Joyeux Noel!

This comes a day late for Christmas, but it's still fun: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in various languages.

"Speaking in Tongues" - Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith's piece in the New York Review of Books discusses how Obama deftly employs different 'voices' and his careful attention to diction. A very interesting read.

Why...

do the British drop the definite article when referring to someone being hospitalized? E.g. - "She remained at hospital for two weeks." I wonder why this fell out of use in American English. Then again, Americans drop the "the" before school: "she's going to school," so why not drop it when referring to the hospital in a general sense and not in reference to a specific hospital?

4x4

In Britain, the term "tetraplegia" is used to described the condition of paralysis of all four limbs, or, from the neck down. Now, in the U.S., we use the term "quadraplegia." It turns out that the British, being better schooled in regard to word roots and the classical languages, use the prefix "tetra" because it is Greek and therefore makes a more sensible pair with the root "plegia," which is also Greek (tetra means four, while plegia means blow or strike), than the Latin-based "quadra."

Word Aversion

The word "moist" gets women's panties in a twist. How shocking. And titillating.

Linguistic Mirroring

In my adolescence, as I was grappling with constructing a cohesive sense of self in light of the maelstrom of new emotions within me and the social difficulties I was encountering, I would often feel self-conscious about my speaking. I would wonder why I spoke differently depending on whom I was speaking to, and whether doing so compromised my authenticity. As it turns out, changing one's speech (dialect, language, tone, inflection, etc.) to match (or contrast with) the other speaker's is a perfectly normal phenomenon. Communication Accommodation Theory even has its own Wikipedia page!

Quite Interesting: Difference Between 'Jealousy' and 'Envy'

According to Stanford University's Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the terms 'jealousy' and 'envy,' though often conflated, are not meant to be used interchangeably. This article says that jealousy involves three parties, whereas envy involves only two. For example, a lover can be described as being "jealous" when his or her mate is showing another person affection:

the jealous person's real locus of concern is the beloved—the person whose affection he is losing or fears losing—not his rival. Whereas envy is a two party relation, with a third relatum that is a good (albeit a good that could be a particular person's affections); and the envious person's locus of concern is the rival. Hence, even if the good that the rival has is the affection of another person, there is a difference between envy and jealousy.

In other words, where jealousy is concerned, said feeling is not dependent on the rival, but on the flirtations of the lover, whose affections the jealous person is afraid of losing. When it comes to envy, however, the feeling is completely rival-dependent (the person is envious of something that the rival possesses, and the situation does not involve competition for another individual).

Punctuation Hazard

Remember - lowercase l's look like uppercase i's or 1's!photo from lowercasel.blogspot.com

Artistic License, My Ass

Like most grammar nerds, I am always peeved when I hear song lyrics with erroneous grammar. Well, either annoyed or amused, depending on my mood. The website Myhymphs has compiled a list of songs written by lyricists who suffer from grammatical cluelessness.

Are there any songs you would add?

Select Grammar-Themed LOLCats

It's all ____ to me!

This clever, hopefully accurate map indicates which language speakers of various languages idiomatically refer to for their equivalancy of English speakers', "It's all Greek to me!"

Apparently Chinese wins as most confusing-sounding-to-foreign-ears language.

Literally Correct

Here is a blog devoted entirely to documenting erroneous usage of the word "literally" -- a pet peeve of mine. It's good for a chuckle, and each example perfectly illustrates (literally, actually - there are pictures accompanying each misuse [usually a quote pulled from a published article]) how inappropriately including "literally" invokes something quite silly to the seemingly few left of us who appreciate the word not being bastardized.

Below is a sampling from "Literally, A Web Log" to get your nerd juices flowing.

literally devour a piece of music

February 23rd, 2009 by Fitz

A reader who prefers to remain anonymous writes:

I teach in a high-school arts program that admits students by audition. The auditioning student must also supply a letter of recommendation. One student had a letter of recommendation from a teacher I know, whom I consider a complete hack. In his letter, he wrote that the student “literally devours every piece of music I give her“. Music is delicious.

Lyin' in Bed

In a move that was very "whoa, dude", today someone on Reddit posted that the word "bed" looks like a bed. I feel I have heard this before, but from whom/where, I cannot recall. As silly as pointing this out may seem, it's interesting to note and I wonder if it's just a coincidence (probably is).

bed

Bed

It doesn't look as cool with the first letter in uppercase; I guess it's just a larger headboard?

Romantic or vulgar?

Language can be so confusing when you don't have the ear or fluency of a native speaker. The slightest change in intonation, accent, or pronunciation can completely change the meaning of a word. Which brings me to the French verb "baiser." Usually it means "to kiss" - at least, that's what all of my vocabulary books and past French teachers have taught me. However, it can also mean "to have sex" in a vulgar fashion (i.e. fuck). I'm not sure if the difference in meaning is contextually determined or if there are pronunciation discrepancies. Because of this, next time I'm in France or speaking to a Frenchie, I'll try to avoid this potential faux pas..

Word Salad

Word salad, the technical name of which is schizophasia, is a symptom of some mental illnesses in which a person's speech is jumbled much like a tossed salad. It involves real words strung together in a meaningless fashion, and schizophasias may or may not be grammatically correct. They are usually a sign of psychoses, particularly in manic manifestations, such as schizophrenia. See thought disorder.

Word salad also refers to a technique that spammers often employ in order to avoid detection by spam filters. By generating large portions of text in spam emails, spammers are sometimes able to bypass Bayesian classifiers.

Learn Cyrillic in Five Minutes?

Da!

Wordy

antoeci -
Those who live under the same meridian, but on opposite parallels of latitude, north and south of the equator.

perioeci -

Those who live on the same parallel of latitude but on opposite meridians, so that it is noon in one place when it is midnight in the other.

Most Looked-Up Words on NYTimes, 2009

Philip Corbett, overseer of the Times style guide and deputy news editor, recently announced the top 50 words that readers look up on the Times' website. If you're a reader of the NYTimes website, you know that it contains a helpful feature that allows you to highlight text and look up definitions. It's fun to look at this list of words and see how many you know. Sadly, I could only define roughly ten out of fifty, but I consider this an accomplishment since, as Corbett notes, Times readers are typically well educated. Interestingly, the list contains no overlaps with the top 25 looked-up words on dictionary.com, according to Zachary M. Seward.

East/West vs. Eastern/Western

Obviously, eastern/western cannot be used as nouns, whereas it seems that east/west , while usually utilized as nouns, can also serve as adjectives. For example, geographic regions in Europe are usually called "Eastern Europe," "Western Europe," e.g.; however, I have heard people say "East Europe," etc.

In the United States, one calls the two coasts the East and West Coasts, but never the Eastern or Western coasts. Is this more a matter of a title randomly becoming the norm, or is there a slight difference in the way the adjectives are being utilized in the instances of "Eastern Europe" vs. the "East Coast"? One possibility is that east & west are used when indicating extremes, not degrees, in regard to direction. Allow me to illustrate this: Eastern Europe refers to a region in which there are countries that vary in how east they are,whereas, in the U.S., all of the states which lie on the east/west coasts are pretty much aligned. For example, Poland is less east than Russia, but Oregon and California, two of the three states that make up the west coast, are along the same coastline. Therefore Poland and its respective Eastern European nations are relatively Eastern, whereas there is no question that New York and, say, Florida are precisely on the east coast.

Vartiation vs. Variant

Is there a difference between these two word brothers? I'm not sure. So far all I know is that 'variant' can be used as an adjective while 'variation' cannot. If in my research I find more information, I'll be sure to update this post.

Homophones

Homophones are words that while sounding the same (or almost identical), have different meanings and spellings (unlike homonyms, which have the same spelling and pronunciation but different definitions). Here is an interesting list of homophones, which I found on www.futilitycloset.com.

• AURAL means heard; ORAL means spoken.
• RAISE means erect; RAZE means tear down.
• SUCCOR means aid; SUCKER means hoodwink.
• ENUMERABLE means countable; INNUMERABLE means uncountable.
• ERUPT means burst out; IRRUPT means burst in.
• ERADICATE means pull up by the roots; IRRADICATE means root deeply.
• PETALLESS means lacking petals; PETALOUS means having petals.
• RECKLESS means careless; WRECKLESS means careful.

Source

All Intents (and Purposes)

It sounds snazzy, but is the phrase "all intents and purposes" redundant? "Intent" and "purpose" do not have precisely identical meanings, but in this particular usage I believe they do. Someone on WikiAnswers seems to agree with me and wrote the following in response to an inquiry regarding the idiom:
"If you have problems with to all intents and purposes bear in mind that in that expression intents is redundant."

Word Conundrum - In spite of vs. despite

From my brief Internet research, I've discovered that there is no difference in meaning between the word "despite" and the construction "in spite of."

Both mean "even though" or "irrespective of."

Here is an interesting blog on the topic: http://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2008/08/14/despite-and-in-spite-of-a-grammatical-detective-story/

You're All Literally Killing Me

One of the most commonly misused words is literally. I don't think I can go one day without hearing someone use it incorrectly, and this always causes me to (literally) cringe. I understand that words evolve over time and that language, perhaps unfortunately, is democratic. But we already have a word that emphasizes the veracity of a statement, and it's a very simple one, too - 'actually.' Why should we be lazy and permissive and allow "literally", whose true meaning is very particular and therefore useful for speakers, to become something it's not? 'Literally' functions perfectly as a pair with 'figuratively,' and to misuse it dulls its potency.

In case you stumbled upon this blog while searching for the meaning of 'literally,' here is a brief tutorial:

Literally: (adverb) in a literal manner or sense. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, 'literal' means " using or interpreting words in their usual or most basic sense without metaphor or allegory.

The opposite of 'literal' is 'figurative,' which means in a metaphorical sense.

Correct: You can't literally 'eat your words' - that's why it's called a figure of speech. Unless you made letter-shaped cakes, used them to form words and then proceeded to eat them.
Incorrect: She, like, literally slapped me when I called her an ugly skank!


I was concerned because dictionary.com now lists "virtually, in effect," as a definition for 'literally.' Although this left me disheartened, I was relieved to see that the reliable OED, while including the "without exaggeration" definition, also tagged it as "informal." The dumbed-down definition hasn't won...yet.

Regard/Regards

"In regards to..."

We hear or read that phrase so often, and so many of us probably think it's correct. But in fact use of regards in the construction "in regards to" is incorrect. The standard use is "in regard to."

"Regards" is acceptable when used as a noun, as in, "Give my regards to Broadway!"