Language Log

Following on Barbara Partee's posting on vwllssnss, here's today's Zits:

Nice conceit about dispensing with vowels in speech (as well as vowel letters in writing).

This morning's Get Fuzzy featured a Bulgarian stereotype that seemed slightly, well, random:

Bucky Katt's assumption seems to be that the dress code at a Bulgarian nightclub would be ragged and strange, thus (at least partly) explaining Rob Wilco's pre-torn and pre-soiled shirt.

The latest xkcd:

(For more on non-literal literally, see here, here, and here.)

Yesterday's Zits:

Then there was the whole Facebook wall rape episode, and…

Today's Doonesbury explores the problem of over-ambitious translation:

Today's Non Sequitur:

Today's Sally Forth:

Stefano Bertolo points us to Rob Cottingham's latest Noise To Signal:

Today's Dilbert suggests a way for engineers to deal with product planners and marketing types, which many potential sources in technical fields will recognize as a tempting strategy for dealing with the press:

Yesterday's Dinosaur Comics explores the far reaches of verbal morphosyntax in English:

(As usual, click on the image for a larger version.)

The most recent PartiallyClips:

(Click on the image for a larger version.)

Today's Get Fuzzy illustrates the perils of morphological decomposition:

From the cartoon Ham and Wonder (by "lapsed linguist" Joe), an adventure in garden pathing, with a bit of explanation: