Sorry, but I just couldn’t resist this photo, which was sent to me by le Big FFF, who received it from someone else a long time ago. I think it’s probably early 70s Anglophone West Africa, but your guess is as good as mine:
If you search Google for “Flurble gronk bloopit, bnip Frundletrune” it asks – quite fairly in my opinion – whether you meant “Fluble gronk bloopit, bnip Frundletrune“. Let’s see what kind of ads that generates. Via Syntactic Saccharose.
Mark Liberman has a devastating post that goes way beyond the other day’s rather unconcluded up business. What I wonder, though, and briefly so, is why “to * up” ghits about so much more than “to * down“, to say nothing of that unloved beast, “to * it all around”. Dinner is emerging from the…
The noble Iggy notes that Korean “parents are turning to surgery to sort out misplaced l and r sounds.” Apparently The procedure, which takes twenty to thirty minutes under local anesthetic, involves snipping the thin tissue under the tongue to make it longer and supposedly nimbler. This is an interesting idea. For example, are there…
I once saw a pocket trumpet miraculously transformed by a car into something vaguely resembling a plate, but back in 1753 James Hanson and his father were condemned to transportation for trying to achieve the opposite without paying for the raw materials. This text is from the online proceedings of the Old Bailey: (M.) James…
I’ve put in something new that has got rid of virtually all my spam which, although it mostly went straight to trash, had reached 3500+ daily. As far as I know this will have no adverse effects on normal people, but give me a ring if you suddenly find you’re having problems reaching me by…
Lovely line in La Vanguardia, discovered lazing on top of an article re bullfighting: Bullfights fracture the allergy of intellectuals to proscription. And, continues the article, The generation of May 68 postulated a tolerant and flexible society to the unanimous cry of “It is forbidden to forbid”. This is one of the most important, most…
Jordi says (comments) that this La Vanguardia writer misuses his sources and has a dubious attitude towards Jews. Mr Robinson disagrees, and explains why. Meanwhile, I’m still waiting to hear news of the sacking of Rafael Ramos (search), whose sins are incontrovertible.
Funny old world: just when I announce that this blog will henceforth be devoted to politics (ie money, sex, violence and food), Language Log goes and blogrolls me. Cool, cool, incredibly cool, but I know a secret agenda even when I’m on the drugs. What this is really about is one Mr Liberman@LL kicking his…