Body Language - Lapham’s Quarterly

Just read this great article from the new issue of Lapham's Quarterly called "Means of Communication."

It is a great magazine, and a particularly great issue. Check it out!

Body Language - Lapham’s Quarterly

Room 101 - Marcus Brigstocke - Grammar Bullies

Tracking the evolution of language

Researchers discover that irregular verbs change in a predictable manner -- just like genes and living organisms.

By Denise Gellene, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 11, 2007

Tracing the evolution of English verbs over 1,200 years -- from the Old English of "Beowulf" to the modern English of "The Princess Diaries" -- researchers have found that the majority of irregular verbs are going the way of Grendel, falling to the linguistic equivalent of natural selection.

The irregular verbs, governed by confusing and antiquated rules, came under evolutionary pressure to obey the modern "-ed" rule of regular verb conjugation, according to a report today in the journal Nature.

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George Carlin - Soft Language

George Carlin - Soft Language

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Excerpt From Lu Chi's Wen Fu

"Prior to the composition of the Wen Fu, the first great work to discuss the use of language is the Ta Hsueh (or Great Learning) of K'ung-fu Tzu (Confucius). Master K'ung believed all wisdom lies in learning to call things by the right name, and that only through a "rectification of names" might one proceed toward enlightened living. This insight is doubly remarkable when we remember that K'ung Tzu lived in a nation that was far more sophisticated than any other on earth at that time, its language rich in emblematic phrases, euphemisms, double entendres, and layered ambiguities loaded with plurisignation" (Hamill xv-xvi).

More to come later, as I make my way through this text.

Phonetics Flash Animation Project

I ran across this site while I was stumbling through linguistic websites. I think this is a wonderful idea, perhaps because I have benefited from anatomical diagrams before (that's how I learned to roll my R). Anyhow, below is the "about" section of their site. Check it out:

This site contains animated libraries of the phonetic sounds of English, German, and Spanish. Available for each consonant and vowel is an animated articulatory diagram, a step-by-step description, and video-audio of the sound spoken in context. It is intended for students of phonetics, linguistics, and foreign language. There is also an interactive diagram of the articulatory anatomy.

This project was a collaborative effort of the Departments of Spanish and Portuguese, German, Speech Pathology and Audiology, and Academic Technologies at The University of Iowa.

(Click Here)

Eggcorns! Get your eggcorns!

This blog, for all intensive purposes, is like a bunch of posts about language bound together with duck tape. But that's okay, because we can still home in on the parts of language that particularly interest us, as I am wanton to do, every once and a while. All tolled, I think it's a pretty cool blog.

Did anything in the first paragraph strike you? I hope so, because I intentionally used six (count 'em--six) eggcorns in that paragraph.

What is an eggcorn? From the Wikipedia article, an eggcorn is "an idiosyncratic substitution of a word or phrase for a word or words that sound similar or identical in the speaker's dialect." That is, it's a type of language mistake that makes logical sense to the speaker. It is named for the mistake that some speakers make to call an acorn and eggcorn. In their world it makes sense, because (1) it sounds pretty much the same, (2) it's egg-shaped, and (3) there's a semantic connection with "corn" which is another type of seed. So it's an egg-shaped "corn" or seed. Eggcorns are considered distinct from other types of linguistic errors, including folk etymologies, malapropisms, and mondegreens.

The term was coined back in 2003 by linguists on the blog Language Log. Since then, Language Log has discussed scores of eggcorns. And a website to compile eggcorns was created a year or so later: The Eggcorn Database.

So did you spot all six of the eggcorns I used earlier? If not, here they are:
for all intensive purposes instead of for all intents and purposes
duck tape for duct tape (though is is a questionable eggcorn)
home in on instead of hone in on
wanton to do instead of wont to do
once and a while instead of once in a while
all tolled instead of all told

Have you thought of any eggcorns you might be using?

Language Musings

"Convention leads to deception." --- Alex Caldiero

Whatdayathink?

English is Tough Stuff

I stumbled upon this poem today at: http://www.docflash.com/say_this.txt

ENGLISH IS TOUGH STUFF
  ======================

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I!  Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does.  Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

    -- Author unknown

Thais' worrisome Western names: Mafia, Big, Money

Thomas Fuller, New York Times

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

(08-29) 04:00 PDT Bangkok --

America has Tom, Dick and Harry. Thailand has Pig, Money and Fat.

For as long as people here can remember, children have been given playful nicknames - classics include Shrimp, Chubby and Crab - that are carried into adulthood.

But now, to the consternation of some nickname purists, children are being given offbeat English-language nicknames such as Mafia or Seven - as in 7-Eleven, the convenience store.

The spread of foreign names mirrors a rapidly urbanizing society that has absorbed any number of influences, including Hollywood, fast-food chains and English Premier League soccer.

The trend worries Vira Rojpojchanarat, the permanent secretary of the Thai Ministry of Culture. Vira, whose nickname is the relatively unimaginative Ra, is embarking on a campaign to revive the simple and often more pastoral nicknames of yore.

"It's important because it's about the usage of the Thai language," Vira said in his office that is decorated with Thai theatrical masks and a small Buddhist altar; he is an architect by training. "We worry that Thai culture will vanish."

With help from language experts at the Royal Institute, the official arbiter of the Thai language, Vira plans to produce by the end of the year a collection of thousands of old-fashioned nicknames, listed by wholesome categories such as colors, animals and fruit and including simple favorites like Yaay (big), Ouan (fat) and Dam (black).

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The Question of Usage

Is a couple a couple or is a couple a few? Are the two phrases synonymous? What say you?

Jolyn (my wife) and I have this ongoing debate over the meaning of the phrase, a couple. I believe that the phrases, a couple and a few, are synonymous. Why? One word: usage. I guess I'm just a usage kind of guy. To me, it doesn't really matter what a dictionary says. Language is created by culture and usage. People (including me) say a couple all the time when they are clearly speaking of a number larger than two. Jolyn claims that a couple means two and that a few means more than two. I disagree with her because her definition comes from the dictionary. The true meaning of a word is defined by how it is used, not by Mr. Webster. However, I do realize that my definition must include Jolyn's as well because she uses the phrases differently than me. Therefore, in terms of usage, a couple can mean two or more than two, depending on who's doing the talking.

Although the usage issue is more complex than my petty argument with Jolyn, our little debate is fun and interesting.

I just thought I should open this up for discussion.