Language Log

Angus Grieve-Smith writes:

I was always taught that the most straightforward way to write American diphthongs is [aj] and [aw], and the "long" mid vowels as [e] and [o]. Recently I've been seeing [ɑɪ ɑʊ ɛɪ] and [ɔʊ] popping up.  This seems to reflect at least three different changes:

(1) A shift from using [j w ɰ] to represent glides, to representing diphthongs as a series of vowel sounds.
(2) A shift to greater detail in these representations.
(3) A shift in the standard from somewhere close to my dialect (Hudson Valley) to … someplace else.

I was a little surprised to encounter the neolexeme embiggen in a perfectly serious Economist report about Ascension Island:

If a future turn of events in Africa was seen as requiring the island's military role to be embiggened and its facilities rendered much more secure, it might be convenient if the islanders had no legal right to remain where they were.

On September 30, 2010, a journalistic genre passed away: the mock obituary marking the purported demise of a linguistic phenomenon. According to the coroner's report, the cause of death was rampant overuse.