Language Log

Paul Devlin has a fascinating series of articles at Slate on transcription errors in the recently-published Anthology of Rap.  Well, the first one starts out as a review of the book, but after the first paragraph or so, it's all about the Mondegreens: "Fact-Check the Rhyme (The Anthology of Rap is rife with transcription errors. Why is it so hard to get rap lyrics right?)", 11/4/2010; "It Was Written (Why are there so many errors in The Anthology of Rap? The editors respond)", 11/10/2010; "Stakes Is High (Members of the Anthology of Rap's advisory board speak out about the book's errors. Plus: Grandmaster Caz lists the mistakes in his lyrics.)", 10/19/2010.

Microsoft Word has really done it to me this time. I need some expert help, Language Log readers. I have a perfectly ordinary file (a simple letter template showing my home address), created in Word on an American Macintosh Powerbook using an American-purchased copy of Word, and when I open it as a copy on my UK-purchased MacBook Pro (though not when I open it as the original) almost everything works except that the file is deranged, and thinks it is supposed to be in French.

Editing the file provokes enforcement of French spacing conventions (colons and semicolons are preceded by an extra inserted space that I do not type); the double quotation symbols (‘‘like this’’) appear as those funny French marks that look a bit like pairs of less-thans and greater-thans (sort of <<like this>>); and, weirdest of all, the spelling and checking of "grammaire et style" turn into French. Word works through the file checking every significant English word and rejecting it for insufficient francophonicity (with no suggestions for respelling), underlining them all in red, though most French words are accepted. The grammar check not only assumes that French is being checked but also reports its results and queries in French. Saving the file preserves the pseudo-Frenchness.

We've had Gnome Chomsky ("Just say gnome", here), and the puns continue with Gnomeland Security, available in several forms (posters, t-shirts, magnets) from several sources (Northern Sun is where I first saw it). Here's the magnet from Northern Sun:

Other sites offer actual advice about gnomeland security: schemes for protecting your garden gnomes from theft.

And then there's something about body scanners:

David Cameron, the UK prime minister, spent the day before yesterday in Zurich with two high-power celebs, Prince William and the soccer star David Beckham, lobbying to get the World Cup soccer tournament hosted in Britain in 2018. Said Cameron: "We have got the stadia, we have got the facilities…", and I guess I was thinking, "You can take the boy out of Eton but you can't take the Eton out of the boy." I wondered how his Latinism would go down with the officials of the famously corrupt International Federation of Association Football (FIFA).

Spot the horrible effect introduced here by an over-picky Wall Street Journal subeditor:

Quite often, these games don't even turn out to be good: Fewer than half of them have been decided by 10 points or fewer.

That "10 points or fewer" phrase on the end is a desperate and quite ridiculous effort at obeying the prescriptive rule that you should use fewer for all things that can be counted, and less only for mass quantities.

To mark 20 years of the Theoretical Linguistics program at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, our friends there celebrated with remarkable panache:

Today's Dilbert (12/01/10):

Tom Jackman, "Dropped 'at' in Va. law yields acquittal in school bus case", WaPo 11/30/2010:

Virginia law on passing a stopped school bus has been clear for 40 years. Here – read it yourself:

"A person is guilty of reckless driving who fails to stop, when approaching from any direction, any school bus which is stopped on any highway, private road or school driveway for the purpose of taking on or discharging children."

Yes, drivers must stop a school bus which is, er, stopped.

Wait. Is something missing there?

Indeed. The preposition "at" was deleted in 1970 when the law was amended, the statute's history shows. And a man who zipped past a school bus, while it was picking up children with its lights flashing and stop sign extended, was found not guilty recently by a Fairfax County Circuit Court judge.

"He can only be guilty if he failed to stop any school bus," Judge Marcus D. Williams said at the end of the brief trial of John G. Mendez, 45, of Woodbridge. "And there's no evidence he did."

Today's Sore Thumbs starts with this panel:

John Muccigrosso writes:

What with all the foofaraw over Austen's editing, I thought you might enjoy this screen shot of the YouTube version of Disney's 1943 "Victory through Airpower".

From Ben Zimmer, who got it from Mike Klaas, who found it on the Wonder-Tonic site ("Written, Graphical, and Interactive Sundries by Mike Lacher") of 3/31/10, here:

GN: We asked Professor Rachel Brownstein of the CUNY Graduate Center to comment on some of the points Kathryn Sutherland raises ("'Austen's points: Kathryn Sutherland responds") and the larger questions they implicate. Professor Brownstein is the author of the forthcoming Why Jane Austen? (Columbia University Press).

I'm glad Professor Sutherland has had a chance to expand her views on the Austen manuscripts and to clarify her remarks, which in the context of a brief interview or press release came off as more tendentious and provocative than she apparently intended them to be. The big tsimmis that ensued when the online archive went live is no surprise, really, and it may in the end prove illuminating and useful. After years of Austen-related arguments about adaptations of the novels and paperback sequels and prequels, send-ups and mash-ups and more or less earnest acts of homage, the focus finally is on the texts, on Austen the writer and the real truth about the books we know as hers. The implications are unsettling.