Posts Tagged ‘linguistics’
“In Japanese and Italian, the response to [‘How are you?’] is ‘I’m fine, and you?’ In German it’s answered with a sigh and a slight pause, followed by ‘Not so good’.”*…
If you own a smartphone and are trying to learn a language, you probably have Duolingo. At this very moment the app—which tries to turn language learning into a rewarding game—may be not-so-subtly suggesting that you are overdue for some Spanish vocabulary practice.
How many other people are learning Spanish, and where do they live?Duolingo recently answered such questions by running the numbers on their 120 million users, spanning every country on the planet. The company identified the most popular language for each country, among the 19 it offers…
More at “The languages the world is trying to learn, according to Duolingo.” [Note the absence of Mandarin, Japanese, Arabic and other Asian and Middle Eastern languages– surely a reflection, at least in large part, of the offers available on Duolingo, which teaches in more languages than it teaches…]
* David Sedaris, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls
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As we prepare to conjugate, we might send elegantly phrased and eclectic birthday greetings to Persian polymath Omar Khayyam; the philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, epigrammatist, and poet was born on this date in 1048. While he’s probably best known to English-speakers as a poet, via Edward FitzGerald’s famous translation of the quatrains that comprise the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Omar was one of the major mathematicians and astronomers of the medieval period. He is the author of one of the most important treatises on algebra written before modern times, the Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra, which includes a geometric method for solving cubic equations by intersecting a hyperbola with a circle. His astronomical observations contributed to the reform of the Persian calendar. And he made important contributions to mechanics, geography, mineralogy, music, climatology and Islamic theology.
“I don’t want just words”*…
ZAGATTITUDE (N.) za-‘gat-i-tood Mindset of one who always has a firm, vocal opinion on where, what and how to eat—informed by Zagats, Chowhound, and other foodie bibles. Usage: They all just wanted pizza, but Blake, flexing his Zagattitude, insisted they go to a pricey new tapas place he’d read about.
Just one of the “Wordbirds“: an illustrated lexicon of neologisms for the 21st century…
* F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
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As we match plumage with coinage, we might recall that this leap-day (like every “last day in February”) is Rare Disease Day— an occasion devoted to raising awareness of and encouraging action on the too-often horrifying ailments that fall outside the spotlight, but that cumulatively are all-too-common. It’s a great day to adopt an orphan (disease).
“‘Meow’ means ‘woof’ in cat”*…
In cliff-side houses like these, some Malian villagers speak an enigmatic anti-language originally designed to fool slave-traders
Criminals, conspirators, fugitives, outcasts– throughout history, they’ve all often spoken “The secret ‘anti-languages’ you’re not supposed to know.”
[Update: further to “I use a whole lot of half-assed semicolons; there was one of them just now; that was a semicolon after ‘semicolons,’ and another one after ‘now’*…,” this wonderful variation, via @PhelimKine]
* George Carlin
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As we watch our tongues, we might send breath-taking birthday greetings to the man who spoke the secret language of the environment, Ansel Easton Adams; he was born on this date in 1902. A co-founder of Group f/64 (with other masters like Edward Weston, Willard Van Dyke, and Imogen Cunningham), his black-and-white landscape photographs of the American West, especially Yosemite National Park, helped define landscape photography and establish photography as a fine art.
“It ain’t no fun if the homies can’t have none”*…
Flyting is a stylized battle of insults and wits that was practiced most actively between the fifth and 16th centuries in England and Scotland. Participants employed the timeless tools of provocation and perversion as well as satire, rhetoric, and early bathroom humor to publicly trounce opponents. The term “flyting” comes from Old English and Old Norse words for “quarrel” and “provocation.” [Indeed, the image above is of Norse god Loki trading insults with his divine brother, Bragi.] ‘Tis a form of highly poetic abuse, or highly abusive poetry—a very early precursor to MTV’s Yo Mama and Eminem’s 8 Mile…
More of the history of insult as a form of battle– and a discussion of the actual ancestry of rap-as-we-know-it– at “Flyting was medieval England’s version of an insult-trading rap battle.”
Rap has been a path between cultures in the best tradition of popular music.
― Jay-Z
* Snoop Dog
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As we yoyo “yo mamas,” we might recall that it was on this date in 1956 that Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley & the Comets became the first rock and roll album to enter the chart. The single had become the first rock single to top the pop charts six months earlier.
“I was supposed to say, ‘In a pig’s eye you are,’ what came out was, ‘In a pig’s ass you are.’ Old habits die awfully hard.”*…
Explore expletives at “Strong Language.” (Though it probably goes without saying: NSFW.)
Special word-lover’s bonus:
* Ava Gardner, Ava: My Story
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As we flirt with forswearing swearing, we might recall that it was on this date in 1644, at the height of the English Civil War, that Milton’s Areopagitica (or Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England) was published. An impassioned philosophical attack on censorship and defense of the principle of a right to freedom of speech and expression, it is regarded as one of the most eloquent arguments for press freedom ever written; indeed, many of its principles form the basis for modern justifications of that right.
“The past is always tense, the future perfect”*…
Predicting the future of the English language is rather easy, in the short term. The odds are, over the next few decades its New World dialects are going to gain increasing global dominance, accelerating the demise of thousands of less fortunate languages but at long last allowing a single advertisement to reach everybody in the world. Then after a century or two of US dominance some other geopolitical grouping will gain the ascendancy, everyone will learn Chechen or Patagonian or whatever it is, and history will continue as usual. Ho hum. But apart from that… what might the language actually look like in a thousand years time? For comparison, the English spoken at the turn of the last millennium looked like this:
1000 AD: Wé cildra biddaþ þé, éalá láréow, þæt þú tǽce ús sprecan rihte, forþám ungelǽrede wé sindon, and gewæmmodlíce we sprecaþ… 2000 AD: We children beg you, teacher, that you should teach us to speak correctly, because we are ignorant and we speak corruptly… (1000 AD, from”The Colloquy of Aelfric.”)
So how far will another thousand years take it?…
Peek over the linguistic horizon at “FUTURESE- The American Language in 3000 AD.”
* Zadie Smith
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As we envision emergent etymologies, we might spare a thought for a wicked bender of English words, James Augustine Aloysius Joyce; he died on this date in 1941. A poet and novelist best known for Ulysses, he was the preeminent figure in the Modernist avant-garde, and a formative influence on writers as various as (Joyce’s protege) Samuel Becket, Jorge Luis Borges, Salmon Rushdie, and Joesph Campbell.
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Ulysses No. 1, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man No. 3, and Finnegans Wake No. 77, on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. The next year, Time Magazine named Joyce one of its 100 Most Important People of the 20th century, observing that “Joyce … revolutionized 20th century fiction.” And illustrating that Joyce’s influence was not confined to the arts: physicist Murray Gell-Mann used the sentence “Three quarks for Muster Mark!” (in Joyce’s Finnegans Wake) as source for the elementary particle he was naming– the quark.
Photo of Joyce included in a printed subscription order form for Ulysses, published Paris, 1921
“All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry”*…
It’s fine to hand-to-hand for some hat, but critical to insure ground control… If you’re going to spark it up, best to be in a space ship… And surely best to skip sack and slick altogether…
Find the decoder ring at argot.com’s “Drug Slang”
* G.K. Chesterton
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As we take two and promise to call in the morning, we might recall that it was on this date in 1965, at the conclusion on Alan Freed‘s third consecutive “Rock ‘n’ Roll Show” at the Stage Theater in Hartford, police arrested 11 teens and closed the theater. At the subsequent hearing at which the theater’s license was revoked, respected psychiatrist and head of Hartford Institute of Living Dr. Francis J. Braceland testified that rock & roll is “a communicable disease with music appealing to adolescent insecurity & driving teenagers to do outlandish things…It’s cannibalistic & tribalistic.”
Dr, Braceland
Mr. Freed
