today's todo list

Develop a new non-verbal system of communication independent of all known linguistic models. Estimate the impact this form of communication would have had on the oral tradition in literature if it had developed instead of speech.

keith mountford in lingua pranca (1978).

how to get your girlfriend to be on board with you going to a strip club in 1 easy step

1. refer to the stripper as an ecdysiast, just as the ancient greeks might have. thus:

YOUR GIRLFRIEND: where have you been all night smelling like musk and dressed in those umbro® shorts?

YOU: seeing a professional ecdysiast.

YOUR GIRLFRIEND: i see, now let me do my best to relieve your epididymal hypertension.

previously.

yo looks like a freak

here is some interesting news about kids in baltimore [deflator alert: it has nothing to do with the wire or omar little]. it concerns a grass-roots trend of adopting yo as a gender neutral pronoun.

[The] Street term ‘Yo’ is being used by kids as a gender-neutral replacement for ‘he’ and ‘she’, according to researchers.

Language experts in the US say since at least 2004 students have been saying “yo” as a substitute for gender specific pronouns and the trend is growing. The study, published in this week’s New Scientist, found middle-school and high-school students in Baltimore, Maryland, used the word in sentences such as, “Yo put his foot up” and “Yo looks like a freak”.

Dennis Baron, a professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has written extensively about the failure of invented words that have not been picked up as pronoun substitutes. He described the emergence of “yo” as significant because it has not been planted and was a grass-roots phenomenon.
He said: “Most of the gender-neutral pronouns are artificial coinages that are then marketed - unsuccessfully - to users”.

i have not been this jazzed up from the linguistic inventions of children since the genesis of nicaraguan sign language. but then i read the following line WHICH TOTALLY BLEW MY BUZZ:

feminist scholar Brenda Wrigley said “yo” sounds “crass and disrespectful. It is something a younger person would shout down the street as a greeting, but not something I’d like to see used in writing.”

as far as i am concerned: this world needs more innovative baltimorean teenagers and fewer feminist scholar brenda wrigleys.

[source]

yo mama jokes for linguists

• English is essentially German spoken in the mouth rather than the throat.
• Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are actually the same language. It’s just that the Norwegians can’t spell it, and the Danes can’t pronounce it.
• Spanish is what happened when Moors tried to learn Latin and said “screw it.”
• Tagalog is essentially Visayan spoken by Kapampangans.
• Franche est essentialement englaishe ouithe les endinges funnies et lottes de vowelles et les adjectifs en alle les places ronges.
• Czech is essentially Russian with beer instead of vodka.
• Korean is essentially being caught in a syllable-diagramming exercise gone horribly, horribly wrong.
• Esperanto is essentially Indo-European pidgin.
• Klingon is essentially Orkish with fewer vowels and more spitting.

oh no you didn’t! how incendiary, perhaps this post needs a disclaimer.

from the essentialist explanations website edited by john cowen. which entry is the biggest diss to a language that you are fond of?

to all aspiring porn bloggers:

• “Lusty” means “brimming with vigor and good health” or “enthusiastic.” Don’t confuse it with “lustful,” which means “filled with sexual desire.”
• “Sensual” usually relates to physical desires and experiences, and often means “sexy.” “Sensuous” is more often used for esthetic pleasures, like “sensuous music.”
• Crevices are by definition tiny. A huge crack in a glacier is given the French spelling: crevasse.

overheard at au bon pan

“…i’m not familiar with that argument, i’m gonna have to google scholar that.”

the verbification of google scholar has begun!

"-ing" nouns that are not gerunds

• awning
• batting
• evening
• farthing
• gloaming
• lightning
• spring
• youngling

i compiled this list myself so that means that there are probably a bunch more words. EVENSTILL it seems that a word that fits these parameters is relatively rare.

UPDATE (6/17/2009) words from the comments:

• words ending in the dimminutive -ling like: sapling, gosling, duckling, elfling, and changeling
• consonant sound + ing words like: king, sting, ring, sling, string, wing, bling, and ming
• -thing words like: something, anything and everything
• places: nanking and beijing
• and or course: ding-a-ling.

great work, hive mind. thank you!

he who smelt it...

i was perusing my favourite dictionary while doing 300 crunches to make my abs look awesome, and came across this gemma°:

randle (răn’dəl) - n. a nonsensical poem recited by irish schoolboys as an apology for farting at a friend.

i immediately consulted the OED to find out more… but nothing. nothing more on the internet either—just amateur dictionaries that have the same definition word for word.

RATS! i want to know if the nonsense poem has specific words or any uttering will do. is one allowed to rip one in the vacinity of one’s good pal and then recite jabberwocky and everything will be congenial again? also, why would this randle placate the poor feller who has just been farted upon? it would have to be a pretty awesome poem to keep me from wailing on my assailant—something by the likes of marvell or donne (before he sold out and started getting hot and heavy with all the god stuff).

how to make your leftovers more appealing in 1 easy step

1. refer to whatever leftover dish that you are about to eat as réchauffé, just as the french do. thus:

A PERSON: what are you having for dinner tonight?

YOU: réchauffé and evian® water

THE SAME PERSON, PREVIOUSLY MENTIONED: and dessert shall be you and i and a bowl of whipping cream.