies internally beyond local names. Impressions that the dialect varies geographically may be a byproduct of class and/or ethnic variation.
wikipedia
This I did not know. It feels awfully unintuitive […]
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Thursday, February 8, 2007
Another Language Log post. I feel like a real parasite, but I can’t help it—they just keep knocking it out of the park over there, especially with regards to one of my own deep-seated hatreds: those fucking odious, obnoxious, supercilious (and deeply trendy) wankers who ride the wave of public interest-sans-understanding in language: Lynne Truss […]
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Monday, December 11, 2006
Tenser, Said The Tensor (reference uncomprehended EDIT: see comments for reference gloss) has put up a rather thorough and thoroughly entertaining linguistic analysis of an old Star Trek: The Next Generation episode: “Darmok”. This is why no one ever called linguistics the dismal science.
I do always love the practice of performing scientific analysis on works […]
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
This Word is most commonly used in speaking of a Number; where I should think Fewer would do better. No Fewer than a Hundred appears to me not only more elegant than No less than a Hundred, but strictly proper.
Baker 1770
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losandżelizować, zlosandżelizować (verb) to smog over
eg Rzadko tak się losandżelizuje Rarely does it smog over like this.
note From SF Bay Area slang - to Los Angelize.
from The Alternative Polish Dictionary
