David Luna, Dawn Lerman, and Laura A Peracchio sound like they’ve started something interesting in Structural Constraints in Codeswitched Advertising (via Scribal Terror). This approach, and the relaxed and integrationist attitude of the Brazilian goverment towards { Portuguese + Spanish = Portuñol}, seem more constructive than calling Spanglish “a hybrid and ugly-sounding monster” or persecuting…
Alex Mayrhofer’s gazetteer, used in the previous post, has a cool homophone feature which helps you distinguish between, for example, Swanmore, Hampshire (what’s with the Aireborough, Alex?), UK and SÄwan Maira, Pakistan. Impressive as the South Downs may seem after a heavy night, Alex’s 3D landscaping reminds one that pub crawls on the North West…
Apparently (via Onze Taal) a Serbian village is changing its name from Smrdić (“old and dirty”) to Izvor (“spring”). Said Smilja Kostic: “All the young people used to leave the village because they were ashamed to live in a place with such a name.” This seems to me dubious reasoning: despite its tempting name, there…