Language: September 2005 Archive Page

Adam Jacot de Boinod first became entranced by language when he discovered 27 words for "moustache" in an Albanian dictionary - and another 27 for "eyebrows". A world of bushy machismo and stolid dignity sprang to life before his eyes. He began hanging out in second-hand bookshops, looking for foreign dictionaries and the tiny revelations contained therein. He made lists of his favourite "words with no equivalent in the English language" - like, say, tsuji-giri, a Japanese word from samurai days meaning, "to try out a new sword on a passer-by" (thanks a bunch, Toshiro), or the stoic German term Torschlusspanik, meaning "the fear of diminishing opportunities as one gets older". --John Walsh --Weird and wonderful vocabulary from around the world (The Independent)

A & L Daily did my blogging for me today.

I wonder what they call it when you can't think of what to write in a weblog? Writer's Blog, weblock? --Anna-Marie --Comfortably Numb (ilex)

One of Mike Vitia's students coins a term.

Students in several of my classes are engaging in drive-by blogging, which is the flurry of entries that one posts just before the blogging portfolio is due. That's a very different issue than weblock, though it can be just as stressful.

UPDATE: At this moment, the night before the blog portfolios are due in my largest class, blogs.setonhill.edu is out. It's never out for long, but the timing couldn't be more stressful for the students. (I don't plan to do the "if you hadn't fallen behind in your blogging you wouldn't feel like it was the end of the world" routine on them. I'd rather be merciful, especially this early in the term.)

UPDATE: The blogs are back up. I can't take any credit for it -- I sent an e-mail to the site administrator and within a half hour, yippee, everything seems to be working.

--Austrian national anthem 'sexist' (BBC)

Should that caption read "Austrian schoolchildren are taught the national anthem during solar eclipses"? I can't imagine why else they might be wearing those goggles.

I don't mean to make light of the subject.

I've written a handout on gender-neutral language, and in my American Lit class, we discussed the ritualistic rhetoric and nearly universal pomposity of national anthems.

But the photo choice is distracting and odd. (My sister suggests that perhaps it was the only handy photo of Austrian schoolchildren.)

Usually once a decade an invention comes along that makes everyone revise the way they think about an accepted form of technology. In the first decade of the 21st Century the invention is Uni-Screw?.

Uniscrew? replaces Slotted, Phillips,? Pozi-Drive,? Torx? and Square Head style screws and offers significant advantages compared to these fastening mediums. As such, Uniscrew? represents the most significant development in fastener technology for decades! --What is Uni-Screw? (Uni-Screw)

I like hexagons quite a bit, and I happen to like fasteners and tools, so naturally this product appeals to me.

But the language of the website reminds me of this article from The Onion: "Amazing New Hyperbolic Chamber Greatest Invention In The History Of Mankind Ever.

Thanks for the link, Rosemary.

Update, 07 Jul 2008: Link is dead... Wayback Archive, uniscrew.com.

Ambiguous word choices are the source of some misunderstandings. Scientists often employ colloquial terminology, which they then assign a specific meaning that is impossible to fathom without proper training. The term "relativity," for example, is intrinsically misleading. Many interpret the theory to mean that everything is relative and there are no absolutes. Yet although the measurements any observer makes depend on his coordinates and reference frame, the physical phenomena he measures have an invariant description that transcends that observer's particular coordinates. Einstein's theory of relativity is really about finding an invariant description of physical phenomena. --Lisa Randall --Dangling Particles (Edge -- The Third Culture)

Great title for an article about public confusion caused by the language of science.

Nowadays, the phrase, "Oh, golly!" may be considered almost comically wholesome, but it was not always so. "Golly" is a compaction of "God's body" and, thus, was once a profanity.

Yet neither biblical commandment nor the most zealous Victorian censor can elide from the human mind its hand-wringing over the unruly human body, its chronic, embarrassing demands and its sad decay. Discomfort over body functions never sleeps, Dr. Burridge said, and the need for an ever-fresh selection of euphemisms about dirty subjects has long served as an impressive engine of linguistic invention.

Once a word becomes too closely associated with a specific body function, she said, once it becomes too evocative of what should not be evoked, it starts to enter the realm of the taboo and must be replaced by a new, gauzier euphemism.

For example, the word "toilet" stems from the French word for "little towel" and was originally a pleasantly indirect way of referring to the place where the chamber pot or its equivalent resides. But toilet has since come to mean the porcelain fixture itself, and so sounds too blunt to use in polite company. --Almost Before We Spoke, We Swore (NY Times)

I don't curse much, except at my computer. The next time I do, maybe I think I'll stop and appreciate the aesthetic qualities of a good taboo word.

Just today I was thinking of my sophomore high shool religion teacher, the very buttoned-down and sensible Mr. McShirley, who told us one day that curse words are verboten because they they disrespect God or the gift of human sexuality.

Then, in the final seconds before the dismissal bell rang, he said, "But there's one word that's simply vulgar. And that word is 'shit'."

A roomful of fifteen-year-old polyester-uniformed Catholics erupted with glee. We remembered that lesson.

At the time, I was reading Larry Niven books. He invented the curse word "tanj" for "there ain't no justice." I like the way that word starts with the plosive consonant, and the "a" sound echoes a reconizable curse, but the ending is muddled.

I like a curse word with a great initial fricative consonant, where you can really work up that angry spittle. Then after a tense, short vowel there's the final explosive consonant. Front of the mouth, like "t"... back of the mouth, like "ck". It's all good.

You just can't put anger in to a final "j" sound. Look at yourself in a mirror and just try shouting "orange!" or "hedge!"

No cracking consontants. No spittle on the mirror. Nothing.

Political Cartoon Prompts Racist Accusations against Student Paper (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

Exhibit A: Political cartoon, edited. Funny?
Exhibit B: Political cartoon, original version. Funny?
Exhibit C: Editorial.
Exhibit D: The controversy, in context.
Exhibit E: Debate, in situ.
Exhibit F: Your thoughts?

# Proof by Name Dropping
A: What do you think about objection X?
B: Well, BigNamei, BigNamej, and BigNamek agree with me. LittleNamei might agree with you, if only they were that silly.

# Proof by Absentee Belittlement
A: What do you think about objection X?
B: Person C, who is not here to defend themselves, thinks that. They are silly. You are silly.

# Proof by Humility
A: What do you think about objection X?
B: You state that so forcefully. I could be wrong. You seem so sure of yourself. That is silly.

# Proof by Humiliation
A: What do you think about objection X?
B: Have you read Book Z, or Book Y, even Book W?
A: Well, no.
B: That explains why you asked such a question. Sit down silly person. --Twenty Special Forms of Rhetoric (Speculative Grammarian)

That is silly.

"Hyperbole researchers have arrived at, without possibility of argument or refutation, the single greatest moment in all of creation, now and forevermore," said the project's lead scientist, Dr. Lloyd Gustaveson, activating the hyperbolic chamber's gazillion-ultra-watt semantic resonator at a gala launch party Monday. "The divine flame kindled by our new hyperbolic chamber will cast its light down through the centuries, making the Promethean fire that brought forth life on earth seem like a brief and guttering spark. Behold—we recast the cosmos in the image of the ultimate!" --Amazing New Hyperbolic Chamber Greatest Invention In The History Of Mankind Ever (The Onion (Satire))

Another side-splitter.