A Person Paper on Purity in Language (satire)
If this doesn’t make you cringe at least a dozen times while reading it, you’re probably a terrible person. A classic piece of shock satire by Douglas R. Hofstadter: go read the whole thing. Excerpt:
Another of Niss Moses’ shrill objections is to the age-old differentiation of whites from blacks by the third-person pronouns “whe” and “ble.” Ble promotes an absurd notion: that what we really need in English is a single pronoun covering both races. Numerous suggestions have been made, such as “pe,” “tey,” and others, These are all repugnant to the nature of the English language, as the average white in the street will testify, even if whe has no linguistic training whatsoever. Then there are advocates of usages such as “whe or ble,” “whis or bler,” and so forth. This makes for monstrosities such as the sentence “When the next President takes office, whe or ble will have to choose whis or bler cabinet with great care, for whe or ble would not want to offend any minorities.” Contrast this with the spare elegance of the normal way of putting it, and there is no question which way we ought to speak. There are, of course, some yapping black libbers who advocate writing “bl/whe” everywhere, which, aside from looking terrible, has no reasonable pronunciation. Shall we say “blooey” all the time when we simply mean “whe”? Who wants to sound like a white with a chronic sneeze?
One of the more hilarious suggestions made by the squawkers for this point of view is to abandon the natural distinction along racial lines, and to replace it with a highly unnatural one along sexual lines. One such suggestion-emanating, no doubt, from the mind of a madwhite-would have us say “he” for male whites (and blacks) and “she” for female whites (and blacks). Can you imagine the outrage with which sensible folk of either sex would greet this “modest proposal”?
Another suggestion is that the plural pronoun “they” be used in place of the inclusive “whe.” This would turn the charming proverb “Whe who laughs last, laughs best” into the bizarre concoction “They who laughs last, laughs best.” As if anyone in whis right mind could have thought that the original proverb applied only to the white race! No, we don’t need a new pronoun to “liberate” our minds. That’s the lazy white’s way of solving the pseudoproblem of racism. In any case, it’s ungrammatical. The pronoun “they” is a plural pronoun, and it grates on the civilized ear to hear it used to denote only one person. Such a usage, if adopted, would merely promote illiteracy and accelerate the already scandalously rapid nosedive of the average intelligence level in our society.
Despite its utility, language defies categorical statements, and this slipperiness makes it beautiful, like an old friend you never tire of talking to.
via allthingslinguistic:
It looks like I’m not the only person on the internet who pronounces lmao like the dictator.
We may add that it was Saussure who introduced the term ‘coefficient’ [into linguistics], and we may note at the same time that Saussure also introduced another term into linguistics, one that has found high favor with linguists, namely, the term ‘phoneme’…. He introduced it, for lack of a better word, as designation for the expression elements of a language in order to avoid confusion with the ‘sounds’ of linguistic usage—that is, to designate the purely ‘algebraic entities’ of his theory. By an irony of fate, Saussure’s theory was so basically misunderstood by his contemporaries and by many who came after them that the term is now generally used as a synonym for ‘linguistic sound’—precisely what Saussure was trying to avoid.
New Words Added To Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Among the new additions: Sexting, flexitarian, obesogenic, energy drink, life coach, craft beer, e-reader, game changer, gastropub, geocaching, shovel-ready, tipping point and more.
12 Ways to stop freezing up when you try to speak a second language
via allthingslinguistic:
Making the shift from language classroom to real-life conversation can be hard, and it’s easy to panic/freeze up when you’re on the spot and you don’t know how to respond, or how to get people to stop switching to English with you. I got thinking recently about things that I do and that I’ve seen other fluent language learners do in order to manage this difficult situation, and ended up with the following 12 tips.
1. Pre-think. What kinds of situations am I going to be in? What will people say/how will I respond? Basic situation ideas include: where/how you learned the language, where you’re from/what you do (and other biographic information), what you’re doing in the area and for how long, especially if you’ve travelled there to learn the language. Also think about how to describe things you’ve done recently or are planning to do. Think about who you’re going to see and what you could say to them. If a funny thing happens to you, describe it to yourself in the language, so it will be easier to tell someone else about later. This is a great time to look up how to say essential words.
2. Re-think. When you have a conversation in the language that goes less-than-ideally, or where you had to switch languages, afterwards think about how you would have said things in the language so if the situation comes up again you are prepared. If you are trying to learn a language with few speakers around you, then you can also do this for any conversation you’ve had. This is also a good time to look stuff up.
3. Learn filler words. Every speaker hesitates sometimes, so learn the equivalent of “ummm” and “ohh” in the language. Similarly, learn transition words/expressions like “and so”, “and then”, etc. This signals that when you don’t know what to say, it’s a content issue, not a language one, so people will be less likely to switch out of the language.
via alecshao:
Maciej Ratajski - The Meaning of a Word is its Use in the Language (2010)
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
Lexicon Valley
For the uninitiated, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.
Is the Sky Blue?
A recent episode of Radiolab centered on questions about colors. It profiled a British man who, in the 1800s, noticed that neither The Odyssey nor The Iliad included any references to the color blue. In fact, it turns out that, as languages evolve words for color, blue is always last. Red is always first. This is the case in every language ever studied.
Scholars theorize that this is because red is very common in nature, but blue is extremely rare. The flowers we think of as blue, for example, are usually more violet than blue; very few foods are blue. Most of the blue we see today is part of artificial colors produced by humans through manufacturing processes. So, blue is the last color to be noticed and named.
Alveolar fricative
It is an odd fact
that s is one of the hardest
sounds to produce: yet
one
of the most unmarked and most
frequent. Here, of course,
the biases of our field betray us: a phonetician (for whom
production has not quite won out
over perception
yet) wouldn’t blink
at this information
but would reply that s—hard though it may be
to pronounce—is perceived
one of the most distinct sounds.
It reaches the ear cleanly, like
a jet engine miles away or
trees breathing out the wind: slash of whitenoise cuts
the signal, abrogates subtlety of sonorant and vowel. Something
hard to miss, hard
to do without, that
longwave
softness.
I think at times that
children with lisps (before, I
mean, they’re pushed around the slow
track of speech therapy and social
expectation) have
something right: s is
too strict a sound; that I’d rather make do with
the unclarity of th, or inaudibility
of f
any day.
