Language Log

Watching the new DVD release of the patriotic World War II musical This is the Army recently, when listening to champion boxer Joe Louis in a cameo delivering his one line, I found myself thinking of, of all people, Tina Fey. Specifically, what came to mind was her movie of earlier this year, Baby Mama, […]

Eager as always to score high-school snark points, Maureen Dowd wrote today about Sarah Palin ("Sarah's Pompom Palaver", 10/5/2008): Then she uttered yet another sentence that defies diagramming: “It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are […]

Today saw the release of the anxiously awaited T-Mobile G1, the first phone to use Google's Android software. On T-Mobile's website, the first ad for the phone was unveiled, and it's packed with jocular comparative adjectives: smarterer, connecteder, funnerer. This isn't just an homage to Dumb and Dumberer, the even more dim-witted sequel to Dumb […]

For a peek at what makes language — and Language Log — possible, consider this. Suppose that you stand up in front of a class of kindergarten or first-grade kids, who haven't learned to read and write yet, and tell them "Today we're going to play a game. I'll tell you a story — and […]

With respect to a piece of political spam from John McCain that included the sentence "You will also have an exclusive opportunity to … ask questions to one of my top advisors", Graham commented Is "ask questions TO somebody" good American English? It reads very oddly to this Brit. Well, "ask questions to somebody" sounds […]

As a result of some Language Log posts a couple of years ago, I get quite a few inquiries from journalists about Dr. Leonard Sax and his science-based arguments for single-sex education. It's in the nature of things that only a small fraction of such discussions wind up in the resulting articles. For example, for […]

According to Dana Milbank, "Still More Lamentations From Jeremiah", Washington Post, 8/29/2008 The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, explaining why he had waited so long before breaking his silence about his incendiary sermons, offered a paraphrase from Proverbs yesterday: "It is better to be quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove […]

You might have thought that the Roman empire was doomed by barbarian invasions, lead poisoning, the loss of masculine values, or climate change. But Jim Bisso at Epea Pteroenta has pointed out that at the very height of the empire's power, in the reign of Trajan, Roman culture had already been compromised by an insidious […]

My post "The discovery of Dr. Syntax" (4/11/2008) ended like this: No one today would think of calling a schoolteacher “Dr. Syntax”, even in areas where primary schools are still called “grammar schools”. I’m inclined to see this as a loss, though an ambiguous one. The image of Syntax in the 18th century may have […]