Messages

1

English & Linguistics / Re: Quotes from work

« on: October 05, 2012, 01:28:32 PM »

A faculty member took the executive to task for using the word "meeting invite" in an email. He said that you invite someone to a meeting or extend a meeting invitation, but not a meeting invite. So I hopped on to OED (thanks to my awesome local library) and took a screen shot for her that shows that invite has been used as a noun since 1615.

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English & Linguistics / Re: Writing a Book

« on: April 13, 2012, 01:10:09 PM »

I'd love to see an analysis of the histories and pros and cons of the various major style guides and why they developed the way they did and what their strengths and weaknesses are.

I could also see a whole chapter on formal language and why what sounds formal to us now may not have started out that way etc. --- take a look at the King Jame's Bible, wedding invitations, etc.

And something on the pronoun problem -- he vs. she vs. they. Attempts to have gender neutral pronouns, etc.

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English & Linguistics / Re: I don't have an accent

« on: March 13, 2012, 06:52:54 AM »

Now I don't know how I say it naturally because my mind has been tainted by this thread. I do know that I don't say idea like [ai'dɪ].

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English & Linguistics / Re: I don't have an accent

« on: March 12, 2012, 02:29:35 PM »

I just realized that "I do not" is not an answer to the question asked. I pronounce museum with two syllables. 

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English & Linguistics / Re: I don't have an accent

« on: March 11, 2012, 05:55:59 PM »

I do not. It'd be interesting to compare our two accent profiles -- she has no Kanab in her upbringing and a lot more California.

I think one of the most interesting accents I have heard is of a young man in his early twenties who spent most of his formative years in Minnesota, but whose father is from Scotland and his mother from England (I think south England, but I don't know for sure) who also served a mission in Idaho. He has a bit of the uptalk of young LDS, some of the Minnesota Scandinavian voweling, and yet there's an underlying British thickness to how he speaks. If I didn't know his background, I would find it impossible to place his accent.

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English & Linguistics / Re: I don't have an accent

« on: March 11, 2012, 11:31:19 AM »

I believe that the preacher voice is an example of Register (or diatype).

I still have a few southern Utah vowels hanging on (I have a very hard time pronouncing color -- I say collar) that combine with California surfer dude and American Academic (for example, a crisp, clipped enunciation).

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English & Linguistics / Re: I hate journalistic writing

« on: February 17, 2011, 06:00:38 PM »

It doesn't matter, Jonathon -- it's alliterative!

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English & Linguistics / Re: The random etymology of the day

« on: January 14, 2011, 10:21:09 AM »

That Shakespeare reference is interesting to me. In some ways it makes more sense. An iron crow is something that is iron that is shaped like a crow's beak. A crowbar is a bar that is shaped like a crow's beak. But a bar could be made out of any kind of metal, right? Perhaps we should be calling crowbars steelcrows.

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English & Linguistics / Re: Deconstructing Chomsky

« on: October 05, 2010, 10:43:25 AM »

Brokaw's area was pretty good but Williams shows way more range (e.g. 30 Rock, Sesame Street).

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English & Linguistics / Re: New column-type thingy

« on: August 12, 2010, 01:15:51 PM »

That was a really good post, Jonathon. And I too am fond of using grey.

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English & Linguistics / You keep on using that word

« on: April 20, 2010, 10:09:45 AM »

I think I met him when I was a kid.  

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English & Linguistics / You keep on using that word

« on: April 15, 2010, 01:13:40 PM »

This Slate article whining about the use of the word kabuki in American political punditry is somewhat interesting, but the comments are very interesting. The author gets schooled in usage, etymology, etc.

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English & Linguistics / How to use a semicolon

« on: January 26, 2010, 10:24:15 AM »

That's hilarious, but it neglects to mention that you do use semicolons with certain conjunctions.  

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English & Linguistics / The random etymology of the day

« on: January 06, 2010, 10:21:27 AM »

Make sure you give it back when you have had enough.

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English & Linguistics / The random etymology of the day

« on: January 06, 2010, 08:42:08 AM »

Of course not. I'm just demonstrating my bilabial ejectives.

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English & Linguistics / The random etymology of the day

« on: January 06, 2010, 07:14:33 AM »

 

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English & Linguistics / The random etymology of the day

« on: January 05, 2010, 09:12:02 AM »

When I grow up I want to be an Orthoepist. That's like the Geek of Language Nerds.

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English & Linguistics / If I were king of the world,

« on: May 26, 2009, 11:10:59 AM »

I am not Brigham Young.

But I have stolen his experiments in social re-engineering to make cool LDS-themed t-shirts: http://motleyvision.spreadshirt.com/

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English & Linguistics / A history of Klingon

« on: May 07, 2009, 02:28:33 PM »

Right. It's like a linguist's version of the Silmarillion.  

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English & Linguistics / A history of Klingon

« on: May 07, 2009, 10:33:41 AM »

A history of Klingon, the language

I found this article fascinating (and I'm not much of a Star Trek fan).

Klingon sentence structure is about as complex as it gets. Most people are familiar with the idea that verb endings can indicate person and number. In Spanish, the -o suffix on a verb like hablar (to speak) indicates a first-person singular subject (hablo—I speak) while the -amos suffix indicates a first-person plural subject (hablamos—we speak). But Klingon uses prefixes rather than suffixes, and instead of having six or seven of them, like most romance languages, it has 29.

Romanian uses suffixes (like Latin!). It's not too complicated once you get the hang of it. But I can't imagine 29 prefixes.

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English & Linguistics / Funny English and Linguistics stuff...

« on: March 13, 2009, 10:52:59 AM »

I don't think it caught fire. I think it felt so misused that it refused to open.

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English & Linguistics / Foreign phrases

« on: March 13, 2009, 10:03:29 AM »

You can't detach social capital from communication, Porter. Not in this world.

People quibble about how to approach language since that is the case. My response (being a typical Gen Xer with a humanities background) is equal parts sincerity, play/flouting and irony.  

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English & Linguistics / Foreign phrases

« on: March 13, 2009, 09:29:50 AM »

Because it is often the phrases, rather than the individual words, that have accrued the cultural baggage and cachet that makes them worth using in certain situations.  

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English & Linguistics / Funny English and Linguistics stuff...

« on: March 13, 2009, 09:07:05 AM »

That is rather remarkable. And by remarkable I mean to really say: I have no response to that.

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English & Linguistics / I hate journalistic writing

« on: February 18, 2009, 10:05:06 AM »

Yeah. Like those teasers for the 10 o'clock news and you stay up and watch the story and realize that you had already seen it on the Internet (sometimes on Snopes) three years ago.