Language Log

Liam Julian, "Putting Fowler back in Fowler's" (2009) presents a perspective that used to be more common that it is today, I think: linguistic prescriptivism as (a particular kind of) cultural conservatism, in explicit association with right-wing politics. Julian wrote:

Burchfield, in his preface to Fowler’s third edition, called the first edition “this extraordinary book, the Bible of presciptivists.” But in the early 20th century, when Fowler was writing the extraordinary book, the trend was away from prescriptivism and toward a descriptive, academic linguistics that, like Burchfield himself, observed rather than decreed.1 Burchfield stressed the extent of “the isolation of Fowler from the mainstream of the linguistic scholarship of his day” and highlighted “his heavy dependence” on English school textbooks and the classics of ancient Greece and Rome, the Renaissance, and post-Renaissance English literature. For Fowler, Burchfield wrote, these influences composed “a three-colored flag” that “was to be saluted and revered, and, as far as possible, everything it represented was to be preserved intact.”

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A post shared by Caitanya Tan | Actress • Host • Storyteller (@caitofalltraits)

A skit by Singaporean voice actress Caitanya Tan.

We have had so many posts dedicated to Popeye's favorite vegetable (see "Selected readings" below), but we haven't yet done justice to one of my favorite spinach dishes: spanakopita.

Spanakopita (/ˌspænəˈkɒpɪtə, ˌspɑː-, –ˈkoʊ-/; Greek: σπανακόπιτα, from σπανάκι spanáki 'spinach', and πίτα píta 'pie') is a Greek savory spinach pie. It often also contains cheese, typically feta, and may then be called spanakotiropita (Greek: σπανακοτυρόπιτα "spinach-cheese pie"), especially in northern Greece.^{[citation needed]} In southern Greece, the term spanakopita is also common for the versions with cheese. 

("Savory spinach pie") 

From J.M.:

Much amusement online this morning about a tropical storm that is named Gabrielle Spaghetti and is apparently doing some modeling work.

GPT-5 is impressively good at some things (see "No X is better than Y", 8/14/2025, or "GPT-5 can parse headlines!", 9/7/2025), but shockingly bad at others. And I'm not talking about "hallucinations", which is a term used for plausible but false facts or references — such mistakes remain a problem, but every answer is not a hallucination. Adding labels to images that it creates, on the other hand, remains reliably and absurdly bad.

Many of her skits are focused on language — "Reference books hanging out":

Frazz 9/10/2025 — Caulfield and Mrs. Olson discuss Melville's novel:

Continued in Frazz 9/11/2025:

I probably learn at least one or two new foreign words per day, and they always delight me no end.

The first new foreign word I learned today is Turkish kahvalti (lit., "before coffee) which means "breakfast".    

Inherited from Ottoman Turkish قهوه آلتی (ḳahve altı, “food taken before coffee; especially breakfast or lunch”), from قهوه (ḳahve) and آلت (alt), equivalent to kahve (“coffee”) +‎ alt (“under, lower, below”) +‎ -ı (possessive suffix), literally “under coffee”. (Wiktionary)

This tells us how important coffee is in Turkish life.

Michael passed away at the age of 77 on May 26, 2025 in Kapa'a, Hawai'i, but I just learned of this great loss two days ago.  Since we usually corresponded about two to three times a month, when I hadn't heard from Michael for several months, I suspected that he was having health problems.

Michael was born on June 2, 1947 in Palo Alto, California to Dr. Edward and Ruth Carr. Michael grew up in Overland Park, Kansas, graduating from Shawnee Mission West High School. He completed his undergraduate work at The University of Colorado and The University of Kansas. Michael married the love of his life, Terry Reardon, in 1972 after meeting on a blind date, and thereafter the two never spent a single day apart. 

From Barbara Phillips Long, in reference to yesterday's Guardian story "Spinal Tap II: The End Continues review – rockers return for mockusequel of pin-sharp laughs and melancholy" ("Enter the Tapocalypse as Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Rob Reiner return in a still-funny, cameo-studded telling of the hapless band’s final gig"):

The word videotaping is still often used to mean "video recording", even though what's meant is recording digital video to a  solid-state storage device, most often on a phone — video recording to tape has gone the way of buggy whips.

The word "exceedances" occurs 7 times in this relatively short article:

"Lead in water at Perth Children's Hospital no risk to patient safety, WA health minister says"
Mya Kordic, ABC News (Australia), 9/10/25

Here are two examples:

"Exceedances are decommissioned while they undergo remediation," Ms Hammat said.

"I have been advised by the Chief Health Officer that there is no risk to the safety of patients or staff as a result of these exceedances."