This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Copyright P. Kerim Friedman.
The conference panel, “Scaling Linguistic Diversity: Language Standardization as a Scale-Making Project,” which I organized together with Sonia Das,
學習瀕危語言（七） [Click for English version.] 作者：傅可恩／Futing; 翻譯者：施永德 DJ Hatfield. 在本系列第六篇，我對台灣原住民族語的教學方式抱怨了，好像是教死語言的模式，不像現用語言的課程：
for instance; derived from the Portuguese ‘balde’, it probably referred originally to ship’s buckets: today, no Indian
…over the years I’ve compiled a mental inventory of the various ways in which people [in Taiwan] respond to the challenge of having to talk to a
Agamben on bandits and werewoves: The medieval ban also presents analogous traits: the bandit could be killed (… “ ‘To ban’ someone is to say that
From the Wikipedia entry on e.e. cummings: The seeds of Cummings’ unconventional style appear well established even in his earliest work. At age
When I first came to Taiwan to teach, my colleague introduced me to a local purveyor of sweetened tofu 豆花 in the night market outside of school.
With regard to the economy, conservatives always preach restraint in the face of forces beyond our control, warning of unintended consequences if we
Today’s New York Times article about how Swedes are choosing new names for themselves probably belongs in the large folder of non-trend trend
Over at Pinyin.info Mark Swofford notices a new trend of inserting “ING” at the end of Chinese verbs. When I twittered about this, Zonble pointed me
It bears no relation to the main point of his article, which focuses on how economic ideology led the Fed into the current “unmitigated disaster”
I would like to congratulate Australia on finally ridding itself of John Howard. In 2002 I wrote about ““Howard’s openly racist policies” and more
If you walk around Taipei these days you’ll be sure to see the word KUSO written in big letters all over the place. For instance, this summer there
[Cross-posted at Savage Minds] In our discussions about anthropologists in the military the term “ivory tower” has come up again and again, as has
I never liked team sports, I never liked playing the dozens, I never liked being put on the spot … Its not that I’m introverted — I’m not. I’m just
Worst name for a political party, ever. A newspaper headline from last year. {india}
It is already old news, having been reported in the BBC over a year ago, but I just learned that Hindi movies are on the way out. With is focus on
One of my students asked why Christmas was spelled X-mas? Here is what Wikipedia has to say: The word “Christ” and its compounds, including
One of my students asked why Christmas was spelled X-mas? Here is what Wikipedia has to say: The word “Christ” and its compounds, including
On December 12th, Stephen Colbert’s “Word” was ” Casualty of War.” You can watch it online here, but Colbert’s impeccable logic is so well crafted
Teresa at Making Light has a great post about how deaf people are using YouTube: Why did it not occur to me that the signing deaf would be using
I’d like to briefly link to two great discussions about the origins of Taiwanese vegetable names: Prince Roy discusses the origins of the Taiwanese
I love this map of South Asia, showing the names of each of the various countries and states in the local language and writing system. Image from
I love this poem by Paul Blackburn which Language Hat found in an online poetry journal called Jacket. It seems to capture the essence of certain
And the winner is … Geoffrey Nunberg! A lot has been said about this nasty debate, and I’ve avoided it because it seems hard to get engaged without
One of the hardest things about learning Chinese is the lack of good dictionaries. I have one of the best — the ABC dictionary with “over 10,000
About half of the students at my college are Taiwanese Aborigines. Many of them are able to apply to the school directly, rather than going through
A conversation while ordering dinner: Me: I’ll have the poached fish. Waiter: Do you want milkfish or turbot? Me: No, she’s not my wife. Even
Not having lived there for a long time, I don’t much write about Hoboken on this blog, but that is where I grew up. The setting for On The
Years ago I read a paper* about politics and architecture in Taipei which pointed out (among other things) the ways in which architecture and
Earlier I identified the phonetic system used to transliterate the name of my university as Gwoyeu Romatzyh 國語羅馬字. Today I look at the official
I was going to write a short piece linking to two great Chinese-character related blog posts, one by Victor Mair (guest posting on Language Log) and
The official “English” name of my university is National Dong Hwa University 國立東華大學. I put English in quotes because, as you can see, the name is a
According to Wikipedia, one of the characteristics of indexicals is that “in order to successfully interpret them the hearer must know the
One of the things I love about riding the NY City Subway is how much individual personality each of the train conductors has. They each have
Who the hell is this “shimu” everyone is talking about? Well, not everyone — just our department’s always helpful and infinitely polite
On the social news site, Digg, someone with the alias “homerfink” posted a link to a story about Mr. T‘s return to television. The show is called “I
Having never served on a jury, my knowledge mostly comes from the movie, “12 Angry Men“. But I’ve always found the instructions given to juries
Recently some latino celebrities recorded a Spanish language version of the American national anthem, leading president Bush to state: I think
Although I am somehow now functioning in a Chinese language working environment, I know myself to be a very slow language learner. While many people
The other day I was giving a talk in which I was discussing David Byrne’s defense of Powerpoint during which I said to my students: “You know, the
You gotta love any singer who can sing in English, Hindi, Icelandic, Danish, Arabic, and Konkani! Leoncie makes Björk look quite dull by
According to John Berger (of Ways of Seeing fame, who is now a novelist living in France), the real masters of postmodern deconstruction are not
The Siraya 西拉雅族 are one of many “Pingpu” 平埔族 or Plains Aborigine peoples in Taiwan. Living on the West Coast, they were among the first to be
In Taiwan it is not uncommon for someone to change the character used to write their name as a means of averting a streak of bad luck. Although
Now that I’m in Taiwan, I guess I should remove my listing from the NYC Bloggers subway map. Too bad I’m not living in Taipei, then I could be on
Dakxin Bajranage’s play, Budhan has been up on the web for some time. The wonderful thing about making art and literature freely available on the
Titles are very important in Taiwanese society. It is incredibly impolite to call someone by their given name, unless you are close friends or
I had lunch today at a terrific Turkish restaurant in Sunnyside, NY. On the menu was “Aborigines in Olive Oil.” At first I thought perhaps they had
If the Bush administration has an ideology, it is that of executive power. John Yoo, now a Berkeley law professor, formerly a “mid-level attorney in
I got this SPAM/virus/phishing scam e-mail which said: Dear Sir/Madam, we have logged your IP-address on more than 30 illegal Websites.
The term overdetermined, as used in social theory, was introduced by Althusser, who took it from Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. Wikipedia offers
Do you use Devanagari on a mac? Firefox? Then please vote for this bug. Firefox 1.5 is almost ready for release and they still haven’t fixed this.
Although the film will be shot in Gujarat, Shashwati does all the interviews in Hindi, and in the future we are likely to be visiting North India on
I recently told someone that I think I learned more in high school than in college and graduate school combined. So it pleases me greatly that one
賊模賊樣—以劇場對抗 That’s how Zonble translated Acting Like a Thief into Chinese on his blog. This is great — now we need more translations! Visit Acting
I love Indian bureaucratese! My new favorite term is “the creamy layer” which I came across while doing research for the film. On this “central list
Hurricanes happen in the Atlantic and typhoons happen in the Pacific, it just that simple. {hurricanes, rita, typhoon}
I can’t stand A Prairie Home Companion, but it wasn’t something I was going to blog about until Ish brought my attention to the fact that Garrison
A little horn tooting: My Language in Society book review on both At war with words and War of words: Language, politics and 9/11 has finally been
If you haven’t heard it already, listen now. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s radio interview will go down in history as the most frank and direct
From The Christian Science Monitor, English is increasingly the language of French businesses: In a recent survey of 26 of France’s largest
In the above map, the size of each country represents its linguistic diversity, as recorded in Ethnologue. It is taken from this NY Times article
Via Language Hat, a New York Times article by Howard French on the complex linguistic situation in China. For China, the consequences of this
Last week Bill Poser of Language Log had a post about Leo Stoller, a Chicago businessman who claims not only to have copyright over the word
Someone recently mentioned to me that I should see Yuan Zhang’s 1999 documentary “Crazy English.” Although the few reviews I’ve found of the film
When I was visiting Aborigine villages in Taiwan I noticed that every house had a satellite dish on its roof. Anthropologist Scott Simon explained
Two things which I thought were true, but are not: That JFK made a jelly donut of himself in Berlin. That Orson Wells caused a panic in the
All those Chinese speakers out there reading this blog, please help Rex pick a Chinese name. {Chinese, names}
While we are speaking of etymologies, one of the most popular ones on the internet is that for “wiki.” As more or less everyone who’s worked with
China is seeking to privatize its rail system. Considering what a mess that has made of rail systems just about everywhere else, I can’t imagine
Language Log’s Mark Liberman has put his finger on a common phenomenon which drives me batty: people using (often incorrect or folk) etymology to
It seems that the word Bollywood derives from Tollywood. Perhaps it’s worth mentioning here that ‘Tollywood’, as a name for the Calcutta film
The Linguistlist now offers RSS Feeds. These are really nicely done — you can get the most recent posts, or you can subscribe to individual
I’m very upset to report that I’ve been demoted. In Google’s English edition Keywords is now only the number two result for “Kerim.” I am no longer
I’ve written before about how much the voiceovers used for foreign-language movie trailers annoy me because they try to hide the fact that these
It seems that Satanists have been dialing the wrong number all these years. It isn’t 666, but 616. I don’t know what area code 666 is, but 616 is in
About Talk is a collection of fascinating insights into language: a series of 52 little essays–conversational in tone, light and anecdotal
I’m a little surprised by Mark Liberman’s remark that Noam Chomsky’s “skepticism about the efficacy of natural selection makes him a natural ally
You realize how far Canadian aboriginal media is ahead of the rest of the world when their biggest controversy is whether they should dub or
The grade school I attended didn’t believe in teaching English grammar, so I remained blissfully unaware of all those rules everyone else seems to
I honestly don’t remember much about Colin Pine. He was a classmate of mine at ICLP in Taipei, where I studied Chinese for a year. Studying Chinese
Unfortunately, the realities of the contemporary publishing industry are such that even books which are classics in their field, and which are often
Speaking to a friend from Colombia last night, I discovered a new word: kidnappable. Actually, the word she told me was in Spanish: secuestrable,
Whether or not Liu Xiaobo’s 刘晓波 accusations [Chinese link infected with malware] are true, the concept is fascinating. He is accusing Li Xiguang
I’ve been mulling over how to respond to Mark Liberman’s recent jibe at semioticians. This jibe was provoked by my claim that linguistics should be
Mark Liberman is correct to state that French post-structuralist theory, is not derived from what we, today, consider to be “linguistics,” and if he
I have to admit being completely hooked on ABC’s TV series Lost. One of the amazing things about the show is that the writers and producers have
From the BBC: Typing Error Causes Nuclear Scare The Sudanese government had a nasty shock this week, when it read on a US Congress website that the
Listening to an NPR show on new legislation to regulate mercury, I heard this: Mad as a hatter. Years ago mercury was used to stiffen fur in hat
One of the phrases that stumped me when I was learning Chinese was 後天 (hòutiān) meaning “the day after tomorrow.” This confused me because the
No need to wait for the book, the curious can download my dissertation right now: Learning “Local” Languages: Passive Revolution, Language Markets,
Via Ampersand, a story in the L.A. Times about a Tennassee judge who is threatening to take children away from immigrant mothers who fail to learn
I’m slightly lactose intolerant, so Feta cheese (and other goat’s milk cheeses) is one of the few cheeses I can enjoy. My favorite kind of Feta is
This is a story that would certainly be generating much bigger waves if it involved a Democrat, rather than a pro-torture (i.e. pro-Gonzales)
From around the web: Google Maps! (via the Map Room) How to fold a map. (Via 43 folders.) AppRocket — looks like Quicksilver for the mac, but for
A man walks into a chip shop and requests “fish ‘n’ chips twice”. The bloke behind the counter says “it’s alright mate I heard you the first
Via Languag Log, which is mentioned in the article, a great piece in The Economist on the use of the internet to do linguistics research: Linguists
In a post by Jonathon Delacour, I learned about the differences between umlauts, diaeresis, and röckdöts. A heavy metal umlaut is an umlaut over
Agencies tasked with defending America from terrorism were among the top employers of workers with phony diplomas. (via Scott Sommers) How crazy
Before going through Customs at Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi, Shashwati had to stop and fill out an “embarkation” form to give to
Some random observations from the trip as we prepare to depart from India… Conversation on a street corner: Stranger: Hello sir, what country? Me:
In my last post I wrote about India’s Adivasis, or “Scheduled Tribes.” Accounting for over 85 million people, they account for the bulk of India’s
India is a settler state, like Australia, the United States, South Africa, Israel, Canada, Taiwan, and many other states where the indigenous
Nobody uses street names in Ahmedabad. I’ve not seen street addresses of any kind. Directions are always in relation to nearby landmarks: Across
On the plane to India I read a NYRB article on the history of trade (in goods and ideas) between India and China by Amartya Sen. In a footnote he
Right now I’m double checking all the Chinese text in my dissertation, so I was happy to see this post in Languagelog: Hanzi Smatter is a blog
Like Red vs. Blue in the US, but Ukrainian style. And here his Blue vs. Orange in pictures. Looks like there is some kind of a settlement. (via
The sign language presenter on the Ukrainian state-run television station “rejected the pro-government script and informed her viewers instead of
A wonderful NY Times story about Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg (yes the sign in the picture is misspelled), and its long name.
When I first met Suketu Mehta he was deep in conversation with someone who was grilling him about his experiences writing the Bollywood action
What is stress? The term was adopted from engineering for use in biology in the 1920s [Start here for the full presentation]: Eighty-some-odd years
Welcome to the ranks! A dissident is a person that actively opposes the established order. The term is most often used to refer to political
In the comments on a recent LanguageHat post two of the most articulate, literate, and thoughtful members of the blogsphere, John Emerson (aka
Geoff Nunberg has a LA Times op-ed on how difficult it is for Europeans to translate US political speech: when foreigners are scratching their
Languaghat has previously covered controversies over how to spell “Euro”, but this latest one is truly hilarious: All official EU texts must be
Two posts over at LanguageLog discuss research showing that “gaydar,” or the ability to detect who is gay and who is straight (in this case using
I was listening to Weekend Edition on NPR and heard a pollster say “gerrymandering” with a hard “G,” as in “gate.” It turns out that such a
If you haven’t seen the clip of Jon Stewart appearing on Crossfire, you can find links to download it here. I wanted to comment on something Jon
Shaviro writes: I just signed the collective letter of protest being sent by university professors [and others] to The New York Times, in objection
Derrida (1930-2004) famously argued that writing preceded speech. By this I believe he meant that the “iterability” of language logically preceded
Today Kevin Drum tells us that “‘Dred Scott’ is code for ‘Roe v. Wade’“, explaining Bush’s strange remarks about being against slavery during the
This is the most scathing inditement I have seen of the Republican Party — and it is entirely constructed out of their own words. Using video
You got no choice that’s what you all been told to listen to. These criminals in the office want to control and limit you. All the political power
It was my impression that Bush’s constant repetition of the phrase “the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time” in an effort to discredit
An amazing post at BoingBoing.net: a “visual language survival guide” used by coalition soldiers. It’s a sort of show-and-tell folding map intended
This doesn’t surprise me: “The Justice Department’s translation mess has become a chronic problem that has obvious implications for our national
I only participated in a formal debate once, in high school, so I can’t really comment on the ground rules for the presidential debates; however,
China’s last inheritress of the mysterious Nushu language, probably the world’s only female-specific language, died at her central China
logophobia: fear of words graphophobia: Fear of writing or handwriting. A Midwest Airlines flight from Milwaukee to San Francisco was canceled
LanguageLog has a post about how the World Tennis Association’s (WTA) official pronunciation guide for Russian women tennis players is mostly
One of the most powerful forms of evidence that there is an innate “language gene” is the development of creole languages out of pidgins. Wikipedia
One of the embarrassments awaiting just about any student of Chinese who studies first in the US and then goes to Taiwan is being laughed at for
A few days ago Munin posted about how Google was offering localized news in Japanese and Korean. At the time I was upset that there was no Taiwan
To the right is Karim Khan Zand, the guy I was named after — in honor of being born on a holiday trip to Tehran. My parents chose the Turkish
From Jonathan Edelstein: Welcome to the second annual Arrival Day Blogburst, commemorating the arrival of the first Jews in New Amsterdam on
You might have seen this floating around the internet: Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the
Having written a post here on typographic discrimination, when I read a recent article on word recognition, my first thought naturally was, “What
For four years George W. Bush has used the power of words to overcome insurmountable facts. A hilarious, must-see video clip from the Daily Show,
Two excellent graphics I’ve recently come across which link size to frequency of word use (click on images for the original pages). The first is
An excellent article about the various theories concerning how we recognize words can be found here. Rather than blogging it myself, I e-mailed the
Via Sepia Mutiny an article on Yiddish speaking Gujaratis in Antwerp: In Antwerp, Jews and Indians are so embedded in each other’s lives that many
In September of last year Jonathon Delacour wrote eloquently about the role of “sadness” in Japanese aesthetics: It’s this “aesthetic empathy of
I didn’t even realize that cotton was a verb. From The American Heritage Dictionary: To come to understand. Often used with to or onto: “The German
I’ve been holding off writing a post about Benjamin Lee Whorf thinking that I would wait until I had time to do the topic justice; but the
I’ve just finished reading Qurratulain Hyder’s River of Fire. Written in 1959 in Urdu, and translated into English by the author, this sprawling
I’m finally reading Mamdani’s book Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (discussed previously here and here), and
A poem I composed from today’s SPAM “subject” lines: rhodolite demonstrable codfish Re: Everything went giddy with Are you a loser? buddy,deal
I wanted to clarify a comment I left in my post on Koko, the guerilla whose learned to use symbols to communicate with humans. I wrote the
Bill Poser explains why a news story about how Koko, the gorilla, used American Sign Language (ASL) to tell her caretakers that she needed a visit
I’m very happy to know about the Don Martin Dictionary, having grown up on a steady diet of Don Martin sound effects. (Both LanguageLog and,
What does it say about our society that some of our largest and most powerful firms, including financial giants such as Merrill Lynch and
Why did the Iraqi Chicken cross the road? There are a bunch of different answers, but here is the one offered by army translators: Chicken he corss
Mongolians need surnames. Actually, they had surnames, but they lost them. How do you loose your surname? Well, it seems that the use of Surnames
Tom Engelhardt points out that only Iraqi’s are “nationalists.” Americans on the other hand, are “patriots.” Here, for instance, is a passage,
In a New York Times Op-Ed aritcle, Brent Staples says something which suggests that the use of the term “pass” to mean, citing definition “5. d” in
Read this hilarious series of telegraphs between British colonial officials in 1916, there is a punch-line at the end, so read the whole thing. Here
There has been great discussion of the phrase “under God” as it is used in the Pledge of Allegiance over at LanguageLog. The long and the short of
I just had to share this amazing picture of a Copepod from the Smithsonian’s web site: “The World of Copepods” I discovered via Mark Liberman’s
I have, on occasion, been criticized for using the construction “more perfect,” being told that it is incorrect and illogical. So I was happy to see
This is exactly the sort of post that this blog was intended to promote: As Raymond Williams points out in his excellent little book Keywords, from
Konrad writes about trying to get through security at JFK: After proceeding through security, I approached an idle officer and made a simple
Forget NASCAR moms, single Dads, disgruntled soccer players and other swing voting blocks. What we want is the “pop” vote! Those who say “soda” seem
Geoffrey Pullum’s scathing letter to William Raspberry about Ebonics reminds me of how hard it was for me to teach about Ebonics to undergraduates.
A few days ago, Mark Liberman posted a link to this Global Security web site with information on the proper pronounciation and meaning of the prison
The government is going to have to come up with new ways to block out information in public documents. Already there was a scandal when a sensitive
I’m really just showing off that I’ve finally implemented Unicode posting on my site, but I also wanted to add a footnote of sorts to my last post
Mark Liberman goes over the research on language and gender and, looking at one particular language feature, asks whether the empirical evidence
You really have to go over to Language log and read this wonderful post by Bill Poser: As a linguist and connoisseur of Chinese food it was clearly
From The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Rob Corddry: Jon, there’s no question that what took place in that prison was horrible, but the Arab World
In spite of advanced technology and the Unicode character convention, people are still in the habit of neglecting the diacritics of foreign
Call it the whoopee cushion doctrine. It is hard to believe that the government now regards flatulence jokes, the lamest staple of gag gift stores,
Last October, Jim, of Uncle Jazzbeau’s Gallimaufrey, had a post about linguists in movies which sparked a lively discussion. This doesn’t quite
Konrad Lawson, whom I’ve long known only as the person behind the Macintosh software company Fool’s Workshop, has an excellent blog, Muninn, which I
Back in March a professor complained that he couldn’t understand student exams which were hastily written in text messaging language: Perhaps I am
For much of history, the science of biology was the science of classification. As can be seen by the text accompanying this image (from a web page
Whereas the English-speaking world was formerly perceived as a hierarchy of parent (Britain) and children (‘the colonies’), it is now seen rather as
I just learned a new word: Coprophagia is the technical term for eating feces. This has been studied in dogs by several people with no definitive
If you use Google to search for “Judaism,” “Jewish” or “Jewish people,” the results are informative and relevant. So why is a search for “Jew”
I was just complaining the other day about how much the voiceovers they use in trailers for foreign language films annoy me. It is as if they are
One thing about almost any large city in a developing country — you’ll see everyone riding around on scooters. One of the biggest changes between my
Using standard spammer substitution-techniques on the word “viagra” yields 600,426,974,379,824,381,952 possibilities: Viagorea ViagDrHa V l a g r
Definition: The act or acts of using public information networks such as newscasts or newspapers in a misleading, devious, or mischievous way, to
Thanks to my friend Ann, I just found a web site devoted to the Lepcha language: The Lepcha language is spoken in Sikkim and Darjeeling district in
I’ve always been fascinated by the relationship between text and image. I even taught a course about it (PDF download) a few years ago. Many artists
LanguageHat deconstructs Dr. Language’s list of supposedly “mispronounced” words: … this list is useless, because its few worthwhile nuggets … are
In an interesting post on Japanese cell-phone e-mailing (not instant messaging, it turns out), Mark Liberman said something which made my thumbs
Although I’ve read some Korean history, and I’ve watched Korean soap operas when I was in Taiwan, I still know very little about Korea. I’ve always
If you’ve missed the wonderful thread over at LanguageLog about the number of Eskimo words for snow then you should check out Mark Liberman’s latest
My first “feeds” post is an unusual use of RSS feeds. Thanks to a website called WordSpy, you can be immediately notified of new words entering the
A useful aramaic phrase: Shluukh kleelaa d-kuubayk, pquud. Laa meshkakh naa d-ekhzey l-ketaan tsuur- aathaa. Which translates as: Could you take
A discussion on an e-mail list made me aware of a new word: “skinship.” Feelings of relatedness and affection between two people, particularly a
Although the NY Times occasionally has excellent stories, I never expect much from it. So I wasn’t surprised to learn that neither does the staff at
This is the first of what I hope to be many such “invited” posts. by Laura Miller [invited author] The recent Washington Post article by Edward Cody
I’m doing OK after my operation. I’m not taking any pain killers, and I even went for a short walk around the block this afternoon. Physical trauma
Do your friend’s get uncomfortable and embarrassed when you use the word “blog” in a sentence? I have noticed that mine do, and so I sometimes try
When I was studying Chinese the school had a policy that we had to speak Chinese all the time, even during our lunch breaks. A well intentioned
I was shocked that Bush still had the nerve to refer to weapons of mass destruction in his state of the union address last night. Calpundit notes
As an anthropologist, I’m embarrassed to admit that I still get very confused by Chinese kinship terms. So I felt better reading about the the
The word “crore” is Indian English for 10,000,000. (One crore = 100 lakhs.) I first encountered this word in articles about the Bollywood film
I had noticed the increasing use of Mandarin Chinese in New York City’s Chinatowns, but this article says that this is true even of San Francisco:
Though a bane to teachers of public speaking, people around the world fill pauses in their own languages as naturally as watermelons have seeds. In
This is the Chinese character for “proton” as in what is in the nucleus of an atom, pronounced “Zhi4zi3″. But my Chinese dictionary tells me that it
This chart shows the Languages Used to Access Google from March 2001 till November 2003. There isn’t much explanation of what this means, but I
Of course, “spider hole” was not concocted to describe Hussein’s hideout. According to two historians, the term goes back at least to World War II,
Back in June I wrote something on my old blog about a New York Times article, by David Berreby, entitled “Fading Species and Dying Tongues: When the
NY City Government isn’t just for English speakers anymore: In a reversal, the Bloomberg administration is expected to announce its support today
I’ve never been overly picky about my vegetarianism. I eat seafood, eggs, and often eat food cooked together with meat dishes as long as I can’t
I totally missed this brilliant post from Nathan Newman, written about three weeks ago. He discusses allegations of liberal censorship of
An American woman has been left with a British accent after having a stroke. Now I’d be really impressed if she could speak in Cockney Rhyming
Watch him squirm: Q: Why won’t you spell out what your position is? Read the whole exchange — it gets even better
Languagehat has a post about Berlusconi’s bad grammar in Italian. He quotes from a recent New Yorker article: His grammar is dreadful. He gets the
Am I allowed to title today’s entry “McJobs”? Not according to McDonalds. What interests me about this story is that although McDonalds raises legal
There has been a lot of discussion of late about the Lakoff interview on how the left needs to learn how to better “frame” issues, in order to
Calpundit brought my attention to this post by Matthew Yglesias, where he points out that the New York Review of Books article on Eminem fails to
Back in September Calpundit used the phrase “technical lie” to refer to Bush administration statements which are “carefully constructed to leave an
FYI: Soft and chewy candy is generally categorized by the industry as either “gummy” if it has a primarily gelatin base, or “juju,” if it has
The Redskins football team can keep its trademark name and logos, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, because a group of activists didn’t provide
From Cursor.org, the naming of a scandal: Time notes that some have christened the scandal “Intimigate.” While the term has yet to gain widespread
There is a lot of talk about languages in Taiwan these days, especially since the announcement of a draft of a proposed “national languages
FROGMARCH verb [mid-19th century and still in use] to carry someone face down, one person holding onto each limb; used on drunks or recalcitrant
Edward Said, the world-renowned scholar, writer and critic has died aged 67, it was announced today. Here is one of the last things he published
This is amazing. There have been lots of lists of lies told by the Bush administration, but Sam Smith has actually edited together all these lies
David Neiwert’s excellent essay, Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An exegesis is now up at Cursor.org, with photos! (NB See my own post on Fascism.) One
I was at a wedding this weekend and was telling some relatives how I live in Jackson Heights, Queens where I have language difficulties because I
David Greenberg has an excellent article discussing why reporters enjoy exposing “small” lies about personal matters more than big lies about issues
Back in May people were discussing how enlarged President Bush’s genitalia looked in his famous “Top Gun” photo-op. It seems that this was a result
Amptoons is right, Pedantry’s series of posts about language policy is one of the most interesting things in the blogsphere right now. (Right up
The BBC reports: A trawler suspected of fishing illegally for the endangered Patagonian Toothfish in the Australian fishing zone off Antarctica is
I was reading Daily Kos who reports that Clark is now second only to Dean on Meetup (although Dean is still way ahead). But what is Meetup? Meetup
I’ve been following an excellent series of posts over at Alas, A Blog about the Kobe Bryant Case (1, 2, 3). In particular, a link to this article by
Anyone who has lived in East Asia knows about bushiban. That’s the Mandarin word used in Taiwan for these “cram schools” which have their
Ah-nold is on the board of U.S. English: While media reports in recent days have focused on Schwarzenegger’s support for Proposition 187, the
Opposition to Bilingual Education is popping up again in yet another state — this time its Florida: The unfortunate reality is that it takes away
Taken from a Monty Python skit were vikings sing a tribute to the canned meat, the word is no inextricably tied to junk e-mail and even Hormel Foods
There goes my site’s “G” rating! Probably means you won’t be able to visit my site from a school or public library web site anymore! Oh well… The
Last night I went to see the Kirov Opera’s production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. This was part of a series called “Petersburg on the Hudson”
In response to the rising tide of people using the “F-word” to describe the Bush administration’s numerous tactics for dividing the world into those
With the vice president attending the funeral of one of America’s most famous civil rights opponents, I think it is worth while taking a look at the
The Guardian UK has an excellent post today on Irony. Not only addressing a “number of misconceptions” about the word, especially the one that
The word “blog” is listed in the March 2003 draft of the OED. It is listed as both a noun and a verb. Both uses are first dated as appearing in
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