Paul JJ Payack, after all the run-up, has botched the story of the millionth word. The most amusing thing was that he forgot to write a script that would stop updating his headline when the millionth word was hit and exceeded, so at 11:30 a.m. in the UK he had this headline at his Global […]
The millionth-word saga, speaking of bogosity, continues. Whatever would we do without the hardworking investigative journalists employed by major newspapers like the Telegraph? Or the "100 years of journalistic excellence" at UPI?
Forbes.com is running a special report on neologisms — a rather peculiar topic for Forbes, I suppose, but they put together a pretty decent lineup of contributors. From the Language Log family there's John McWhorter and me, with good friends of LL Grant Barrett and Mark Peters also pitching in. There really was no news […]
Gullible reporters keep falling for a self-aggrandizing scam perpetrated by Paul J.J. Payack, who runs an outfit called Global Language Monitor. As regular Language Log readers know, Mr. Payack has been trumpeting the arrival of "the millionth word" in English for some time now. In fact, he's predicted that the English language would pass the […]
In her most recent column ("Obama: Our first female president", 7/1/2010), Kathleen Parker argues that Barack Obama writes like a girl: If Bill Clinton was our first black President, as Toni Morrison once proclaimed, then Barack Obama may be our first woman President. […] No, I'm not calling Obama a girlie President. But … he […]
[Update 6/20/2010 — The linked CNN story has been extensively modified, for the better. The headline is now "Language mavens exchange words over Obama's Oval Office speech," and the article now highlights Ron Yaros along with Payack, and incorporates some information from this post. Fev at headsuptheblog has some before-and-after analysis.] It's amazing what a […]
From the notorious Global Language Monitor: (Click on the image for a larger screenshot.)
It's almost over. The English Language WordClock is ticking inexorably towards its zero hour early Wednesday morning, marking the imagined birth of the mythical millionth English word. But what will happen then? The Million Word March FAQ over at the Global Language Monitor is silent on this subject. None of the journalists interviewing Paul Payack, […]
Jorge Cham at PhD Comics follows up on his analysis of the science news cycle:
It's time once again for our semi-regular feature, "Mr. Payack Bamboozles the Media." Paul J.J. Payack, as Language Log readers know, is the assiduously self-promoting president of the Global Language Monitor who has managed to hoodwink unsuspecting journalists on a range of pseudoscientific claims, most notably the number of words in the English language. (He […]
Silas Lesnick, "An ensemble cast has come together for Whitney Cummings’ The Female Brain movie", comingsoon.net 8/17/2016: Black Bicycle Entertainment has today announced the ensemble cast for their upcoming The Female Brain movie, which marks the directorial debut of Whitney Cummings. Cummings herself will also star in the film, which she co-wrote alongside Neal Brennan, […]
Another fragment of aleatoric sub-poetry, from the 5,036,601 spam comments that Akismet has caught since we installed it: I image this might be numerous upon the written content material? nevertheless I nonetheless believe that it may be suitable for just about any type of topic material, because it could frequently be pleasant to resolve a warm […]
Following up on "The QWERTY effect", 3/8/2012, I got this email earlier today from Peter Dodds: