Toluu

The Web of Language

Everything you wanted to know about language, and more.

Small Latin and less Greek were good enough for Shakespeare, but some Brits want to rid English of its classical rootsNovember 11

Three town councils in England have banned Latin words and phrases common in English because, as the folks in Bournemouth put it, "Not everyone knows Latin." Even worse, Latin's a problem in Bournemouth no matter what language you speak: "Many readers do not have English as their first language so using Latin can be particularly difficult."

 

Banned from this seaside Dorset city of 163,000 with its seven miles of sandy beaches are eg and ie, annoying abbreviations that now must be replaced with the fully-articulated English for example and that is.

 

Gone from Salisbury, best-known for Stonehenge, are ad hoc, ergo and QED (Latin for ergo, sort of). And ex officio's officially out in Fife, whose civil servants must only act 'in their official capacity' (even though official comes from Latin), and whose stand-up comics can no longer ad lib. What they'll do instead is anybody's guess, though if they go on ad nauseam no doubt they'll get the hook – the comedians, that is, not the civil servants, who can't be removed from their jobs for anything as simple as malfeasance (which is French for not doing your job). 

 

Bournemouth's not one of the old towns of Roman Britain like Londinium (London), Cirencester, or Verulamium (St. Albans). It dates from the later 19th century, but like many of Eng

Debating the Perception DeviceOctober 6

Joe:  It's literally a shame--let me say that again--it is a real and total shame--seriously--that we must use a light dimmer to express our political opinoins.  It is a solid fact--a dark truth--that American political discourse is completely lacking of any substance.  Literally.  Check the record.

Sarah:  Say it aint so, Joe.  There ya go again, talking about stuff instead of turn'n the dial.  You sure aren't one of the Joe six-packs out there, do'n their best, use'n their fingers to twist that knob.  I'd like to give a shout out to all those 3rd graders out there, make'n their voices heard by spinning that circle!

 

Correcting other people's English illegal -- Comma Bombers guilty on federal conspiracy chargesSeptember 22

The Comma Bombers, better known as Jeff Michael Deck and Benjamin Douglas Herson, both 28, both English majors, both graduates of that hotbed of compassionate conservatism, Dartmouth College, were sentenced to a $3,000 fine and a year's probation by a federal judge last month for correcting an apostrophe on a historic handpainted sign at the Watch Tower, near Arizona's Grand Canyon.

 

The sign had been painted by the architect Mary Colter to introduce visitors to the Anasazi-style Watch Tower that she designed on the Canyon’s south rim in 1933.Interestingly, Colter had been a stickler for detail: she handpicked every stone and placed it in the structure to achieve the maximum impact.

But the vandals didn’t approve of Colter's attention to punctuation, so they fixed a misplaced apostrophe and added a missing comma with WiteOut and markers. The pair decided not to fix a

Pig-gate: any way you spin it, lipstick on a pig is politics as usualSeptember 11

When Barack Obama said of rival John McCain's economic plan, "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig," Republicans loudly complained that he was attacking vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who had connected lipstick, hockey moms, and pit bulls in her speech at the Republic Convention.

 

But lipstick on a pig is an insult used by Democrats and Republicans alike, and it's been a political staple at least since 2004. The real issue isn't whether Obama was insulting Palin, McCain's economics, or both. Instead, the media circus that we might call pig-gate has become an object lesson in how interpretation depends more on attempts to control what words mean than on what their dictionary definitions say they mean.

 

 

 

Sen. Obama prefaced his remarks at a Norfolk, Virginia, high school by calling Republican objections to his phrase “lipstick on a pig,” describing the McCain economic plan, as "phony outrage."

 

Democrats were likening McCain's economic proposals to "lipstick on

Defending the language with bullets: If you can read this in English, thank a soldierAugust 1

“It’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

  Barack Obama

 

The bumper sticker on the back of a construction worker’s pickup truck caught my eye: “If you can read this, thank a teacher . . . .”

 

This homage to education wasn’t what I expected from someone whose bitterness typically manifests itself in vehicle art celebrating guns and religion, but there was more: “If you can read this in English, thank a soldier.”

 

 

And there it was: a “support our troops” bumper sticker that takes language and literacy out of the classroom and puts them squarely in the hands of the military.

 

It’s one thing to say that we owe our national security and the survival of the free world to military might. I