YOU TALK FUNNY

This is great. Just watch it, jerks.

Tue, 29 May 2012 11:22:37 -0700

This is great. Just watch it, jerks.

The Most Comma Mistakes

Tue, 22 May 2012 19:27:43 -0700

Grammatically, there are various ways of describing what’s going on. One helpful set of terms is essential vs. nonessential. When the identifier makes sense in the sentence by itself, then the name is nonessential and you use a comma before it. Otherwise, no comma. That explains an exception to the only-thing-in-the-world rule: when the words “a,” “an” or “some,” or a number, come before the description or identification of a name, use a comma.

via Buzzword decoder: Your election-year guide to environmental...

Tue, 15 May 2012 04:29:58 -0700

via Buzzword decoder: Your election-year guide to environmental catchphrases | Grist

Buzzwords here! Get your buzzwords!

Regional English, Tweet by Tweet - NYTimes.com

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 11:32:41 -0700

Regional English, Tweet by Tweet - NYTimes.com:

timefornaps:

According to a paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Dialect Society in January by Brice Russ, a graduate student at Ohio State University, the 200 million or so messages posted each day in the supposedly placeless world of Twitter may end up being a rich source of information about regional difference.

To demonstrate the validity of Twitter-based research, Mr. Russ searched through some 400,000 Twitter posts coming from identifiable locations and zeroed in on three different linguistic variables, starting with the regional distribution of “soda” vs. “pop” or “Coke,” something that has been well-studied by scholars and amateurs alike. Next, he tracked the use of “hella,” an intensifier (as in “hella boring”) that is associated with Northern California but whose regional distribution has only been examined anecdotally. Finally, he looked at the well-documented syntactic construction “needs X-ed” (as in“the car needs washed”), which is common in the Midwest and especially around Pittsburgh.

Mr. Russ’s results for carbonated beverages, plotted onto a Google map, track closely with previous research, with “pop” predominant from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest, “Coke” predominant in the South and “soda” ruling the Northeast and Southwest while also cropping up elsewhere. But his map for “hella” shows the word leap-frogging up the West Coast to Seattle (and, more puzzlingly, popping up in St. Louis and Kansas City). “People may be moving up the coast, bringing it with them,” he said, adding that he was utterly confounded by the midwestern “hella” hotspots.

As for the “needs X-ed” construction, Mr. Russ detected hints of a southward drift since it was studied in the mid-1990s, though he was cautious about drawing firm conclusions. “There could have been diffusion southward,” he said. “Or I may have just caught something that the previous research missed.”

Look, Megan Rascal! Fun with linguistics!

Fun indeed.

"The idea that young women serve as incubators of vocal trends for the culture at large has..."

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 11:08:00 -0800

“The idea that young women serve as incubators of vocal trends for the culture at large has longstanding roots in linguistics. As Paris is to fashion, the thinking goes, so are young women to linguistic innovation.”

- They’re, Like, Way Ahead of the Linguistic Currrrve

Our Lin-sane attraction to terrible puns, explained

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 07:13:23 -0800

Our Lin-sane attraction to terrible puns, explained:

Um…I can’t think of one.

Negative affect, you say?

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 07:56:00 -0800

Negative affect, you say?:

julianneeee:

vegansaurus:

“Many people like eating meat, but most are reluctant to harm things that have minds. The current three studies show that this dissonance motivates people to deny minds to animals. Study 1 demonstrates that animals considered appropriate for human consumption are ascribed diminished mental capacities. Study 2 shows that meat eaters are motivated to deny minds to food animals when they are reminded of the link between meat and animal suffering. Finally, Study 3 provides direct support for our dissonance hypothesis, showing that expectations regarding the immediate consumption of meat increase mind denial. Moreover, this mind denial in turn reduces negative affect associated with dissonance.”

I thought “affect” was wrong, but it’s correct if you look at definition 3 in the New American Oxford

Someone was concerned over a word usage in my post (not mine, it’s a quote), but they sorted it out! This is my kind of gal.

Affect/effect is quote a troublesome pair though. From my favorite grammar site:

There are five distinct words here. When “affect” is accented on the final syllable (a-FECT), it is usually a verb meaning “have an influence on”: “The million-dollar donation from the industrialist did not affect my vote against the Clean Air Act.”

Occasionally a pretentious person is said to affect an artificial air of sophistication. Speaking with a borrowed French accent or ostentatiously wearing a large diamond ear stud might be an affectation. In this sort of context, “affect” means “to make a display of or deliberately cultivate.”

Another unusual meaning is indicated when the word is accented on the first syllable (AFF-ect), meaning “emotion.” In this case the word is used mostly by psychiatrists and social scientists—people who normally know how to spell it.

The real problem arises when people confuse the first spelling with the second: “effect.” This too can be two different words. The more common one is a noun: “When I left the stove on, the effect was that the house filled with smoke.” When you affect a situation, you have an effect on it.

Less common is a verb meaning “to create”: “I’m trying to effect a change in the way we purchase widgets.” No wonder people are confused. Note especially that the proper expression is not “take affect” but “take effect”—become effective. Hey, nobody ever said English was logical: just memorize it and get on with your life.

The stuff in your purse? Your personal effects.

The stuff in movies? Sound effects and special effects.

“Affective” is a technical term having to do with emotions; the vast majority of the time the spelling you want is “effective.”

Wikipedia even has a whole page dedicated to the use of “affect” in psychology.

I’m bringing back, “pump your breaks, kid!”...

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 17:33:51 -0800

I’m bringing back, “pump your breaks, kid!” It’s already going great.

Another Oxford comma illustration. The Stalin one is a little...

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:17:51 -0800

Another Oxford comma illustration. The Stalin one is a little funnier.

I've been watching too much Bravo

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 12:33:52 -0800

Chimps May Have the Ability to Understand Language Like Humans

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 06:52:31 -0800

Chimps May Have the Ability to Understand Language Like Humans:

I read about this sine-wave form speech with dolphins too, pretty cool. Thwarts the naysayers!

NATO phonetic alphabet. My sister suggests we talk like this...

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 10:10:28 -0800

NATO phonetic alphabet. My sister suggests we talk like this now. I’m golf alpha mike echo.

Good find, mom! Top of the list for things that annoy me: when...

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:53:02 -0700

Good find, mom! Top of the list for things that annoy me: when clients play editor and take out my serial commas! It’s only a short while ago that you could omit the last comma in a list but it’s never wrong to include it! And sometimes, like here, it’s wrong to exclude it.

I’m researching surf slang. This is kind of amazing. From...

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 09:49:46 -0700

I’m researching surf slang. This is kind of amazing.

From the riptionary.

Cally’s new word game.

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 14:17:08 -0700

Cally’s new word game.

The Lexicon of Sustainability | Grist

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 05:22:36 -0700

The Lexicon of Sustainability | Grist

Exclamation Points and E-Mails - Cultural Studies - NYTimes.com

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 08:31:41 -0700

Exclamation Points and E-Mails - Cultural Studies - NYTimes.com:

Pish, whatevs. Use ‘em if you got ‘em!

Snarky

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 11:57:00 -0700

I’m getting so tired of this word. Here’s the definition from Free Dictionary:

snark·y

adj. snark·i·er, snark·i·est Slang

1. Rudely sarcastic or disrespectful; snide.

2. Irritable or short-tempered; irascible.

People keep calling vegansaurus snarky and imply that’s something they like but it seems like a bad word. I’m kind of like, only snarky people use the word snarky. But it’s not so much the definition as the connotation; it’s totally like a tween computer geek word. I’m not a tween computer geek.

Haaa. That was kind of snarky, I believe. But maybe it’s like when you call someone defensive and then 90% of anything they say sounds defensive. It’s not their fault.

Fun with Gender and Toy Ads!

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 04:41:00 -0700

Fun with Gender and Toy Ads!

Inspired by my blog name! destroyyouco: I talk, we talk, they...

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 17:37:20 -0800

Inspired by my blog name!

destroyyouco:

I talk, we talk, they talk, all at once.
“Where are you from? “Everywhere”
Noise was their language.