Graphical demonstration of the hand signals needed
Graphical demonstration of the hand signals needed to buy and sell commodities on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange.
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kottke.org posts about language
Saying words wrong on purpose
Fun little article by Grant Barrett about people saying words wrong on purpose.
I sometimes say “muscles” so that the ‘c’ has a ‘k’ sound (the same way the cartoon character Popeye says it), computor instead of “computer” (after Ned Beatty’s exaggerated pronunciation of “Mr Luthor” in the Superman movies), and I occasionally say benimber instead of “remember” because it was something my cousin Paul said more than 20 years ago.
I use several of these mispronunciations regularly, which drives Meg nuts. Nucular, saxamaphone, muscles with Popeye’s hard c, computor, robit for robot, etc. Those of you who speak other languages…is this a common behavior outside of English?
Update: Language Log found a 1932 article about Intentional Mispronunciations. From a summary of the article:
Her categories include everything from adding or subtracting syllables and restressing (antique as “an-tee-cue”, “champeen”, “the-‘ater”), tensing lax vowels (“genu-wine”), borrowing of “vulgar” pronunciations (“agin”, “extry”, “who’d-a thunk it”, “varmint”)…
Funny restaurant names
A list of amusing restaurant names presented somewhat oddly in scholarly paper format. Pony Espresso is a coffeehouse in Wyoming, Wiener Takes All in a hot dog place in Illinois, and Wholly Mackerel is a Gulf Coast seafood place.
Michael Bierut on the concept of bershon,
Michael Bierut on the concept of bershon, defined by Sarah Brown thusly:
The spirit of bershon is pretty much how you feel when you’re 13 and your parents make you wear a Christmas sweatshirt and then pose for a family picture, and you could not possibly summon one more ounce of disgust, but you’re also way too cool to really even DEAL with it, so you just make this face like you smelled something bad and sort of roll your eyes and seethe in a put-out manner. Kelly Taylor from Beverly Hills, 90210 is the patron saint of bershon, as her face, like most other teenagers’, was permanently frozen in this expression.
Bierut notes that Jennifer Grey’s performance in Ferris Bueller embodies the spirit of bershon, but Molly Ringwald does bershon pretty well in Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club.
Four words that prove how difficult the
Four words that prove how difficult the English language is: lose, loose, chose, choose.
Update: Doug points out: bough, cough, dough, rough, through.
Update: Ubi says: I can point out one that is really hard to deal with for us Italians. We always pronounce ‘steak’ with the ‘ea’ of ‘freak’. So, here’s my list: steak, stake, freak, break, weak.
Update: Anissa points us to Hints on pronunciation for foreigners.
Update: BJ says: This post reminded me of a word constructed to demonstrate that fact explicitly: ghoti (pronounced ‘fish’).
Update: Ben says: I’m reminded of the Dr. Seuss compilation The Tough Coughs As He Ploughs the Dough.
Some cultures use whistling languages to communicate
Some cultures use whistling languages to communicate when regular speech becomes ineffective over large distances. From Wikipedia:
Whistled languages are normally found in locations with difficult mountainous terrain, slow or difficult communication, low population density and/or scattered settlements, and other isolating features such as shepherding and cultivation of hillsides. The main advantage of whistling speech is that it allows the speaker to cover much larger distances (typically 1 - 2 km but up to 5 km) than ordinary speech, without the strain (and lesser range) of shouting. The long range of whistling is enhanced by the terrain found in areas where whistled languages are used.
Here’s an mp3 of two men communicating via whistling. It sounds very much like R2-D2.
Grant Barrett researches the origins of the
Grant Barrett researches the origins of the word “w00t” and determines that it probably originated from the “whoot/whoomp there it is” dance craze of the early 90s and not from the hacker/gaming community. Which conclusion provoked a little nerdfury in the comments. (via waxy)
From a site that tracks “false words,
From a site that tracks “false words, usages, or expressions”, the definition of Michael Bayesian Filters:
1. a series of computer based filters, trained over time through an artificial intelligence process, which allow computer controlled motion picture cameras to automatically record high budget action sequences in the style of producer/director Michael Bay.
2. a method of filtering email spam that relies on producer/director Michael Bay to manually read and sort all incoming messages.
I can’t think of Michael Bay without humming this song. (via crazymonk)
The year in buzzwords from the NY
The year in buzzwords from the NY Times. Written by Grant Barrett of the excellent Double-Tongued Dictionary.
Why have I not looked at the
Why have I not looked at the Wikipedia page for Ocean’s Eleven before now? Best part is the description of the crazy names for the cons referenced in the movie.
Off the top of my head, I’d say you’re looking at a Boesky, a Jim Brown, a Miss Daisy, two Jethros and a Leon Spinks, not to mention the biggest Ella Fitzgerald ever.
Sadly, the page for Ocean’s Twelve has no corresponding list, save for a description of the Lookie-Loo with a Bundle of Joy.
Non-profit writing organization 826NYC is holding a
Non-profit writing organization 826NYC is holding a Scrabble for Cheaters competition on January 19th with the proceeds going to benefit their programs and students. The more money a team raises, the more they can cheat. Here are some of the cheats:
Flip a letter over and make it blank: $100
Add Q, Z, or X to any word, anywhere: $200
Passport: play a word in any language: $250
Reject another team’s word: $450
Invent a word (must have a definition): $500
Entry information and rules available on the web site. Oh, and you’ll be playing against John Hodgman.
Anyone in a coining mood?
Anyone in a coining mood? If one doesn’t already exist, there needs to be a term for writing a blog comment or Twitter update, thinking better of it, and then discarding it by closing the browser tab without clicking “Post”. As in: “Jason, I would have responded to this post in the comments, but I ________ it instead.” Any ideas?
Regret the Error’s annual list of media
Regret the Error’s annual list of media errors and corrections is one of my favorites…the 2007 installment doesn’t disappoint. The corrections in the UK newspapers are awesome:
An article about Lord Lambton (“Lord Louche, sex king of Chiantishire”, News Review, January 7) falsely stated that his son Ned (now Lord Durham) and daughter Catherine held a party at Lord Lambton’s villa, Cetinale, in 1997, which degenerated into such an orgy that Lord Lambton banned them from Cetinale for years. In fact, Lord Durham does not have a sister called Catherine (that is the name of his former wife), there has not been any orgiastic party of any kind and Lord Lambton did not ban him (or Catherine) from Cetinale at all.
Funny Engrish menu error at a Beijing
Funny Engrish menu error at a Beijing restaurant: “stir-fried wikipedia”. (via waxy)
The top 60 Japanese buzzwords and buzzphrases of 2007.
The top 60 Japanese buzzwords and buzzphrases of 2007.
The term “monster parents” refers to Japan’s growing ranks of annoying parents who make extravagant and unreasonable demands of their children’s schools.
(via bb)
This article about tracing American slang words
This article about tracing American slang words to their Gaelic roots seemed interesting at first but by the end I was wondering what the odds were that so many slang words came from Ireland. By chance shortly after I finished the article, Grant Barrett emailed me a piece he wrote in response to the article and its subject, Daniel Cassidy.
Cassidy’s theories are insubstantial, his evidence inconclusive, his conclusions unlikely, his Gaelic atrocious and even factitious, and his scholarship little better than speculation. In short, his book is preposterous.
A story by J. Robert Lennon using
A story by J. Robert Lennon using only words from The Cat In The Hat.
I have to say one thing here: it is not fun to be with me. I like books and things. Tame: that is I. I get no kicks, fly no kites, play no games. Hops and pot are not my things. If you are here, I want you to go away. So what should this dish, this fox want out of me? I sat and picked at the fish and looked at those hands, so white.
Anagrams for “Ann Coulter” include “Rectal Noun”, “
Anagrams for “Ann Coulter” include “Rectal Noun”, “Loaner Cunt”, “Real Con Nut”, and “Unclean Rot”.
Chuck Adams is one of the few
Chuck Adams is one of the few remaining Morse code aficionados in the world. Adams records audiobooks in Morse, chats with others in Morse via ham radio, and can transcribe Morse at 140 words/minute.
Earlier this year, Mr. Adams sent Barry Kutner, a 50-year-old ophthalmologist from Newtown, Pa., and another world-class coder, a 100-words-per-minute version of the book. To Mr. Adams’s chagrin, Mr. Kutner wrote an email back pointing out that the gap between words was eight dits long, instead of the prescribed seven. At that pace, a dit lasts 1.2 one-thousandths of a second.
See also: Tales of the telegraph.
It’s worth sitting through the first several
It’s worth sitting through the first several minutes of this documentary on the speech patterns of Edwardian-era Britons to hear Joan Washington, the host and an accent expert, speak with several different British accents.
The half-life of irregular verbs scales with
The half-life of irregular verbs scales with the square root of usage frequency. “Be” and “have” will be irregular for a long time but “dive”, “sting”, and “wring” have less time before they’re regularized.
The past-tense of regular verbs end in “ed.” For example, the past-tense of chide was chode, but has now regularized into chided.
Another recent study has found that the evolution of words decreases with usage. Nature has the abstract of the paper and the NY Times has a short piece as well.
“Bird,” for example, takes many disparate forms across other Indo-European languages: oiseau in French, vogel in German and so on. But other words, like the word for the number after one, have hardly evolved at all: two, deux (French) and dos (Spanish) are very similar, derived from the same ancestral sound.
Do you make a distinction between typos
Do you make a distinction between typos and misspellings, or is that just me? For example, “regualr” is a typo while “refridgerator” is a misspelling. The former is a mechanical error while the latter demonstrates a lack of specific knowledge. Both are signs of sloppy writing which might be why people don’t often distinguish the two.
“The full Ginsburg” is the term for
“The full Ginsburg” is the term for appearing on all five of the big Sunday morning political shows: This Week, Meet the Press, Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, and Late Edition. The term is named after William Ginsburg, Monica Lewinsky’s attorney and the first person to complete this political Pokemon collection. According to Wikipedia, four individuals have completed the full circuit: Ginsburg, Dick Cheney, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton. Source: Brouhahaha, The New Yorker.
A glossary of cheese terms.
Giganti: A very large style of Provolone, typically weighing 200 to 600 pounds and measuring up to approximately 7 feet in length.
There’s a surprising amount of language around cheese.
A Fixie of Hipsters
A fixie of hipsters: the perfect collective noun for two or more hipsters. Coined by Erika Hall on Flickr. Fixie is slang for a fixed gear bicycle, increasingly the urban 20-something’s conveyance of choice. Other favorite collective nouns: a murder of crows, a blessing of unicorns, and shimmer of hummingbirds.
Anagram menu items:
Roast taros.
Broccoli rabe with cool crab brie.
A steak and skate duo.
Melon and lemon sorbet.
Being sent to Mordor:
Hardware techies at Apple are regularly sent from California for intense two-week shifts to the city-sized FoxConn factory in Shenzhen, China where iPods are made and tested. Internally at Apple this is known as “being sent to Mordor.”
Tauba Auerbach: startling starting staring string sting
Tauba Auerbach: startling starting staring string sting sing sin in i. More of her typographic work here.
Several of the web’s most popular sites (
Several of the web’s most popular sites (Digg, YouTube, MySpace, CNN) are using the mullet strategy (business up front, party in the rear) for content to attract both boisterous users and well-heeled advertisers. “They let users party, argue, and vent on the secondary pages” — that’s the party in the rear — “but professional editors keep the front page looking sharp” — the business up front.
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