Entries from Michael Erard - Archives tagged with 'Language'
Word Made Flesh, Design Observer, January 13, 2007
I spent years learning to diagram sentences from Catholic nuns, a biographical fact I share with Kitty Burns Florey, who explains the history of sentence diagramming as well as its appeal in her new book, Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The...
The G Word, Design Observer, Oct. 29, 2006
Ten years from now, jokey newspaper articles about corporate follies will mention why the Chevy Nova didn't sell in Latin America, the hilarity that ensued when company names (e.g., Pen Island) became URLs, and how Google waded into the mighty...
Fragments of English, Texas Observer, June 30, 2006
Part of the real history of English and Spanish in Texas... There is a concoction of self-satisfied myth and ignorance about English that is served up at Sunday services, on the floor of the Texas Legislature, in newspaper editorials, and...
Analyzing Eggcorns and Snowclones, & Challenging Strunk & White, New York Times, June 20, 2006
Serious linguistic scholars don't usually write about talking dogs and street signs -- not for publication, anyway. But that is what they do on Language Log, a funny, wide-ranging blog that provides up-to-the-minute linguistic commentary written for a wider...
The Mandarin Offensive, Wired, April 2006
Inside Beijing's global campaign to make Chinese the number one language in the world. A light snow is falling outside the windows of Cyrus H. McCormick School in southwest Chicago, but the second graders in Room 203 are not distracted...
With Sound From Africa, Phonetic Alphabet Expands, New York Times, Dec. 13, 2005
For the first time in 12 years, the International Phonetic Association is amending its official alphabet. A sound called the labiodental flap will be granted its own letter, one that looks something like a v with a hook. The sound,...
Tongue Tied, New Republic, Oct. 24, 2005
Last fall, the College Board asked 14,000 high schools in the United States how many of them planned to offer Advanced Placement (AP) courses in Chinese in the fall of 2006, in preparation for the first Chinese language AP exam...
A Language is Born, New Scientist, October 22, 2005
WHEN Carol Padden first visited Al-Sayyid, a small Bedouin village in the Negev desert in Israel, her expectations were not high. Padden, a linguist at the University of California, San Diego, first went there in 2000 to study a newly...
How Linguists and Missionaries Share a Bible of 6,912 Languages, New York Times, July 19, 2005
Among the facts in the new edition of Ethnologue, a sprawling compendium of the world's languages, are that 119 of them are sign languages for the deaf and that 497 are nearly extinct. Only one artificial language has native...
Gift of the Gab, New Scientist, January 8, 2005
THE news arrived as an unexpected email. "Sir," it began. "First, let me apologise for bothering you, but I saw an article you wrote and had to write." The writer, N, went on to describe how his grandfather, a Sicilian...
Frame Wars, Texas Observer, November 5, 2004
To read my previous Texas Observer piece about George Lakoff, go here. Whoever wins on November 2, the fight over reality and political language will continue The conventional view of politics says that people are swayed by words, images, or...
A Lesson in Linguistics from the Mouths of Babes, New York Times, Oct. 12, 2004
'Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin,'' the three little pigs taunted the big bad wolf. When Anna Van Valin was 4 years old, she pronounced the phrase ''not by the chair of my hinny hin hin'' and...
Just Like, Er, Words, Not, Um, Throwaways, New York Times, January 3, 2004
If you were hearing this instead of reading it, you might notice a pause here and there tucked between the phrases, filled with a familiar, soft hum or rumble -- an um or uh. Though a bane to teachers of...
Immigration by Shibboleth, Legal Affairs, Nov/Dec. 2003
THE YOUNG MAN CLAIMED HE WAS FLEEING THE TALIBAN. They were killing all the Hazara, a Shi'a Muslim minority, in his village in Afghanistan, he said. He and his brothers had spent their days hiding in the mountains, but the...
For the World's ABC's, He Makes 1's and 0's, New York Times, Sept. 25, 2003
MICHAEL EVERSON, a 40-year-old typographer who lives in Dublin, considers himself blessed because he has found his life's work: to be an alphabetician to all the peoples of the world. Mr. Everson's largest project to date -- a contribution to...
Language Matters, Legal Affairs, July/August 2002
In April 2001, a Californian named James Johnson began to suspect that the owners of an apartment he wanted to rent in the San Francisco Bay Area were ignoring his phone calls because he was African-American. Johnson hadn't met the...
Metaphor and Myth, Texas Observer, Dec. 21, 2001
Team Sanchez Ponders What It Means To Be Hispanic Given that language and politics are so linked, it’s remarkable that linguists and political professionals rarely mingle. So when George Lakoff, a Berkeley linguist, traveled to Austin for a day-long meeting...
W., a Usage Guide, Texas Observer, August 03, 2001
The Bush Dyslexicon by Mark Crispin Miller W. W. Norton 304 pages, $24.95. Each time we hear President George W. Bush open his mouth, we should hear the sound of rushing air, argues media critic Mark Crispin Miller in his...
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