Fact or Fiction: Dogs Can Talk Nothing in the last century has really changed that scientific opinion. (No one has ever questioned whether dogs communicate with each other, but calling it “talking” is something else.) So what are Maya and her cousins doing? It’s more appropriate to call it imitating than talking, says Gary Lucas, [...]

My maths professor went off on a tangent (no pun intended) about his first language today: Malayalam. I had assumed it would be Urdu or Punjabi -which came up and he acknowledged. He’s Indian and I figured he knew Hindi – which he does. Apparently, while it is the national language, different regions tend to [...]

Language Log has a post that made me smile for two completely separate reasons. They don’t link to the article (presumably because it was quoted from a printed newspaper, of all things) so I’ll quote a bit: Quotation marks (typically the single ones ‘ ’) that are used to mark the use of a word [...]

UCLA Phonetics Lab Archives. I like this, a lot. I had more to post, but I ran into some issues involving women, booze, studying and otherwise boring problems involving cash. I’m sick, been very drunk lately and have nearly managed to miss one of my finals already this week. I promise I’ll post a whole [...]

(Via Language Log (Via Tensor)) I’m incredibly hungover this morning, but never the less, I persevere.

Etymology is much more interesting already. Yeessssssss, indeedy. Kudos to Karl Hagen.

Instead of writing an essay, I started reading Gravity’s Rainbow last night. I’m about twenty or so pages into it and I’m impressed so far -more so than I initially thought I would be from what I’ve heard. Either that, or I’m just a sucker like that. The weekend was mostly a drunken blur, a [...]

see more pwn and owned pictures I almost myself on the sidewalk but I knew what to do! Disaster Averted!

The ‘nucular’ affectation: George Bush, on the other hand, can’t be exculpated for saying “nucular.” After all, it isn’t likely that that version was frequently heard at Andover, Yale, or the Kennebunkport dinner table. In his mouth, it’s what I’ve described as a “faux-bubba” pronunciation. (As I noted in the “Going Nucular” piece, this disaffectation* [...]

“[...] because of, you know, they had to be, you know… they changed it to people-friendly language.”“Don’t you mean politically correct?”“Huh?”“Politically correct.”“Uhm, no.” Seriously? Google doesn’t seem to confirm this phrase as common-use or as a replacement for politically correct. Then again, I work with people who regularly say utilize instead of use and verbiage [...]