Language Log

Jason Kottke links to a "Grammar Challenge" devised by David Foster Wallace and posted by a student of Wallace's, Amy McDaniel. What's noteworthy is that Kottke reports getting 0/10. Kottke is a thoughtful, creative English prose stylist, and Wallace thought that these questions were basic ones that should be taught in any undergraduate class. Kottke seems to think the problem lies with him. I take a different view: this test is useless. Just imagine a chemistry quiz that accomplished working chemists could not pass. What would you make of such a quiz? I myself would question its author's competence at devising chemistry quizzes.

Grace Wu sent me a photograph taken at Taipei Storyland, shown at the right (click on the image for a larger version).

The characters running down the right side of the picture read as follows:

WO3 YAO4 SHUO1 GUO2YU3, BU4 SHUO1 FANG1YAN2
"I want to speak the national language, not the topolects."

In other words, "Let's speak Mandarin, not Taiwanese, Hakka, Cantonese, etc."

So Roy Ortega thinks that the Spanish-language media in the U.S. have an obligation to become "more proactive in encouraging [their] audience to seek full fluency in the English language". (Immediate side note: why do people seem to tend to write "the English language" instead of just "English" when making pronouncements like this?)

From the Times Online of August 23, under the head "Quangos blackball … oops, sorry … veto 'racist' everyday phrases", a story that begins:

It could be construed as a black day for the English language — but not if you work in the public sector.

Dozens of quangos and taxpayer-funded organisations have ordered a purge of common words and phrases so as not to cause offence.

Among the everyday sayings that have been quietly dropped in a bid to stamp out racism and sexism are “whiter than white”, “gentleman’s agreement”, “black mark” and “right-hand man”.

Details to follow, but first a word about quangos, for readers unfamiliar with the term.

(Hat tip to Danny Bloom.)