Archive for the ‘Language’ Category

Illiberality.

Sunday, April 6th, 2008

I am always amazed to see how many people who are self-described liberals and "tolerant" people are members of the Facebook group "I judge you when you use poor grammar", or any other incarnation of thereof. Language is often described as the last human characteristic that is an acceptable ...

i’m in ur acquisiton phaze impoverishing ur stimulus.

Saturday, October 20th, 2007

I am that end of having a cold where you feel okay for the most part. The only remnant of it is the 80 cubic feet of mucus in your head that makes you feel like you're blowing your brain out when you blow your nose. Also, I ...

/sigh.

Monday, October 8th, 2007

A gem from today's issue of the Salt Lake Deseret Morning Tribune News: It is hard to find a better example of academic nonsense than the assertion by two linguists (Forum, Sept. 27) that the disappearance of archaic languages is "the most serious crisis facing humanity today." Not AIDS, pollution, global warming, ...

Tablua Rasa

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

For my Islamic Law class this past semester, I wrote a short essay about Muslim linguistic philosophy in light of modern linguistics. For some reason, I don't have the final draft, but I do have the first draft. I don't really want to go through and edit it, ...

Womyn

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

Good news everyone, I have something new to be annoyed by. First of all my faithful reader(s) should note that I am either a feminist or at least sympathetic to feminism, however something happened today that almost made me want to go home and brood while listening to one of the ...

I’m too tired to think of a title…

Thursday, March 15th, 2007

A couple of business matters. I would like to congratulate the following people for the following reasons: Emily for getting accepted to veterinary school, and Noah for getting engaged. I also want to promise that I will update more like I used to. I am over the ...

Shut up, Nebulon.

Tuesday, January 9th, 2007

I started Monday unable to find my class, only to learn that I had arrived two hours too early. Phonology was interesting today. The professor asked everybody's name, except me. He asked me what I go by. I don't know what to think of that. ...

I don’t know if I have anything to add.

Tuesday, August 15th, 2006

I've been a little busy preparing for school, and the like, so I haven't posted anything really substantial. Anyway, I was reading from Nicholas Ostler's Empires of the Word, and read this passage concluding a section discussing, among other things, the prominence of Arabic and the revival of Hebrew: The ...

Autobiography of a Nation.

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006

So, I was reading Empires of the Word by Nicholas Ostler, and I started thinking about Aramaic. Ostler states about the Aramaic Jesus of Nazareth spoke: Jesus of Nazareth spoke Aramaic, though not of the best, by the standards of his own people. His native Galilee was generally reckoned ...

There is No ‘T’ in Mountain.

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

Let me refer you to a conversation I once had with a girl (yes, I talk about this crap with girls): Me: The moun'ins are nice. Girl: It isn't 'moun'in,' it's mountain. Me: It doesn't matter. Girl: There is a 't' there. Pronounce it. Me: No, there isn't a 't' there. Nary a week passes ...