Using language as makeup for your ugly face

"Ethnic cleansing" is used to avoid "genocide", extraordinary rendition" is used to avoid "kidnapping for the purposes of torture".

BEYOND any shadow of a doubt, the ugliest phrase to enter the English language last year was "extraordinary rendition". To those of us who love words, this phrase's brutalisation of meaning is an infallible signal of its intent to deceive.

I guess it's not really fashionable anymore to point out similarities with 1984, is it?


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Where does Jesusland appear?

Raht in the middle. Always raht in the middle. A linguistic map of the United States. I love articles with subheads like "Resisting the low back merger".


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Earliest Hebrew alphabet found

Or as my two-and-a-half-year-old son, who has an inexplicable interest in Hebrew (really, he's going to be taking lessons with his little friend), would say: "Erweeist Eeeeebrew Awphabet founded"...


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Literally
The blog.

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Fun with accents... And racism!

From the Unjustified Complaints Dept. (From Bourgeois Nerd)


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When worlds Fucking collide

Those whacky Brits; those crazy Austrians! Together they bring us the comedy thrill ride of the year!


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English as She is Spoke

I think we linked to something like this a couple years ago, but BoingBoing's post found this little site, which is kind of nice.


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Working as I do in both official languages, and with folks whose native dialects, chiac and joual, are weird blends of the two languages (especially chiac), this rings true to me. Frankly, I'm amazed that we need a formal funded study to confirm it. What next? That some people have a hard time walking and chewing gum at the same time? Driving and ironing?

Your brain can't hold two languages at once

Not without some subtle bleeding from one to the other.


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Edited by author 05-31-2005 04:45 PM
What can it be like to be this man?

To be in a crowded room of people speaking a language not you own, I've experienced, but this? Imagine you are the last English speaking person in the world. Here is Alban Michael, the last Nuchatlaht speaker. And his story is not entirely unique.

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Brit speak

Roight, ven, luvvy, 'ere's yer litto storee.

In an effort to help the thousands of American tourists who visit Britain each year, British Airways launched an advertising campaign in New York this month, aimed at deciphering some of our finest expressions for our American buddies.

On billboards and bus shelters across Manhattan, "Brit-speak" can be heard loud and clear. Next to one of the city's busiest roads a huge billboard says: "This traffic is 'bonkers'! In London, 'bonkers' means 'crazy'." On a bus shelter in Greenwich Village a poster reads: "Avoid 'legging it' by taking the bus. In London, 'leg it' means 'to run quickly'."


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The speech accent archive

A very cool little site that has catalogued and analysed samples of 414 (so far) people of different linguistic backgrounds reading the same passage of text.

The speech accent archive is established to uniformly exhibit a large set of speech accents from a variety of language backgrounds. Native and non-native speakers of English all read the same English paragraph and are carefully recorded. The archive is constructed as a teaching tool and as a research tool. It is meant to be used by linguists as well as other people who simply wish to listen to and compare the accents of different english speakers. It allows users to compare the demographic and linguistic backgrounds of the speakers in order to determine which variables are key predictors of each accent. The speech accent archive demonstrates that accents are systematic rather than merely mistaken speech.

(From Salt and Ice)



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Edited by author 03-10-2005 08:49 AM
It's pig latin all over again. Thing is, kids don't seem to know that this isn't suitable for their university essays. Genre, kids, genre. Shiver me timbers.

Edited by author 03-09-2005 04:20 PM
What are the kidz saying, mum?

In case you don't already know, in case you lost years of your life, like I did in childrearing, and now find you can't understand a damn thing they're saying, try this.


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Internet v language

The internet is not killing language.

Traditional linguists fear the internet damages our ability to articulate properly, infusing language with LOLs, dorky emoticons and the gauche sharing of personal information on blogs. But some researchers believe we have entered a new era of expression.

"Resources for the expression of informality in writing have hugely increased -- something not seen in English since the Middle Ages,"

Au contraire, it has given it a new home here at Bookninja.



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