My score is artificially inflated by the fact that here in China texting is my primary means of communication. People I want to contact then have time (and translation software) to figure out my meaning.
Voice converstaions are much more difficult.

Also I would read a daily newspaper if the possibility existed - but it doesn't.

Adjusting for these factors I scored 8

Not an 8! What did you really score?

Honestly. It was eight.
I answered as if I were still living in the UK.

Here in China I am forced to use text messages when I would much rather call and speak because phone conversations are difficult with people who have only a little English. Texting works because they can look up any words they don't know or run it through translation software. So, for example, yesterday I probably sent about thirty messages - none of which would have been sent in the UK.

Also in the UK I always read a daily paper. Here there are no English language daily papers available.

I counted DVD and download as TV because there is no English TV to speak of (OK -one very boring business news channel, but nobody watches that)


Nobody has landlines here but I would if I could so I answered "both"

My circumstances make it impossible to meaningfully answer the quiz.

Answering without making any adjustments I scored 95 which just goes to show that the test, as defined, is meaningless because it doesn't take any account at all of individual circumstances.

But answering honestly for my non-China life I scored 8.

I don't live in China and I was (gasp!) seven. What am I doing wrong?

Well, I scored less than my age, anyway, with 60.

I must have made a mistake then when I did it. If Bob scored 8, I couldn't have possibly gotten 66. And, of course you're right, Bob, that this is not a psychometrically sound test. But it's fun!

Gosh I scored only 19.If only I'd taken the quiz last weekend, when I texted woth my youngest. LOL.

This is interesting.

Very funny, Proof!

I liked these:

“Remove child before folding” – on a baby stroller!

“Never operate your speakerphone while driving” – on a hands-free cell phone product called the “Drive ‘N’ Talk”!

“Danger: Avoid Death” – a warning on a small tractor!

“This product moves when used” – a warning on a popular children’s scooter!

Why Johnny can’t sign his name: Cursive writing goes the way of the quill

quote:

Argued Molenaar: “Your signature is your mark. Are we having a whole generation who can’t write their name? How are you supposed to sign cheques — put your fingerprint on a legal document?”

But... just print your name. What am I missing?

quote:

But... just print your name. What am I missing?

Printing isn't as unique as cursive. It would be fairly easy to forge block letters but not cursive.

But the reason signatures are hard to forge isn't because they're cursive, it's because they're personalized. Isn't it? Printed writing can be personalized too.

Years ago, when I worked for a bank, I was an "authorised signatory". That partly meant that most of the letters that were sent out by us had to be signed by me, even the most routine. I soon found that a lot of people would phone up and ask for me by name because they'd got a letter bearing my signature, instead of asking for the correct department.

I soon started making my signature an indecipherable scrawl so they'd be forced to explain why they were calling to the switchboard operator - in that way they'd be put through to the person who was dealing with that area.

My signature is still unreadable twenty years on.

Interesting subject. This article cites studies showing that cursive handwriting is still taught in 70% to 90% of US 3rd & 4th grade classrooms. Seems odd that they already have teens in Canada who never learned it. I also find odd their claim that handwriting lessons have been replaced with typing lessons. My kids, who never learned qwerty-typing, type at least 30wpm with 2 fingers, & there seems little use today for the 60+wpm I learned.

The thrust of recent US articles is a concern that the core-curriculum-standard-driven classroom will dump cursive instruction in favor of 'teaching to the test'. (Hopefully by the time that mania reaches the 7& 8 y.o.'s, IT will have been dumped.)

A teacher in the comment thread says kids anticipate learning cursive with excitement (as an 'adult' skill), but that could change as soon as today's iphone note-senders become parents. Another finds cursive helpful in the development of reading skills.

Despite spellcheck, spelling bees are as big here as they've ever been. Perhaps handwriting, like spelling, will stay around as an equally desirable & exotic skill.

quote:

But... just print your name. What am I missing?

I asked Shu if it is legal to print your signature, and he says it is. You could write your name however you like, he says, including in a foreign language. Shu says forgery is "another issue." You know those lawyers!

I do remember being excited when I got to learn cursive, Bethree.

quote:

asked Shu if it is legal to print your signature, and he says it is.

I often use an "X".

An illiterate young man cashed his meager checks every week for years at a local store. Because he couldn't sign his name, the storekeeper accepted his scrawled "X" in the name area. The young man struggled to complete night school but was unsuccessful. Then one day, the young man signed his weekly pay check with "Xx". The storekeeper was dumbfounded.
"What does this mean?" he asked.
"I graduated last night from school, so now I'm a doctor."

This makes for a good word stolen.

Interesting, Proof. Usually we steal words from the Germans!

quote:

Usually we steal words from the Germans!

They do plenty of stealing back, though. I think it's pretty much a two-way street.

Hard to think of 'shitstorm' and 'scheißesturm' as anything but the same word. Yet how clever to borrow a foreign spelling to coin a nuanced version. There must be examples of this in English, but all I can think of are a few French terms which suggest a certain recipe (like steak au poivre rather than steak with pepper).

quote:

Originally posted by bethree5:
Hard to think of 'shitstorm' and 'scheißesturm' as anything but the same word. Yet how clever to borrow a foreign spelling to coin a nuanced version. There must be examples of this in English, but all I can think of are a few French terms which suggest a certain recipe (like steak au poivre rather than steak with pepper).

One example from the UK:

Sliced fried potatoes here are called "chips". When McDonald's and the like started opening up over here they called the stuff they serve up "fries". Since British chips are usually thick-cut we started calling all thin-cut chips (like MCD's) "fries". Decent restaurants, who often serve thin-cut chips, started calling their offerings "frites" (the French term) to avoid association with the fast-food "fries".

Not many of the foreign words we've borrowed have the exact same meaning in English as they did in their lending language. The Germans also make up English words like: Beamer 'LCD/video project', Handy 'mobile phone', Shooting 'photo shoot', etc.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

Schadenfreude does. It's an n of 1, I know.

I did think many of the German words had the same meaning, though, like ohrwurm, too. Or another of my favorites, torschlusspanik.

I think of Schadenfreude as a kind of learned loanword, like Sturm und Drang or Bildungsroman, but I don't think one could use either of your two other examples without glossing them.

"Glossing" them? Do you mean "annotate?" I hadn't realized "gloss" can mean that, but I found that definition in the dictionary.

I think you are right about torschlusspanik, but I am not sure about ohrwurm. That seems to be used fairly common. I've seen it in the media recently. I know google hits don't mean much, but ohrwurm has 1.5 M Google hits, and torschlusspanik only has 89,000.

"Glossing" them? Do you mean "annotate?" I hadn't realized "gloss" can mean that, but I found that definition in the dictionary.

Funny, I was unaware of any other verbal meaning. But "giving a luster to or shine" is one.

"Glossing" in this context is usually taken to mean giving a definition. So ... I've just glossed "gloss".

quote:

I've just glossed "gloss".

Made me glossy-eyed.

So funny - particularly the school ones. What were they thinking?

From today's Huffinton Post:

SMALL PENIS CONTEST WINNER VOTING FOR WEINER

I hope it's bigger than the present one.

He is a bit sleazy, isn't he? And what's up with his wife?

He's overweining

Stolen from zm's Morphology of Peevology FB group: People who highlight minor grammar points are amazing.

What is amazing about that article is that not once was my name actually used.

Richard English posted this other article which was on the same website.

I missed these articles, arnie and Proof. Love that Dailymash. It's a lot like our The Onion .

This isn't an article, but it's a great video that will make you laugh (and reminds me of the the Dailymash or the Onion, thus the post).

Here is an interesting article about Louis C.K.'s opinion that smartphones cause a lack of engagement. I liked her use of the phrase "electronic existentialism" for links to clips like C.K.'s smartphone rant.

Odds Are, It's Wrong

March 27, 2010 article about statistics. I was led to this by a November 26, 2013 article,
Why Big Data is bad for science

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
Here is an interesting article about Louis C.K.'s opinion that smartphones cause a lack of engagement. I liked her use of the phrase "electronic existentialism" for links to clips like C.K.'s smartphone rant.

I found Louis C.K.'s rant incoherent. Phones are making us less human, or something?

quote:

Phones are making us less human, or something?

Yes, and I found it ironic that the commercial preceding the video (at least in my case) was an ad for cell phones.

I found Louis C.K.'s rant incoherent.

It's part of his shtik. It seems he discovered a few years ago, after a messy divorce, that he is growing old, and the one thing he remembers from other family members growing older is that they become incoherent ranters.

"Now, you kids get off my lawn and stop reading those comic books!"

If you watch his show(s): his character is basically a child in a 4o-something year-old body. I enjoy his comedy, but he should leave the parental, child-raising tips to others.

Tinman, your articles were very interesting - though there is nothing there that scientists don't worry about every day. For example, we are analyzing a large database with multiple relationships, and we've found a few significant differences. As was stated in one of the articles, the sheer # of relationships, in themselves, can create significances. We are aware of that and certainly won't push those significances. I think most scientists are. So these authors need to take a chill pill, as one of my friends says. It's under control.

See what punctuation reveals about you.

Here is an example:

quote:

; You're a jerk who read one book by Nietzsche or maybe Foucault, and it's the only thing you ever talk about now. Worse, you've taken a useful punctuation mark and ruined it for the unpretentious writers among us, the same thing hipsters are always doing to perfectly nice cheap beers.

I thought it interesting to relate use of punctuation to selection of beers.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
Not an 8!

I also scored an 8. But not an 8!.

I had to go way back to June to see what you meant about an 8. You and Bob (in his non-China life) scored the same and Proof scored a 7. Arnie at least was normal with a 60.

ScienceNews has posted their top 25 stories of 2013.

they are all interesting, but one of particular interest to Wordcrafters is Language learning starts before birth. This is the same story that Kalleh posted on January 15, 2013.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Kalleh:
See what punctuation reveals about you.

haha, this was a cute column, Kalleh (tho I don't know what she's got against the tilde). In your quoted example about the semi-colon, I use it without the benefit of Nietsche or Foucault, or expensive beer; it's because I just can't stop talking long enough to end a sentence...

I hear you, Bethree!

Here is an article by Clarence Page on words in the news this year. They include:
affluenza
bitcoin
fatberg
lean in
selfie
twerk
vape
young invincibles