How to (Not) Speak With a British Accent

20 July 2010

This YouTube video is getting some buzz around language circles—and not the good kind. I don’t think this is how the English really pronounce coffee.

John Wells has a more detailed dissection of the video on his blog.

The lesson here is not to post YouTube videos on a subject unless you really know what you’re talking about.

(Hat tip to Wishydig.)

Update (a few minutes later): I just found this parody video made in response.

English-only in Homer, Illinois

18 July 2010

The “Johnson” blog at The Economist reprints an anti-immigration and English-only resolution the town council passed earlier this week. You can read the entire text there, but the first sentence reads:

Homer Township Board recognizes that there most likely no serious problem with illegal immigration, in the Township, but wants to make it policy to enforce the Rule of law in Homer Township.

Methinks they had best learn to write English themselves before requiring others to do so.

The town is presumably named after the Greek poet, but a more appropriate namesake might be another famous, and more recent, Homer. Some of that Homer’s edumacation is evident here.

Another SMBC Comic

18 July 2010

Another one from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. I could go all Arnold Zwicky and comment about how the third error (the misuse of whom) is in a different class than than the previous two usage errors and is much less likely to actually ever occur in real life, but I won’t:

SMBC comic on grammar errors

Couple of Articles on Prescriptivism

16 July 2010

John McIntyre, copy editor for the Baltimore Sun, has a post on his You Don’t Say blog outlining a very sensible approach to prescriptivism. McIntyre “gets it.” Very few people who dispense writing advice realize or acknowledge that different registers and voices are appropriate for different audiences, and the “rules” of style need to be adjusted accordingly.

And the Johnson language blog over at the Economist has a post about how prescriptive criticism of language is often used to mask ad hominem attacks.

I Write Like

16 July 2010

This is a fun, but ultimately pointless, site. I purports to tell you which famous writer you write like.

I evidently write like H.P. Lovecraft. Although one of my posts from 2001 is like Shakespeare.

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Oddly enough, Shakespeare’s Sonnet #116 is written in the style of Dickens.

(Hat tip to Michael Bigley)