January 2012
WatchAugust, I think.
1 tag
“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be...”
– Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.
Look At All These Links
Links that have been sitting in my drafts folder for varying lengths of time, but don’t warrant posts of their own.
Daniel Ellsberg on the effects of getting access to top secret information:
Over a longer period of time — not too long, but a matter of two or three years — you’ll eventually become aware of the limitations of this information. (…) In the meantime it will have...
ɧ
While I’m on the topic of language, let my introduce you to my favorite unclassifiable consonant, ɧ. Yes, I have a favorite unclassifiable consonant.
Generally, I’m pretty happy to have been born where I was born. It’s a very comfortable existence. But as a language nerd, I find myself wishing I was born into a more exotic language. Perhaps one with funky morphosyntactic...
Language is irrational. Gloriously so.
This is what comes up if you google “literally”. Note that the second sense, universally loathed by language purists, has started creeping into dictionaries.
At this point, literally is a dead horse that has been beaten one too many times. The purists have pointed out the illogic and descriptive linguists have pointed out that it’s part of the natural evolution of language and...
