The studied use of archaicisms, vowel transposition and misspelled euphemism means that in spam a couple of hundred English proto-dialects are born and die every day. Here is part of a message received this morning from Jesus: launger eræctoins ma micelnes in eower beran mara sæd betera þe vaigra! When the men in the white…
“The first Project was to shorten Discourse by cutting Polysyllables into one, and leaving out Verbs and Participles, because in reality all things imaginable are but Nouns.”
Oh, if only empirialism weren’t such a well-established (260 ghits) misspelling of imperialism! For what would suit those evangelical empiricists better? Word found in the comments section of swampman Chappell’s blog, currently awaiting recolonisation.
That insolent colonial, John Chappell, has launched an all-out assault on this house, suggesting that I perform the work of a yeoman: 1a. An attendant, servant, or lesser official in a royal or noble household. b. A yeoman of the guard. 2. A petty officer performing chiefly clerical duties in the U.S. Navy. 3. An…
The Calcutta Telegraph is generally acknowledged to be the Indian daily with the best Polish coverage, and so it is this evening, with a story about Polmos, a Zielona Góra vodka producer facing prosecution for handing out a free English course with each bottle. Said Renata Durda of the state Agency for Solving Alcohol Problems:…
Irish opposition parties are trying to stir up the nationalist vote with a proposal to get Irish (ca 0.2M fluent speakers) adopted as an official EU language. I know when I’ve lost an argument, and I hereby renounce everything I have said on this subject in the past. Let’s make every European tongue (including the…
As a second-class Anglo-Saxon, I would have immediately and incorrectly assumed that the use of the word shatnes in connection with wool and linen referred to the increase in hygiene and decrease in mortality that resulted from making undergarments from the latter rather than the former (PDF). Via LanguageHat.
Over a couple of lunchtime drinks today a culturecrat intimated that it might be possible to fast-track ghit into the official dictionary of a widely spoken Romance language. Being first with this kind of thing is important – just think of the PR.
The difficulty of interpreting intent in materials published in a different language and cultural context was one of the interesting facets of the case of the Fuengirola imam, convicted of publishing with malicious intent a manual on how to beat women without leaving scars. It’s not going to get any easier here once radio and…