GrammarGasm

In this sentence, would you put quotation marks around ABC?

XYZ is sometimes referred to as ABC.

If there isn't yet, I think there should be a name for words that sound to one like they should mean the exact opposite of whatever they mean. The example that immediately comes to mind is "natty," as applied to couture -- perhaps by comparison to similar-sounding words (e.g. nasty, ratty, etc) it has always sounded to me like it should mean shabby and unkempt, not "smart and fashionable" (incedentally, natty likely comes from the same root as the word "neat," as well as "net" in the sense of "remaining after decuctions").

What words do you think poorly fit their definition?

No idea how I stumbled across this post, but I am so glad I did.

Thought you all might enjoy this. The last one sort of sums up my feelings about this sort of lists, but in a way that's cute and self-effacing, in contrast to my own crumudgeonly and unpleasant.

Dunno if this is quite up your alley, but I'm sure some of you will get a giggle out of it!

http://slagartist.livejournal.com/4980.html

Current Music: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Too Real | Powered by Last.fm

Oh this makes me so very happy! Save the Words!

Current Location: Squeeland!
Current Mood: squee!
Current Music: Squee!

Everyone at work uses the phrase "as per" and it kind of drives me crazy because I've always thought it's supposed to be just "per". A little bit of googling has brought be no help whatsoever, since most of the sites I saw weren't arguing the grammatical correctness of the phrase, but rather how stuffy or archaic it sounds. Is "as per" acceptable?

(in a slightly related issue, I've looked at the terms "per" and "as per" so much in the last 10 minutes that they've lost all meaning for me) :)

thanks!

Current Music: Up and Down - mixed by Kick Bong

Brilliant.

This is something I've been musing about lately, and I think it's enough about language to fit well here. For lack of a better term, I'll call it an exercise in theoretical xenolinguistics. I've considered various implications, but I'm going to write about just one here, mostly because I've given it the most thought and developed it the most in my mind.

In English, and in other human languages I'm familiar with, there is a hierarchical and even moral shading to vertical positioning coded right into idiom and even the words of the language itself. Consider "high priest," "lowlife," "the rise and fall of the Roman Empire," and so on. Higher is better, lower is worse. It's so much a part of our thinking that the preference seems inherent in the very concepts.

But let's do a couple of thought experiments:

First, let's imagine beings that evolved to sentience on a particularly hostile little world. The surface is incredibly dangerous; periodic storms of dangerous stellar radiation cause illness and genetic damage, and at their most severe immediate death. If that wasn't bad enough, there are also radiation-tolerant predatory creatures on the surface, ready to chomp on our poor little sentient aliens. So these guys live an almost entirely subterranean existence. Layers of bedrock protect from irradiation and from raids by the surface beasts. Obviously, the deeper the burrow, the more protected from both threats, and as such, one's status in society is reflected in how deep a burrow one lives in.

In this case, it seems quite likely that their language would reflect this flip -- the king of these people would be, essentially, the lowest of the low.

In that case, it's a simple inversion of our own paridigm. Let's consider another situation. Let's imagine a sentient being that lives outside of any significant gravity well -- or if the idea of a deep space critter stretches your ability to willing suspension of disbelief, and honestly it does my own, you can replace that with a being that is neutrally buoyant in its medium. Such a creature would not even have a concept of up and down. What, then, would be the central positional hierarchy of its language? One possibility I've imagined is inwards/outwards, or put alternately central/peripheral or near/far. I'm much less certain on this one, and I'd love to hear other ideas my fellow grammargasmics might have.

What other assumptions can you think of that are coded into our language that might look different for different sorts of beings?

I'm letting this community go. Does anybody want it? Reply here. If nobody wants it, I'll likely delete it, because I don't know how else to get it off my list.

Not like I'm a total dork or anything.

I am very perturbed by a question I have never thought I would have a problem. I bought some books recently. When relating this purchase to a friend, should I say "These books were bought" or "These books are bought"? I think the latter is correct for I am still alive. Is my reasoning correct?

There's about 40 or so words and a similar amount of names that I have fallen in love with in every sense of the word (no pun intended :-P)

( If this sounds like you as well, please look behind the cut :-) )

Thanks,
Dave

Op-Ed columnists are generally not where one goes looking for grammar glee, but Maureen Dowd of the NY Times has written a delightful piece about the language of politics in the election.

This is a new punctuation approach to me that I found amusing:

"Cobill was not injured in the initial collision;, two passengers, children ages 8 and 10 years, were transported to Terrebonne General by Acadian Ambulance with minor injuries."

First, I should ask if the first sentence I'm referring to is even grammatically correct in the first place. Is "She doesn't support me in hardly anything" grammatically correct? And if it is, does it mean the same thing as "She hardly supports me in anything"? I'm thinking that it is correct and they do mean the same thing, but something about the first sentence sounds "twangy" (like, Southern twang--for lack of a more descriptive word--no offense to Southern US parlance) and it almost seems like a double-negative...but I'm not sure.

Help?

Current Mood: confused

I have found a delicious article about semi-colon snubbers and gender:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/08/10/sex_and_the_semicolon/

To quote the article "Hemingway and Chandler and Stephen King 'wouldn't be seen dead in a ditch with a semi-colon (though Truman Capote might). Real men, goes the unwritten rule of American punctuation, don't use semi-colons.'" Such beautiful gibberish!

PHOENIX—A man from Somerville, Mass., and his friend who went around the country this year removing typographical errors from public signs have been banned from national parks after vandalizing a historic marker at the Grand Canyon.
( No White-Out allowed! )

Current Mood: amused

This isn't so much about grammar as it is about context. I'm curious about the use of "I'm sorry" when expressing condolences and sympathy. Recently, a dear friend lost her mother to a prescription drug overdose, and in her grief and anger she didn't want to hear anyone say they were sorry for her loss. She said, "There's nothing you can do, you can't bring her back, you didn't kill her, so why tell me you're sorry?"
This morning, another friend emailed me and told me she would be putting her dog to sleep and she was devastated. I was trying to think of another way to say "I'm so sorry" (because why should I be apologizing?) but wound up writing that exactly. I wrote "you have my deepest sympathy" as well, but it all just seemed so automatic.
This got me to thinking: Why do we say we're sorry when something bad happens to someone else? When did this start? Has it just become so mainstream that we don't even think about it?

To note: Vampire Weekend

A friend of mine sent me this song ages and ages ago, and I giggled appropriately, but left it at that. I just heard the song on the radio, though, so apparently it's getting popular.

Anyway, thought it belonged here, if no one's mentioned it already.

Enjoy!( lyrics and youtube song (not really a video) under the cut )

Okay, so it's not really about oxford commas, but there's irony to be enjoyed in the title at least...

Saw this in today's Wall Street Journal and it made me snerk:

"In the case, Leegin Creative Leather Products Inc., a maker of womens' purses and accessories, was sued by Kay's Kloset, a Dallas retailer, after Leegin cut off shipments to Kay's. Kay's had been discounting Leegin's wears."

From hitchhiker, timing is everything.