Chicago Words

21 July 2010

Chicago Magazine has compiled a list of forty words that the city of Chicago has, supposedly, contributed to the lexicon and that capture the spirit of the city in some way. Some of the the connections to Chicago are tenuous, such as a first citation in the OED from a Chicago newspaper, but it’s an interesting list of words. Plus, for a journalistic endeavor it appears to be surprisingly accurate. Usually reporters get articles on language (and just about everything, frankly) so wrong, but here writer Graham Meyer seems to get it mostly right.

(Tip o’ the hat to Wilson Gray on ADS-L)

LA Times on Electronic Books

20 July 2010

Here’s an article on the future of books in a digital age in the Los Angeles Times. Unlike they typical gloom and doom accounts of the “end of reading,” this one focuses on the advantages of a digital format over print.

(Tip o’ the hat to Grant Barrett & Martha Barnette of A Way With Words)

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