Language Log

Today's xkcd — "Linguistics Gossip":

The mouseover title: "The E's wedding invitation definitely used the word LOVE more times than was strictly necessary."

From Phillip Remaker:

Loved your deep dive on finding the provenance of the "conspiracy theory" image.

A recent linguistic message from Dinosaur Comics:

Today SMBC:

Today's SMBC:

Today's xkcd:

Mouseover title: "If an anatomical structure is named for a person, it means they were the only person to have it. Pierre Paul Broca had a special area of his brain that created powerful magnetic fields, enabling him to do 19th century fMRI research."

"Baby Blues" by Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott for January 16, 2023:

(source)

Brian McFadden's recent comic on "Social Media Substitutes" starts with this panel:

Following up on "Words: Too many? Too few?", T-Rex is discussing lexical issues again:

Mousover title: "as the French say – or will soon say if they know what's good for them – c'est TRES yally-teep."

Today's xkcd:

Mouseover title: "WARNING: PEOPLE NAMED EVE ARE PROHIBITED FROM INSTALLING THIS APP!"

In Dinosaur Comics for 10/17/2022, T-Rex seems to encounter a lexicographical problem:

Mouseover title: "i'll be communicating entirely through glances and MAYBE raised eyebrows from now on"

Archive description: "words were a mistake, an error, a blunder, a blooper, a fault, a folly, a gaffe, an oversight, a misjudgment, a slip-up, a mix-up, a trip-up, a series of errata,"

The term "eye dialect" has come to cover a range of non-standard spellings. At one end, we have a non-standard representation of a totally standard pronunciation, like "wuz" for "was" — and that's how the phrase's inventor, George Philip Krapp, meant "eye dialect" to be used:

The impression of popular speech is easily produced by a sprinkling of such forms as ain't, for isn't, done for did, them for those, and similar grammatical improprieties. This impression is often assisted by what may be termed "eye dialect," in which the convention violated is one of the eye, not the ear. Thus a dialect writer often spells a word like front as frunt, or face as fase, or picture as pictsher, not because he intends to indicate here a genuine difference of pronunciation, but the spelling is merely a friendly nudge to the reader, a knowing look which establishes a sympathetic sense of superiority between the author and reader as contrasted with the humble speaker of dialect.

It's natural to extend the phrase to cover representations of contextual reductions that are also entirely standard, like "ta" for "to" in a phrase like "went ta town", representing the pronunciation [tə]. American, at least, would always say it that way — it would be weird to say [wɛnt tu tɐʊn], unless some special context motivated that hyperarticulation.

And there's a further common extension, to things like "oi" or "ah" for "I" — regional, ethic, or class pronunciations.

Today's SMBC: