Language Culture
If you love word play, you probably know that a word — or longer piece of writing — that reads the same forward and backward is called a palindrome. But what do you call a word that spells another word backwards, or a word that looks the same upside down? When terms for these orthographic puzzlers didn't exist, logolologists (such as the authors of the books listed below) were happy to invent some. Here are a few…
Trivia - the bit of coastal land in between Holland and Denmark is known as Frisia, and the Frisian language still survives, although those who still can speak it dwindle every year. I heard a recording of some of it once, and something about it fascinated me - to the ear, it sounded almost exactly like English, except that it used a different vocabulary. (I suppose that means phrasing and vowel sounds are the same) It was like hearing people speak English in another room where you couldn't quite make it out.
Vexillology… the scientific study of the history, symbolism and usage of flags or, by extension, any interest in flags in general.… -Wikipedia
…The correct way to write the phrase is beck and call. This phrase is a part of the idiom “to be at someone’s beck and call.” Beckon call is an example of an eggcorn — a slightly misheard (yet still kind of sensical) version of a common phrase.…
…Neither financier seized either weird species of leisure.…
…I read The Pied Piper in Latin and learned what the word "pied" means. It means clothed in many different colors.
This phrase is used in a sketch about a badly translated English-Hungarian phrasebook from the British TV comedy show, Monty Python's Flying Circus. … It's possibly the most useful phrase there is, and a handy one to have when you're asked to say something in a language you're learning. … Click on any of the phrases that are links to hear them spoken.…
…After just forty minutes of annoying my wife with intense practice, I finally mastered the skill that had eluded me since I was eight years old. Achievement unlocked!…
…Where was their outrage when Bill Clinton used women for recreation and made the words “blow job” and “blue stained dress” part of our national dinner conversation?
Where was their outrage when Hillary Clinton called these women, whom her husband was using as play things, “sluts, whores, trailer-trash and bimbos”?
Where was their outrage when Hollywood and the Washington Beltway mocked the prudishness of those like me who dared suggest a leader’s private life is, indeed, our business and any politician who would use women privately, and then lie about it, should be held accountable publicly?…
Today, IS: National. Punctuation; Day!!1!
Behave… --'accordingly'?!?
Government BANS eg, etc and ie from its websites in case they prove too confusing to non-English speakers
The Government Digital Service says it advocates 'simple, clear language'
People whose first language is not English might not understand terms
Programs for visually-impaired people mispronounce the abbreviations
But critics say move is 'short-sighted' as Latin is part of 'cultural heritage'…
Doomestic dogs, cats, hamsters or budgerigars should be rebranded as “companion animals” while owners should be known as “human carers”… Even terms such as wildlife are dismissed as insulting to the animals concerned – who should instead be known as “free-living”, the academics including an Oxford professor suggest.
The call comes from the editors of the Journal of Animal Ethics, a new academic publication devoted to the issue.…
…You can thank one chain for the rise of the donut - and your spelling angst.…
…Thus readeth Johnson's Economist column on how punctuation is being changed by computers and the internet.
Most people take punctuation to be something obvious and settled.
… The first English writers, when they punctuated at all, availed themselves of long-forgotten symbols like the diastole and trigon, the interpunct and the diple. Printing began the process of settling the punctuation system, but even that took four centuries. Samuel Johnson’s commas, in the mid-18th century, were not only heavy; many would be ungrammatical today, and this style persisted into the first editions of The Economist in 1843.…
It has been a tradition of Oxford Dictionaries to choose the most popular word once a year.
Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Dictionaries, said conventional words have been having a tough time fulfilling the surging needs of visual communication in recent years. The tech company quickly found that the “Face with Tears of Joy” emoji is by far the most popular.…
If you’re one of those people who packs like a weekend warrior every time you head on a camping trip, you can blame the English language.
Those word-birthing Romans conquered half of Europe around the year zero and everywhere they went, they saw only open countryside: what they called campus.…
Hircine: of or pertaining to a goat, especially its odor.
…Dolezal rose to prominence as a black woman but was revealed last week as white by her parents.
“I don’t see why they’re in such a rush to whitewash the work that I have done and who I am and how I have identified…”
Patrick Ortega, 15-year-old deaf boy in sub-Saharan Africa, unable to communicate with anyone, until… [video 4:25] Wow. Extra thanks to Red Dawn at CotR for this.
"…Some may protest that it is not English but Mandarin Chinese that will eventually become the world’s language, because of the size of the Chinese population and the increasing economic might of their nation. But that’s unlikely. For one, English happens to have gotten there first. It is now so deeply entrenched in print, education and media that switching to anything else would entail an enormous effort. We retain the QWERTY keyboard and AC current for similar reasons.
"Also, the tones of Chinese are extremely difficult to learn beyond childhood, and truly mastering the writing system virtually requires having been born to it. …"
Our recent piece on Americanisms entering the language in the UK prompted thousands of you to e-mail examples. Here are 50 of the most e-mailed. What kind of word is "gotten"? It makes me shudder.
why add <3 as a word? A spokesperson clarified, "While symbols do become spelt-out words relatively frequently, it is usually only with a mundane meaning as the name of the symbol… It's very unusual for it to happen in such an evocative and tangential way." [Could you repeat that again in, say, plain English?]
The dictionary says that although the terms are associated with modern electronic communications, some are surprisingly old. The first confirmed use of "OMG" was in 1917.
An all Spanish-speaking television station has joined the Tulsa market. ... "It's an advertising opportunity, a marketing opportunity and a political one...."
Oklahoma voters will decide whether English should be the state's official language.
The Supreme Court ruled narrowly Tuesday in favor of a government policy that threatens broadcasters with fines over the use of even a single curse word on live television, yet stopped short of deciding whether the policy violates the Constitution.
The Senate approved a bill Wednesday night to let voters decide if Oklahoma should make English its official language. House Joint Resolution 1042 now returns to the House to have the Senate amendments approved. The amended version of the bill passed the Senate 44-2 with no debate.
syn·ec·do·che [si-nek-duh-kee] -- noun Rhetoric. a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part, the special for the general or the general for the special, as in ten sail for ten ships or a Croesus for a rich man.