Watch Your Language Blog

Cow dialectology?!

Not likely if you ask LanguageLog and linguists. But scientific facts cannot stop some PR people and BBC journalists. Check out how and why the false idea that cows speak/moo in dialects has made the news all around the globe. Here’s my favorite “news bit” cited by LanguageLog.

—I think this cow is from Buenos Aires. —You are mistaken; although it walks rapidly as if it were late for work, its moo is typical of cows from Santa Fe. Don’t worry, this dialog is fictitious, but according to the most recent theories of language specialists, this conversation could easily be real, because cows, just like humans, seem to have regional accents.
[Zviezdana]


February 25, 2008

 

‘Obama’ and its variations

The latest word to enter the English language, according to the Global Language Monitor, is ‘obama’ and its different variations:

“Obama is used as a ‘root’ for an ever-expanding number of words, including: obamamentum, obamacize, obamarama, obamaNation, obamanomics, obamican, obamafy, obamamania, and obamacam.

To enter the English language, a word has to meet certain criteria, including frequency of appearance in the written and spoken language, in the media, have a large geographic footprint, and to stand the test of time,” he points out. “In the past, this process would unfold over many years, even decades or centuries. However, the Internet, with instant global communication to billions of people has radically accelerated the cycle.”

 (ELHAM)

Tags: coinage, English
February 22, 2008

 

Do you know all the colors of the rainbow?

Of course, in order to answer that, you first need to know how many colors there are. Believe it or not, that information varies from language to language.... More

Tags: colors, language, newsletter, Russian, Vietnamese
February 22, 2008

 

When finding your car requires divine intervention.

My husband and I had taken our daughter on her first trip to Israel several months after her Bat Mitzvah. After visiting the Ein Gedi spring near the Dead Sea, an excursion she enjoyed, then hiking under the blazing sun to tour ancient ruins, which she did not appreciate, we decided to make our way back to our rental car. We didn’t know how to get to the parking lot but fortunately chanced upon a local on our way back... More

Tags: Hebrew, language, newsletter, travel
February 22, 2008

 

Pretend to pronounce…

Are you frustrated by how difficult it is to pronounce a new language? Don’t be. There are easy things you can do to get better, and you’re never too old to improve your pronunciation if you really work on it.... More

Tags: language, newsletter, pronunciation
February 22, 2008

 

International Mother Language Day

Today is UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day. (We first read about this over at Out of the Woods Now, where a recent talk given by David Crystal on endangered languages — entitled “The Future of Languages” — was being recapped.) The year 2008 was also proclaimed by the United Nations to be the Year of International Languages, with the slogan “Language Matters!” and an aim to educate about and protect endangered languages. (SUZANNE)

Tags: endangered languages
February 21, 2008

 

Old age is more like a semicolon

The New York Times analyzes semicolon sightings in NYC:

It was nearly hidden on a New York City Transit public service placard exhorting subway riders not to leave their newspaper behind when they get off the train.

“Please put it in a trash can,” riders are reminded. After which Neil Neches, an erudite writer in the transit agency’s marketing and service information department, inserted a semicolon. The rest of the sentence reads, “that’s good news for everyone.” (ELHAM)

Tags: English, punctuation, semicolon
February 20, 2008

 

Celtic: a minority language?

Aberystwyth University’s department of Welsh recently received significant funding to investigate the roots of Celtic, and challenge the presumption that Celtic languages are minority languages:

“Professor Patrick Sims-Williams, who is leading the project, said the grant would enable Dr Alexander Falileyev, a scholar from St Petersburg working in Aberystwyth, to investigate Celtic in southern Romania and as far east as Galatia in Turkey.

Prof Sims-Williams said: “We know that these areas were colonized from the 3rd Century BC onwards by peoples who spoke Celtic languages.

“It’s becoming clear that Celtic was one of the major languages of ancient Europe, alongside Greek and Latin.”

The real question is though, are you pronouncing Aberystwyth correctly? (ELHAM)


February 14, 2008

 

Are you a jerk, or just a creep?

Seems that linguistic evolution can work people up into a name-calling frenzy the same way biological evolution does. Dr. Mark Pagel of Reading University recently published a study arguing that new languages are formed not by the gradual drifting apart of groups who no longer need to communicate, but rather by sudden, possibly violent, disruptions. We guess that makes him a jerk. (TOM)


February 8, 2008

 

We the front-runner

Little words such as pronouns—I, you or we—carry more important meaning than we usually give them credit for. If you listen more closely to the political speeches that are everywhere around us in this exciting election year, you’ll notice that the candidates use the pronouns in rather picturesque ways. I’m particularly thinking of the pronoun we. ... More


February 6, 2008

 

Make Mine a Quaranta

Have you ever thought about what it means to order a venti coffee? Or a grande supremo? A few years back, comedian Dave Barry looked into the language of coffee, and his findings were dissected at Language Log. (SUZANNE)

Tags: Italian
February 4, 2008

 

Punctuational bursts of language change

According to research findings released today, the evolution of language parallels evolution of species:... More

Tags: evolution, language
February 1, 2008