Language Log

In this morning's post, I noted an early example of metaphorical literally in William Robertson's History of America (Volume I), 1777:

The Andes may literally be said to hide their heads in the clouds; the storms often roll, and the thunder bursts below their summits, which, though exposed to the rays of the sun in the centre of the torrid zone, are covered with everlasting snows.

This struck me as a perfect example of the case noted by Henry Bradley in the 1903 edition of the OED, where literally is "used to indicate that some conventional metaphorical or hyperbolical phrase is to be taken in the strongest admissible sense". A quick Google Books search showed that Robertson was by no means alone: in the last half of the 18th century, the phrase "may literally be said" was a fairly reliable indicator of metaphor or hyperbole.

The opinion section of The Guardian is blessed with the name "Comment Is Free", and sometimes what they publish is worth every penny of that. Long-time Language Log readers will recall that we have often said here before that whenever someone says that the X people have no word for Y in their language you should put your hand on your wallet — to make sure it's still there. The people who witter on about who has a word for what hardly ever even know the languages they are talking about, and in the vast majority of cases (check out some of the cases on this list) their claim is false. At this page you can read an editorial about spelling reform saying that "phonetic languages like Italian and, apparently, Finnish not only have no problem with dyslexia, they don't even have a word for it." I find it almost unbelievable that people imagine they can continue to get away with printing flamingly obvious drivel about language in major newspapers. They always assume that since there are no linguistic scientists and no cross-linguistic dictionaries or encyclopedias, no one will check on them. The multiple genetically-linked effects of dyslexia don't go away if you alter the orthography. And to set the record straight: The Italian word for dyslexia is dislessia. Finnish has three words for it, two native and one borrowed: dysleksia is the borrowed one, and the others are lukivaikeus (literally "reading-difficulty"), lukihäiriö (literally "reading-writing-disturbance": lu is the first syllable of the stem meaning "read", ki is the first syllable of the stem meaning "write", and they have been collapsed to coin this word).

Claire Cain Miller, "Google Tweaks Algorithm to Push Down Low-Quality Sites", NYT 2/25/2011:

Google said Thursday that it had made a major change to its algorithm in an effort to improve the rankings of high-quality Web sites in its search results — and to reduce the visibility of low-quality sites. While the company did not say so explicitly, the change appears to be directed in part at so-called content farms like eHow and Answerbag, which generate articles based on popular search queries so they will rise to the top of the rankings and attract clicks.

The word protesters has for obvious reasons jumped into abnormally high-rotation on the news radio dial, and to my surprise, many of the members of the media (on NPR and the BBC) that I've heard use the word are pronouncing it protésters [pʰɹəˈtʰɛstɚz] rather than the way I would pronounce it, prótesters [ˈpʰɹoʊˌtʰɛstɚz]. (Please ignore the r-coloring I've indicated on the last vowel, which reflects my r-ful pronunciation; it's the difference in stress that I'm interested in.) I think I've pinpointed both the justification for pronouncing what I'll arbitrarily call "the media's way" and why I pronounce it my way; read on below the fold if you're interested, and let us know what you think in the comments.

In this week's online BBC News magazine, Alan Metcalf reprises his recent book OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word. I haven't read the book, but Prof. Metcalf is an established scholar as well as a successful popularist, and I have every reason to think that the book is well worth reading. Still, I have a little semantic problem with the article.

The article mostly discusses the history of OK, saying that its widespread circulation probably dates back to an unfunny joke in an 1839 article in the Boston Morning Post. Fair enough: he and the OED agree on this point. Then he goes on:

But what makes OK so useful that we incorporate it into so many conversations?

In the New York Times Week in Review this weekend, I have a piece looking at the clever linguistic strategies that Egyptian protesters used to tell President Hosni Mubarak that it was time to go. (There's also a nice slideshow accompanying the article.) Language Log readers will already know about the appearance of "Game Over" in the Cairo protests, as well as the use of Chinese to get the message across, but there were many other creative variations on that theme.

According to James C. McKinley Jr., "Rare Storm Hits Texas, Causing Chaos for Drivers", NYT 2/4/2011:

Paul McDonald, a forecaster with the service, said the mass of arctic air that had blanketed much of the country had caused three days of frigid weather in Texas as well, freezing the ground. Then overnight, two low-pressure systems moved into the state — one from New Mexico and one from the Gulf of Mexico — and collided with the cold air, producing snow and ice. Though Texas usually has balmy enough temperatures this time of year to melt ice and snow as it hits the roadways, this time the pavement iced over.

“If the air had not been so cold, we would have seen a little light draggle, but cause the air was so chilly it turned into snow,” he said. “We get about one event like this every 10 years.”

The American Dialect Society (meeting in Pittsburgh in conjunction with the Linguistic Society of America) has selected nominees in the various categories for Word of the Year. You can check out the full list here.

The final votes in all categories will take place tonight (Friday) at 5:30 pm in Sterlings 1, 2, 3 at the Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown Hotel. Attendees of the cabal LSA conference (and interested members of the public who happen to be in Pittsburgh) are welcome to attend and participate. Those who are unable to attend can follow the action via Twitter at @americandialect (using the #woty10 hashtag).

[Late update: And the winner is… app — a word not on the original list of candidates, but instead nominated from the floor, much like tweet last year.]

A Carrier friend recently told me, somewhat to my surprise, that his father, who passed away in 1995 at the age of 95 and never went to school, had liked opera. He called it "shun be lhehudulh" ᙖᐣ ᗫ ᘱᐳᑐᒡ [ʃʌn be ɬehʌdʌɬ] = "they fight each other with songs". I'm not sure how much Italian he understood, but he seems to have understood opera pretty well.

I learned a new word today from David Millward and Steven Swinford, "BAA 'refused offers of help clearing snow'", The Telegraph 12/21/2010:

Another senior airline executive added:"Airlines were getting frustrated at stands not being cleared. They said let's do it, we will do it ourselves and BAA said no, they would not let airlines do their job for them. They were being jobsworths about it."

Everyone who writes a lot and is cursed with at least a smattering of knowledge about Latin must have had the experience of feeling that they wanted to imply continuation of a list of alternatives with a short expression like etc. but meaning "or other things". I had the experience in something I was writing just this morning. What would the right expression be?

From Ryan North yesterday:

with an explanation, and a plug for LLog:

WHAT ARE THE HAPS MY FRIENDS

November 17th, 2010: This comic and all the eggcorns in it come from the wonderful Language Log and the eggcorn database.

Read the rest of this entry »

Reader RP sent along a link to a recent story in the Washington Post (Marjorie Censer, "CACI says it's buying Fairfax tech firm as it announces record earnings", 11/1/2010):

Paul M. Cofoni, CACI's president and chief executive, praised the company's strong quarter as well as its newest acquisitions. In contrast with other defense chief executives who in earnings announcements last week warned of tightening budgets, he was bullish on CACI's future performance.

"The opportunity pipeline is as robust as it's ever been," Cofoni said. "It's almost semi-infinite."