quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
Very interesting, arnie, and I know we've talked about drinking words, as well as sex words, here before. I really liked the story about the drunken thrush "tottering around." The Latin word for "thrush" is turdus. I assume that's not where the word "turd" comes from?

It would seem not: http://www.etymonline.com/inde...d&allowed_in_frame=0

Britishisms and the Britishisation of American English.

Fascinating. And I was delighted to see this paragraph:

"...The same thing might be influencing a trend that Yagoda has spotted for Americans to use the day, month, year format for dates - 26/9/12 rather than 9/26/12..."

In the travel business (the world's first global industry and still the largest) the standard international date format has, for many years, been dd/mm/yyyy - and this is the "official" system in the USA (all the US government forms I have seen use it).

But the lay US person still prefers the mm/dd/yyyy system - to the frequent confusion of international travellers holding tickets that bear an ambigious entry such as "8 O'clock on 6/7/2012" Is that 0800 or 2000? Is it 06 July or 07 June?

In fact, to make things 100% clear, the international travel format eschews the "all figure" date reference and there is an international three-letter code for months which, fortunately for English speakers, uses the first three letters of the month which, as it happens, are all different. So the above dates would be rendered as 06 JUL 2012 or 07 JUN 2012. Of course, that does mean writing one or two more letters - but it saves two oblique strokes and so the overall effort and ink consumption must be more or less the same.

Similarly, in all international timetables the 12-hour clock has long gone and so the confusion between times such as 8am and 8pm is also avoided. US domestic timetables still use the 12 hour clock, though - and I find them very confusing having thought in the 24 hour designation for all my working life.

A follow-up in the Grauniad to the BBC post I last mentioned: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comm...ms-american-language

Interesting, arnie. I do have one quibble:

quote:

The use of university, rather than college or school, for example, may well be used by Americans to make sure they are understood outside the country.

We use the word university all the time. We don't say "go to university," as we insert a "the," but we sure use the word. Indeed, I used to teach at Loyola University. The word university is not just used to be understood globally.

I do think there has been some influx of Britishisms, to the point that I almost don't see them as Britishisms. For example, I hear "cheeky" quite a bit.

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

This article from the New York Times speaks to the same.

Twenty years ago I worked with a printing cameraman who persisted in calling the hood of his car a "bonnet" and a wrench a "spanner." He also was divorced by his wife because, among other odd characteristics, he fixed his racing car's engine in the living room. So this isn't someting recent.

Was he English, Proof? The English call the hood "bonnet" and the trunk the "boot."

No, solidly American. Just involved in the foreign racing car element.

Well, in another thread we are talking about Americans use of Britishisms. This must be one example.

An interesting blog post on Bowdlerism in school Latin text books: http://laudatortemporisacti.bl.../bowdlerization.html

quote:

... Peter Green tells about the great lengths to which he and some of his Sixth Form fellows at Charterhouse went to find out as much as they could about obscene passages omitted in bowdlerized school editions of the classics ... They spent long hours of their free time in the well-stocked school library tracking down these naughty bits, poring over commentaries and lexicons, and trying to figure out what the censored passages meant. In the course of doing so they greatly improved their knowledge of Greek and Latin.

Green goes so far as to say (p. 242), "This was how I first acquired the basic techniques of scholarly research."

Very interesting, arnie. I haven't seen that Blog before, but I like his description of himself as "antediluvian, a bibliomaniac, and a curmudgeon."

"This was how I first acquired the basic techniques of scholarly research."

I really enjoyed that blog entry; thanks, arnie. I remember once being confused by a passage (in Plautus, IIRC) that was translated into French instead of English.

Literacy privilege, or, why grammar nazis are dicks.

An article on Boing-Boing on three extremely thoughtful blog posts by Chandra on 'correcting' others' language on the Interweb. Make sure you read the three linked articles, and, if you have the time, read the comments as well.

Nice series of blog postings, arnie. Thanks.

I particularly liked "Painting the Grey Area" Blog. I so wish our editors would read it!

And Boing Boing will always be special to me because they published one of my OEDILF limericks.

Damn Chinese internet!

I read the boing boing intro and was all set to read the actual articles when I found they are on a wordpress blog which, just like blogger blogs, is blocked in China.
So, much as I'd like to, I can't read them.
(And, to make things even worse, the authorities here are having a vigourous campaign of locking down all the popular VPNs)

Incidentally since the new administration here appointed a new person to oversee the internet gmail has become very difficult to use. Connecting can take up to a dozen tries, messages may have to be sent multiple times as error messages of "server error" repeatedly appear, it will go down over and over in a session with the message "you are not connected - retrying in xx seconds", attachments will disappear from sent messages AND from received messages.
I can only surmise that the Government is trying to make it so bloody awkward to use that people switch to local services which, surprise surprise, are not available in English.

Oh, that's too bad, Bob. We have had problems on Gmail chats, haven't we?

The Role of a Dictionary.

Interesting, arnie. Thanks for that! I liked this:

quote:

One is that no dictionary contains every word in the language.

12 Old Words that Survived by Getting Fossilized in Idioms.

H/T: Languagehat.

Those were interesting reads, arnie. The one word that I disagreed with a bit was "sleight," as in "sleight of hand." I've never seen it written as "slight."

This is not a word related blog entry, but it is evidence as to why one of my least favorite states is Florida. My other least favorite state is Texas.

Baltimore Sun editor and "moderate prescriptivist" (his words) on Why I hate "iconic".

quote:

This is America, and you are free to write as you please; and if your editor is too busy, too tone-deaf, or too slipshod to stop you, then bless your heart and go ahead. Doofus.

Ah, this is priceless. Don't we all feel that way sometimes, even though many of us tend toward being descriptivists?