Language: September 2007 Archive Page

Full transcript, the very end of which is Columbia's Bollinger having the last word:

I'm sorry that President Ahmadinejad's schedule makes it necessary for him to leave before he's been able to answer many of the questions that we have or even answer some of the ones that we posed to him. (Laughter, applause.) But I think we can all be pleased that his appearance here demonstrates Columbia's deep commitment to free expression and debate. I want to thank you all for coming to participate. (Applause.) Thank you.

I understand that by inviting the leader of Iraq to speak in a public forum, Columbia's Bollinger risked fallout that could have affected his career. I was not surprised that he began with a speech that put Ahmadinejad on the defensive. And I was not surprised that Ahmadinejad twisted and dodged so much.

I am hardly an expert on linguistics, but I used to teach a freshman engineering writing course when I was in Toronto as a grad student,and from time to time, I had to teach students who had gone to high school in another language how to write college English. I remember learning that one way to translate the concept "learn" into Chinese is the concept "copy," so when I saw Mandarin speakers (many of whom were second-generation immigrants to Canada) struggling until I gave them the model, and then respectfully reproducing my work and expecting to be praised, I had to ask someone if there was a different word for Chinese "watch all the little components of what I do, so that you can improvise and do different things  as circumstances require". Oddly enough, when the students wrote their first personal paragraphs, they often wouldn't actually state the main point -- they thought it would be an insult to the reader's intelligence for a memo to spell out exactly what the client should do. (I told those students, if you don't insult your North American clients that way, you'll lose their business."  ("North America" is friendly Canadian slang referring to "Canada and that country south of us".)

Ahmadinejad's speech reminds me of so many different freshman papers I got from students with a Middle Eastern background. I don't want to start making generalizations, because I never really made a serious academic study of this (there is a whole field of English as a Second Language acquisition, so I'm sure this is nothing new), but the facial expressions that Ahmadinejad gave, the way he cheerfully evaded answers, even the way he responded (after behind reminded) to a the question of gender discrimination by saying "But as for women, maybe you think that being a woman is a crime. It's not a crime to be a woman." On the surface, coming right after his insistence that at there are no homosexuals in Iran, he looked intolerant and ridiculous -- how could he possibly think that the question accused him of thinking that being a woman is a crime? (Of course, he backed up his statement by giving only examples of traditional female roles, though elsewhere he did emphasize the role of women in science and government.)

aibohphobia

The irrational fear of palindromes (words that read the same forwards and backwards).

Dude 1: Hey, what's your name?
Dude 2: Bob.
Dude 1: AAAAAAAAAAH! *Runs and hides behind sofa*
Bob: Wow.
Dude 1: AAAAAAAAAAH! *Runs away and falls down stairs*

This completely stupid fauxbia made me laugh for some reason. There appears to be a real art to writing a successful Urban Dictionary entry. Such entries are often gratuitously vulgar, even when the term being defined is not vulgar. If I weren't so sick, I'd try to think about it some more.

Language Log offers a thorough discussion of the real story of the emoticon.

Before seeing the Google Books page image, I had thought that Bierce's suggested punctuation looked like this: \___/. That's how it appears in a footnote to Andrew Graham's online essay, "Forked Tongue: The Language of Serpent in the Enlarged Devil's Dictionary of Ambrose Bierce," as well as the Wikipedia entry on emoticons. It's interesting to discover that the parenthesis-as-smile representation actually goes back 120 years. (In Ambrose Bierce's Civilians and Soldiers in Context: A Critical Study, Donald T. Blume dates this essay to September 25, 1887, but the version published in the 1912 collection may have been subsequently revised.)

The pre-Fahlman trail included a 1979 reference an idea from a Reader's Digest article the author had read "long ago."  I actually once sent a grad student to the library to look for this article, but he came back empty-handed. (I think I asked him to look from 1970 on, which explains why he didn't find the right article, which was published in 1962,

I'm glad someone has tied all those loose ends together...

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Fahlman posted the emoticon in a message to an online electronic bulletin board at 11:44 a.m. on Sept. 19, 1982, during a discussion about the limits of online humor and how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly. "I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-)," wrote Fahlman. "Read it sideways."

Several years earlier, in 1979, the "tongue-in-cheek" icon -) failed to make a similar splash.

English Original

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

Run through AltaVista's Babelfish, translating from English to Spanish to English to Spanish, until reaching stasis. HyperSpanish?

Universal recognized of the truth it is, like of single man in the possession of a good fortune, must be internal desires of a wife. In spite of little they know it that the sensations or the opinions that such man nay is in his first one which he incorporates a vicinity, this truth are so elbow fixed to the minds of the surrounding families, who consider it have taste of the legitimate characteristic of some or another one of the daughters of the heir

HyperGerman:

It is confirmed truth, the one individual man in the possession of a luck, disturbance within its desires of a woman. However small conserved goods, within it to the way an inside to a way to these a man, who to the surplus in the morning in such a way to the way an inside, so that from the feelings the containers dig also or, to the opinions it, which are surplus its first you, possible coming into neighbourhood, this truth in the understanding of the surrounding families as this well-being place that, it cube, which specifies certified characteristic you a way of approx.. in a formed way in a way or as others its daughter meetings also inward

HyperFrench:

It is a universally identified truth, that a simple man in possession of a good fortune, must be interior want of a wife. However little known the feelings or the sights of such a man can be on his first writing a proximity, they these truth so good is fixed in the spirits of the surrounding families, which one considers with him with him the legitimate property of hard or others their daughters.

HyperJapanese (each cycle was adding more and more structure, and getting more and more philosophical... I gave up before reaching stasis):

Those which agree to the fortunate person of the wife of the single human? Furthermore finishing, the thing of the uniform of phenomenon of thing phenomenon of the thing like _ thing, do those of our our possession ones do the fact that the thing namely average it is called? Perhaps, in regard to consideration thick Seki it is justice of this truth daughter in regard to Seki, it is? The headquarters of thing of decorative style series 1 of truth gazing/hoping of those our things of universalness the fact that it is there should be convinced, it is other than neighborhood? Knowledge, how small human? Opposite side and quality or, or how or is that enormous thing start? The place of opinion, being abnormal, courtesy we should feel Seki which is healthy fixing? Therefore as for thing are phenomenon of thing and thing of possession ones liked those of thing how? What of evidence of 1st thing?

HyperItalian (cycling some articles but otherwise static... probably the most comprehensible version)

Universal recognized of the truth it is, that one a single man in possession of good fortune, must be to the inner part of desires of a moglie. However little known the sensibility or the points of the point of view of such man it can in the first place be on the relative which it records in the vicinities, this truth therefore is enslaved slowly in the minds of the surrounding families, than the legitimate property approximately or other of their daughters is considered.