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November 14, 2011 @ 4:06 pm
· Filed under Snowclones, Words words words
Last month, in the post "'Words for snow' watch," I reported that Kate Bush's new album (out Nov. 21) is called 50 Words for Snow. I wrote, "It's unclear at this point exactly how Eskimos will figure into Bush's songwriting, but it's safe to say they'll be in there somewhere." Today, thanks to NPR's stream […]
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March 22, 2011 @ 9:06 am
· Filed under Humor
"Eskimo’s kennen nog maar drie woorden voor sneeuw", De Speld, 3/21/2011 ("Eskimos now have only three words for snow") — subtitle "Klimaatverandering debet aan taalverarming" ("Climate change to blame for language impoverishment"): Een uitgebreid taalonderzoek onder 1.000 Inuit heeft uitgewezen dat het aantal woorden dat hun taal kent voor sneeuw is gereduceerd tot drie. In […]
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September 23, 2010 @ 3:41 pm
· Filed under Humor, Snowclones
The granddaddy of all snowclones has often been expressed here at Language Log Plaza as a formula with variables: If Eskimos have N words for snow, X surely have Y words for Z. So it's pleasing to see this iteration of the ur-snowclone, from Jeff Potter's new book, Cooking for Geeks (p. 258): If Eskimos […]
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August 12, 2010 @ 5:56 pm
· Filed under Endangered languages, Language and the media
The Guardian has an article today entitled, "Linguist on mission to save Inuit 'fossil language' disappearing with the ice," about a forthcoming research trip by University of Cambridge linguist Stephen Pax Leonard to study Inuktun, an endangered Polar Inuit language spoken by the Inughuit community of northwest Greenland. It's always great to see this kind […]
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April 11, 2010 @ 9:31 am
· Filed under Humor, Language and technology, Lost in translation
Six of us — three philosophers, two linguists, and a mathematician — were having dinner the Café Noir in Providence last Thursday night, and when three of us decided on the excellent boeuf bourguignon, someone at the table told a story of a colleague who tried to include the phrase boeuf bourguignon in a word-processed […]
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April 2, 2010 @ 11:34 pm
· Filed under Ignorance of linguistics, Language and advertising, Snowclones
This is from an actual job listing on BusinessWorkforce.com, advertising a position at the "marketing innovations agency" Ignited: Integrated Copywriter/Etymologist Sure, the Eskimos have 40 words for “snow,” but Ignited has 40 words for “next.” That’s because we’re kind of obsessed with what’s next, whether that be in technology or media or Eskimo etymology. If […]
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February 2, 2010 @ 6:52 am
· Filed under Language and the media, Snowclones
David Marsh, in the regular language column at The Guardian, writes about the increasing frequency of -gate derivatives in recent journalism, and cites Language Log: All these gates are examples of a snowclone, a type of cliched phrase defined by the linguist Geoffrey Pullum as "a multi-use, customisable, instantly recognisable, timeworn, quoted or misquoted phrase […]
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October 16, 2009 @ 1:15 am
· Filed under Humor, Language and politics, Snowclones
Stephen Colbert on Olympia Snowe (Colbert Report, Oct. 14): We are now one step closer to a nightmare future where everyone has health insurance. And I will tell you who I blame: Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, the only Republican who voted in favor of the bill. And folks, I am angrier than an Eskimo… because […]
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September 24, 2009 @ 8:13 am
· Filed under Language and culture
Kevin Drum recently laid out a long-standing unsolved problem, one that has preoccupied such luminaries as Paul Krugman, James Fallows, and Glenn Beck ("Saving the Frogs", Mother Jones, 9/23/2009). The problem is that there's no good substitute for the over-used and untrue story about how a frog, if placed in a pot of gradually heated […]
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August 1, 2009 @ 7:17 am
· Filed under Linguistics in the comics
From Iceland, via Thor Lawrence, a Zits cartoon (from a free daily newspaper) with Eskimo snow words in it:
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July 30, 2009 @ 8:34 am
· Filed under Linguistics in the news
It's a trend: comix-ironic Whorfianism. Several readers have drawn my attention to the latest Diesel Sweeties:
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February 22, 2009 @ 2:22 pm
· Filed under Language and culture
Yesterday afternoon, Mark Halpern sent me a response to last week's discussion of his book Language and Human Nature in the post "Progess and its enemies", 2/16/2009. It's presented below as a guest post, after the usual transformation from MS Word to html. (I take responsibility for any format or font errors that may have […]
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February 1, 2009 @ 3:11 pm
· Filed under Language and culture, Words words words
In the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, Billy Baker has an article exploring the cultural significance of the local expression salted, a popular put-down among Boston's schoolkids. Baker explains: Salted is typically delivered by a third party as a way to get into someone else's fight — person one insults person two, and person three informs […]
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