Archives for April 2004

Anybody seriously interested in typography probably already knows about Typophile, but I just discovered it (via MetaFilter) and wanted to pass it along. It’s beautifully designed, has useful book reviews and articles, and ranges far beyond typographical technique (see the discussion thread on the pros and cons of a proposed “Hate the Hate” organization). And while we’re on the subject, let me recommend Anatomy of a Typeface by Alexander Lawson, a very well written book that goes back to the early days of printing. In the words of the Typophile reviewer:

This book does not take into account the digital type revolution of the past twelve years, but it’s an excellent critical review of all the important types still in use. Some of these types may have had their genesis several hundred years ago, but Lawson also takes into account their twentieth-century incarnations. Especially valuable are the examples of old typography, which never fail to fascinate and enchant. Not only a worthy reference, but an entertaining read.

Via the newly active riley dog (now relocated to the Yukon), I got to a clever three-part poem, “A Lesson” by Jeanne Marie Beaumont, whose first part, “Vocabulary,” contains the lines:

Sty and style are not related;
neither are braid and bread…
But some words like river and rival
surprisingly are, and more obviously,
void and avoid.

The bad news is that river and rival aren’t actually related, since the Latin word ripa ‘(river) bank,’ the root of river, is of unknown etymology; the good news is that rival has a very interesting etymology which is the real focus here: it’s from Latin rivalis ‘one using the same stream as another, a rival,’ from rivus ‘stream.’ Isn’t that unexpected and delightful?

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Geoff Nunberg has an interesting take on why, despite the proliferation of books explaining to the public at large how language works (I was happy to see that he name-checks my man Robert A. Hall), people persist in believing all manner of nonsense, “from their conviction that African American Vernacular English is slovenly and without rules to their certainty that Elizabethan English persists in Appalachian hollows.” He uses Amazon.com’s “customers who bought this book also bought” feature to suggest that people who buy books by real linguists buy other books by real linguists, while those who buy books on “proper usage” and “better English” stick to that sort of book and thus are not exposed to more enlightening material. Sad if true, and I have to admit it sounds plausible.

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In a recent comment, John Hardy (of Laputan Logic) pointed me towards an amusing and amazing essay, “Hou tu pranownse Inglish,” in which the indefatigable Mark Rosenfelder makes about as good a case as can be made for the current English spelling system (which “everybody agrees… is horrible”). He gives 56 ordered rules, which combine to produce a 59% rate of accuracy using his impressive-sounding Sound Change Applier—59%, that is, if you insist on perfect outcomes; if you allow “minor errors,” the accuracy rises to 85%. He suggests “a really useful and minimal spelling reform” based on his rules (“I met a traveller from an anteke land hu sed: Tue vast and trunkless legs of stone…”) and ends with a section of unyielding oddities, the last of which is a word that’s been discussed here:

While we’re at it, could we please fix the word ginkgo, which is not only difficult and irregular, but doesn’t reflect any proper Japanese word? The Japanese characters (銀杏) can be read two ways: as icho:, they refer to the tree; as ginnan, to the fruit. The second character can be read kyo: in other words, so someone misread the combination as ginkyo:, and someone else mangled this into ginkgo.

Another such word is geoduck, which is pronounced “gooey duck”; a less violently dissonant, but still unpredictable, spelling is distelfink, which according to Merriam-Webster’s is pronounced DISH-tlfink (it’s from Pennsylvania Dutch dischdelfink ‘goldfinch’), although the AHD gives the normalized DIST-lfink.

I urge everyone to investigate Mark’s labor of love, zompist.com, which features (among many other things) a great deal of material on languages and linguistics (check the right-hand column). The one I use most is probably Numbers from 1 to 10 in Over 4500 Languages, but it’s all educational, fun, or both.

The site FreeFullText.com “provides direct links to over 7000 scholarly periodicals which allow some or all of their online content to be viewed by ANYONE with Internet access for free.” Unfortunately, most of them only offer a sample issue, but a number of them, like the Journal of Islamic Studies, allow you to see abstracts of all articles, which gives you an idea of what’s going on in the field, and some, like Linguistic Discovery, put everything out there for all comers. (Via wood s lot [04.01.2004].)

Linguistic Discovery looks like an interesting journal, and I’m happy to have found it. From the Editorial Statement:

We are pleased to launch a new journal, Linguistic Discovery, which is dedicated to the description and analysis of primary linguistic data. The amazing linguistic diversity of our planet poses a great intellectual challenge to linguists as we attempt to define what aspects of language and language use are universal versus those which are particular to subsets of the world’s languages. Linguistic Discovery provides a platform for linguists to explore these issues and to inform others about linguistic phenomena that deepen our understanding of language, as well our appreciation for it. The journal will be published at least two times per year.

In the previous two decades, linguists have become increasingly aware that linguistic diversity is in rapid decline. While there is some disagreement over the specific role that the professional linguist should play in any community’s struggle to maintain or expand the use of its heritage language, all agree that linguists are uniquely suited to the task of accurately documenting and describing the world’s languages. To this end, Linguistic Discovery aims for all of its articles to contain original or hard-to-access data, including cross-linguistic studies whose novelty may not be in the individual pieces of data described, but in the data base.

While there are a number of specialized journals that cater to the study of a given language or language family, few journals publish for a broad readership on a range of different languages. We believe that exposure to diverse linguistic data is critical for theorizing. Despite widespread agreement with this claim, many journals remain relatively narrow in the sets of languages analyzed and the theoretical topics covered. For this reason, Linguistic Discovery has a particular bias toward lesser-studied languages and phenomena.

And other funny species names. (Via Chuck Welch at BlogJazz, who says “This really belongs over at languagehat.”)

About everything. Especially N*am Ch*msky. I humbly acknowledge the superior wisdom of Semantic Compositions’ prominent guest blogger, and will henceforth write only about matters appropriate to my simian self. Ook!