Mark Liberman has omitted a major British contribution to redundancy from this spelling reform post. “[About] as much use as …” is found pleasantly unassertive by lovers of warm beer, and it also tongue-trips with a greater joie de vivre. Our maths teacher (who had hair on the palms of his hands) used to tell…
David Bell, the British Chief Inspector of Schools, said last summer that infants increasingly lacked speaking skills because of the “disrupted and dishevelled” lives some were forced to endure. So how come George W’s oracy has declined now he’s no longer a boozer? Mr Bell thinks that the answer to the problem lies in more…
Satirical mag Titanic has gone one better than publishers Springer & Spiegel, who yesterday deserted the state language reforms of the mid-90s: TITANICK kehrt zurück zur ganz, ganz alten RechtschreybungSie habent eyn Eynsehen: Der Spiegel-Verlag und Springer kehren zurück zur alten Rechtschreybung. Doch TITANICK gehet noch eyn Schrittleyn weyter und schreybet ab dem heutiglichen Tage…
The bad news is that the UK is about to become a net importer of hydrocarbons; the good news, that we are now selling services to fascist regimes in Central Asia as well as colonising the lexicons of Middle Eastern analysts who, it seems, have stopped measuring oil supplies in barrels: The impact of the…
Discreet enquiries suggest that Chuck D is out of the office and being a Public Enemy on a beach somewhere until September, so we’re going to have to sort this one two three four out ourselves. I completely agree with Eric Bakovic and Mark Liberman that the big problem facing the phrase “Ain’t how that…
Re this post by Eric Bakovic, I reckon that when Chuck D of Public Enemy sings Ain’t how that God planned it? he is using “how that” where standard English speakers would use “how”, and that the pronoun “that” is assumed in the “ain’t” or what precedes it. The “how that”/”how” swap turns up in…
I’m terribly sorry: I meant conservative in the sense of a nostalgia for things just past, which does, I think, make Habermas and Derrida conservatives. Mark Liberman, on the other hand, is nostalgic for times long past, for the Enlightenment–buckled shoes, open drains, and, quite possibly, beating well-loved columnists with clubs–which makes him not so…
Seriously, if I write this blog in Portuguese, will someone invite me onto Orkut? Or am I better off just heading down the Brazilian bar down the street? All these do-good schemes always end up in trouble – just check the story of rioting at the Forum over in Lorna’s Shorts.
Re Sony’s PlayStation Portable: The firm demonstrated a piece of software called Talkman, which utilises the built-in microphone port of the PSP and allows users to speak into the device in one language and have what they said translated into another, spoken, language. The software uses a cartoon bird as its main interface, which is…
The Taoiseachracy got sick of being hassled during the Irish presidency of the EU by lobbyists for various unloved languages, so here’s a little bit of revenge that should end discussion of EU institutional language policy for the next decade: LONDON — Ireland said yesterday it wants Irish to be made the 21st official language…