Category: Uncategorized
The truth about communication differences between genders
Deborah Cameron’s book The Myth of Mars and Venus seems to be a fact-based debunking of the popular notion that men and women speak and write differently. It’s Language Log territory, for sure. In the London Times she outlines the myths about communication between genders: Myth 1: women talk more than men. Myth 2: men…
The Pork Chop Bandit: Why cops give criminals nicknames
In the Edmonton Journal, Bill Mah takes a quick look at police-given names for criminals. “For us, instead of saying, ‘You know, the guy who’s running around with a hammer targeting bakeries,’ it’s easier to give the guy a name,” Hewko said.…While some of the names sound silly, Hewko says police aren’t being flippant about…
Changes in emails, feeds, and blog postings
Today we start a new format for the daily emails and the RSS feeds that reflects a change in the Double-Tongued Dictionary web site. From here on out, I am concentrating on collecting new catchwords, which are those words that to seem to warrant more attention from lexicographers, and less on doing full entries, in…
How very disingenuous of Steven Pinker
In a column for the Los Angeles Times, author and linguistic gadfly Steven Pinker writes, Every year, the American Dialect Society predicts which new words will catch on. But a follow-up of their picks from the 1990s shows they are about as accurate as tabloid psychics. Some of the words were political barbs that died…
Enjoy the riffle of onionskin as dictionary days are upon us
Joan Houston Hall, editor in chief of the Dictionary of American Regional English, answers questions for David Medaris of The Daily Page in preparation for the Wisconsin Book Festival October 10-14, 2007. What question has nobody ever asked you about DARE that you most wish someone would ask, and how would you answer it? “How…
Good news! The radio show stays on the air!
My radio partner Martha Barnette, our producer Stefanie Levine, and I are as happy as dogs with two tails: we’ve struck a deal that will keep our radio show, A Way with Words, on the air. Read more about it here. We’re already working on new full-hour episodes, which will broadcast in San Diego and…
UPDATED: What the hell are those lexicographers thinking?
Colleague and friend Erin McKean is guestblogging about dictionaries and lexicography this week over at The Volokh Conspiracy. Part 1: The Myth of the Lexicographer-Judge. “The other myth about lexicographers is that we are horrified, appalled, and indeed, quite put out when we see misspellings, nonstandard usages, slang, or informality in general. This is ridiculous—it’s…
The ten best Scottish words
Clare Smith has fun in the Scotsman as she nominates her ten best Scottish words: bauchle, blether, dreich, fankle, gallus, mooch, pockle, slitter, wabbit, and wheesht. I knew only blether, gallus, and mooch (Western meaning, which I believe is the only one used in the US).
Difficulties of bilingualism: “How come my cousins speak Spanish and I don’t?”
Two articles underscore the difficulties in achieving bilingualism in children even when you want them to be bilingual. Counter to what the English-only, English-first, or English-as-official-language believers say, it’s incredibly difficult to get a child to speak fluently in any language but those that dominate a society—so laws, campaigns, and cuts in bilingual education aren’t…
Six months
Big accomplishments for the boy over the last month: His first solid food. His first teeth—two, on the bottom. Lots of syllable-sounding talk over the last few days. It’s the kind of noise that makes you think if you just listened hard enough you could make out words. Also still the cutest baby in the…