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The word “lethologica” describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.
(via)
For the life of me, I probably will not remember this word. But it’s pretty neat that there is a word for it. English is fun!
(Source: ohyeahfacts)
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The opening of Beowulf, in Old English/Ænglisc (spoken 400AD - 1100AD, approximately).
Hwæt! We gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!
oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
monegum mægþum meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas, syððanærest wearð
feasceaft funden; he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum weorðmyndum þah,
oð þæt him æghwylc ymbsittendra
ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan; þæt wæs god cyning!
Ðæm eafera wæs æfter cenned
geong in geardum, þone God sende
folce to frofre; fyrenðearfe ongeat,
þe hie ær drugon aldorlease
lange hwile; him þæs Liffrea,
wuldres Wealdend woroldare forgeaf,
Beowulf wæs breme - blæd wide sprang -
Scyldes eafera Scedelandum in.It’s on my Bucket List to be able to recite this opening part someday. Imagine being able to whip out a dramatic reading of Beowulf in Old English! Wouldn’t that be awesome? No? I’m the only one?
This makes me miss Morris and Old English with Janet Erickson.
(Source: magicaldeductions, via linguish)
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And the sun falls down.: So far the only thing of interest I've come across in my Linguistics textbook
So far the only thing of interest I’ve come across in my Linguistics textbook
From Language Files, 10th edition by the Department of Linguistics at Ohio State University:
“ d. Sound Symbolism. A second apparent counterexample to arbitrariness issound symbolism: certain sounds occur in words not by virtue of being directly imitative of some sound but rather simply by being evocative of a particular meaning. That is, these words more abstractly suggest some physical characteristics by the way they sound. For instance, in many languages, words for ‘small’ and small objects or words that have smallness as part of their meaning often contain the vowel [i], which occurs in Englishteeny ’extra small,’ petite and wee ’small,’ and dialectal leetle for “little,’ in Greek mikros ‘small,’ in Spanish diminutive nouns (i.e., those with the meaning ‘little X’) such as perrito ’little dog,’ where -ito is a suffix indicating ‘little,’ and so on. Such universal sound symbolism—with the sound [i] suggesting ‘smallness’— seems to be motivated because [i] is a high-pitched vowel and so more like the high-pitched sounds given off by small objects. Thus the use of [i] in ‘small’ words creates a situation in which an aspect of the form, i.e., the occurrence of [i], is determined by an aspect of the meaning, i.e., ‘smallness.’ We may thus characterize the appearance of [i] in such words as somewhat iconic—the “small” vowel [i] is an icon for the meaning ‘small(ness).’”
MIND=BLOWN. I’d never make that connection on my own.
I’d also like to point out that this is my 100th post, one-hundred more posts than I ever anticipated I’d do. My followers are a source of motivation for these posts, regardless of how relevant they may be to others.
THANK YOU, ALL ELEVEN OF YOU:
Callie, Haley, Melissa, Becca, Greta, Rosalyn, Justin (who will probably be the only person to have any interest in the first part of this post), Eleanor, Taylor, Rachel, and Audri.
Now back to mind-numbing Linguistics homework.
I never considered this, even though it makes a lot of sense. Thank goodness for linguistics to solve these language problems I didn’t even know I wanted to know!
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Digital Overload: Your Brain On Gadgets
The average person today consumes almost three times as much information as what the typical person consumed in 1960, according to research at the University of California, San Diego. [from the article]
We might consume that much information, but a lot of the information contains empty calories.
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Ms., Miss, Mrs.?
A fascinating discussion of the etymology behind these terms.
I have to go with Fola La Follette (what a great name!) on this one. If men only are ever called “Mr.”, then it would make sense, and make things so much easier, socially speaking, if the same goes for women:
If Miss is the form of address for women before marriage, let it be so after marriage, too. Let the term acquire a larger social significance. When women keep their own name, a woman will not have to explain her children by wearing the name of a perfectly good legitimate husband who’s at home. (New York Times, Feb. 21, 1941).
I’ve really never understood the necessity for the Mrs/Miss/Ms distinction. Mostly, it’s just confusing. Why should one woman have to carry around so many different prefixes for her name? Since language is starting to condense, I also think we should do away with the Mrs/Miss difference. It just doesn’t make such sense.
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Luciferous: An Apologia of Exacting Locution
I am often confronted by people who do not know even rudimentary words like nostalgia or remorse. I don’t even expect them to know words like jingoistic or ennui, but I don’t stifle my use of them regardless. Now I don’t go out of my way to pepper my speech with difficult words to give off a pompous air of intellectual superiority. I just find it important to have my speech be as accurate as possible.
I must say, as an aside, I also have a love for what Robert Frost found so important: that being word and sentence sound, the flow of language.
As Hitchens says so often “Look to the language.” There is a lot to be gleaned from peoples word choice that is often missed.
The issue compounds when the subtle anti-intellectual ideas of “Why do we need so many words that have such similar or identical definitions” or “Why not just speak plainly” etc. Now I’m all for brevity and simplicity in communication, and that is because brevity and simplicity are still tools to convey certain ideas to much greater accuracy. If you semi-colon, comma, and merge sentences together in a long string the ideas run together and the ideas that they contain become more apparently tied together to the reader. If you use a short declarative sentence that stands out in its exacting brevity that sentence will have more impact to it.
What these people are really missing in their language, both written and spoken, is the power of connotation. This mentality has breed people like Stephanie Meyers who thinks using the first large word in the thesaurus entry is appropriate to replace whatever mundane word she has written and that the imagery and connotation do not change because of it. It seems to only serve as a masturbatory “I sound so smart” device, and as a go to defense for the gaggles of girls reading her trash to prove that the books are not insipid and vacuous of anything resembling literature but that they are ‘really, really smart books, for smart people to read.’
Using “big” words is not a crime it is something to be proud of, as long as you don’t habitually misapply your improved lexicon. You should use the words you know how to use, but don’t be derisive to people who know more, use those people to learn new words and more exacting connotation for your word choice in whatever context you apply them to.
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Floccinaucinihilipilification is a 29-letter word
Which means an act or instance of judging something to be worthless or trivial. Ironically the world itself seems to be.. worthless to be known.
Submitted by spazz-out
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A Man, A Plan And A Sharpie: 'The Great Typo Hunt' : NPR
“Incensed by a “no tresspassing” sign, Jeff Deck launched a cross-country trip to right grammatical wrongs.
He enlisted a friend, Benjamin D. Herson, and together they got to work erasing errant quotation marks, rectifying misspellings and cutting unnecessary possessive apostrophes.
The Great Typo Hunt is the story of their crusade.
In 2 1/2 months, Herson and Deck traveled the perimeter of the country, exploring towns and cities in search of typos. They found 437 typos and were able to correct more than half of them.
Some typos were uncorrectable — out of the team’s reach, or, as Deck tells NPR’s Tony Cox, requiring tools and materials that weren’t included in his “typo correction kit.”
Deck carried a variety of Sharpies, of which “the black Sharpie was the most important.” Deck also carried Wite-Out, dry erase markers, chalk, crayons and pens.”
[It drives Matt absolutely crazy that I do this all the time. I carry pens and white board markers too. Though it’s not usually typos I’m correcting: usually people just honestly don’t know the proper way to use punctuation or apostrophes, or how to spell certain words. But that’s perfectly understandable: the English language, despite her beautiful complexities, is one hell of a bitch to master.]
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