Language Log

From "Got English English and "Scientific" English one meh?", mrbrown.com 9/18/2013:

"This P6 science question is taken from a paper that is set by a local brand name primary school. The majority of the students who took this test gave the answer as (4). The science teacher insisted that the answer is (2). The reason given was that sentence D should be interpreted to mean that only light energy is given off when an electric current passes through it."

Katie J.M. Baker, "Ladies, What's Up With the 'I Feel Like' Verbal Tic?", Jezebel 8/23/2013

When I search my Gmail inbox for the phrase "I feel like," infinity results come up. "I feel like this particular story's very up your alley," a professional acquaintance wrote. "I feel like this might be the transitional stage to Federici's utopia," a woman in my book group joked. "I feel like I look too meek in my new profile pic," I worried to a friend. "I feel like I've done nothing of worth lately," another friend confided in me. "I feel like I'm being unhelpful." "I feel like it was important." "I feel like I have to reconcile my expectations."

We are feeling so many feelings, and we are very aware that we are feeling these feelings. But most young women I know are self-conscious about how often they qualify their emotions with "I feel like." If it's how we feel, do we need to drop an "I feel like" as a prelude to our feelings?

Here's what I don't like about "I feel like," a phrase I use constantly:

* It sounds a little indulgent, verging on narcissistic; when I say "I feel like" I feel like (ha) a touchy-feely liberal girl who learned to talk about her feelings in school.
* It evokes Carrie Bradshaw's pseudo-pensive "I couldn't help but wonder…"
* "I feel like" seems sheepish. I don't want to apologize for my feelings!

Yesterday, I posted on Speakout/Truthout about Rachel Jeantel's African American Vernacular English use in the Zimmerman trial/verdict: "Race, Credibility, Communication and Evidence in the Zimmerman Trial, and Beyond", 7/30/2013.

Readers of my Language Log post of July 10 — written before the verdict was announced — may recall that I felt that despite its vernacular character, Jeantel's testimony would be understood by the jury, but that they might not relate to her. Turns out I was both right and wrong. They didn't relate to her, didn't even find her credible, but they (at least Juror B37) also found her difficult to understand.

I was surprised that someone of Victor Mair's broad and deep erudition was unfamiliar with mozzie ("Magic grass of queerness", 7/26/2013). So for other Americans who have not been following the adventures of our Commonwealth cousins in developing the nickname-like vocabulary items known technically as hypocoristics, here's an attempt by the Australian branch of McDonald's to join the club:

[Below is a guest post by John Rickford.]

The defense plans to rest in the Florida trial of George Zimmerman today, and arguments are raging about whether he will be found guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin or not.

In the case of Rachel Jeantel, however, the 19-year old prosecution witness whose testimony on June 26 and 27 went on longer (5 to 6 hours) and generated more commentary in the media than any other witness, the GUILTY verdict is already in.

Some time ago, R.I. sent in this quotation from Golf World, 6/3/2013:

Because Irwin is the oldest U.S. Open champion—45 when he defeated Mike Donald in a playoff at Medinah CC in 1990—and won his last PGA Tour event, the 1994 MCI Heritage, when he was 48, there seemed little doubt his skill set wouldn't make him a formidable senior-tour member if he committed to the 50-and-over circuit.

You probably think that this is going to be about misnegation, and the tendency for negative concord to sneak back into standard English after having been chased out a half a millennium ago. That's what I thought too, but along the way to YAMP (Yet Another Misnegation Post) I was waylaid by a curious observation.

At the conclusion of "Mystery characters and variant characters", I promised that I would introduce Language Log readers to some truly weird characters. Herewith, I fulfill that pledge by presenting the following five photographs forwarded to me by Don Clarke. They were taken by a friend of his in Shēnkēng 深坑 ("Deep Pit"), Taiwan.

I'm in Ann Arbor for the 2013 LSA Institute, where I'm teaching a course on Corpus-Based Linguistic Research, and this evening the Institute organizers showed "If These Knishes Could Talk: A Film About the New York Accent". It was quite a lot of fun, and I certainly recommend it to all LL readers — though unfortunately it has not previously been shown outside of the NYC area, and the only way to buy a DVD is apparently to contact the filmmaker Heather Quinlan directly.

R.L.G., "A language with too many armies and navies?", The Economist 6/21/2013. This post gives a laudably concrete discussion of the differences among contemporary regional varieties of Arabic, with examples taken from the r/Arabs Dialect Project. It also quotes from a 1998 paper by my colleague Mohamed Maamouri, "Language Education and Human Development: Arabic diglossia and its impact on the quality of education in the Arab region" (Discussion paper prepared for The World Bank Mediterranean Development Forum, Marrakech, 3-6 September 1998).

Below is a query from Garrett Wollman, which I'm putting up as a guest post for LL readers to answer. For some background on the (an)arthrous terminology, see e.g.

"Syntax under pressure", 8/28/2007
"(An)arthrous abbreviations", 9/17/2007
"Language Log is strong", 9/16/2007
"Language Log only pretty strong", 9/30/2007
"Anarthrous irony", 3/27/2010
"'The' culture war", 12/16/2010
"BofA goes anarthrous in the Bay Area", 4/27/2011

Recently on alt.usage.english, contributor "Navi" asked:

Which is correct:

1-I saw THE "3:10 to Yuma" with Glenn Ford, not the remake with Christian Bale.
2-I saw "3:10 to Yuma" with Glenn Ford, not the remake with Christian Bale.

From Bert Vaux, following up on "U.K. vs. U.S. usage in Lee Child", 6/13/2013:

I just finished "The Affair" (quite good) and only noticed one more feature that I think may be a clear Britishism, "in the event" in the particular sense and construction here:

…I figured if the reduced payload let the Humvee hit sixty-five miles an hour I would be in Carter Crossing again at three minutes past ten.
[new chapter]
In the event the big GM diesel gave me a little better than sixty-five miles an hour, and two minutes short of ten o'clock I pulled up and hid the truck in the last of the trees…

From Bert Vaux:

I was just preparing a facebook post on the use of "luck out" when I came across your nice entry on the very same passage on the Language Log! ["Lucking out", 10/8/2011; "More lucking out", 10/11/2011]

Anyway, a propos of your (in my opinion correct) observation that Lee Child generally does American English quite well, I thought you might appreciate the following examples (also from The Affair) where I think he slips up:

"hosepipe" for "hose" (p. 230 in my edition)

"not by a long chalk" for "not by a long shot" (238)

"drinks well" with the infamous British regular-plural-inside-compound (245)

[I'm not sure what we call this in American English; I know that some parts of the country call cheap/generic drinks in a bar "well drinks", from which I'd infer that the thing in question is called a well, but I don't actually know.]

These come with the caveat that I haven't actually researched their American vs. British distribution; I'm just going by my personal exposure to the two varieties.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably already seen Business Insider's "22 Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Totally Differently From Each Other." (Or, as it was originally titled, "22 Maps That Show the Deepest Linguistic Conflicts in America.") The piece has truly gone viral, garnering more than 21 million views, according to Business Insider. But there's been some confusion about the origins of the dialect survey data.