July already!

[Verbivore]

To start the month: The language at the end of the Earth.

[Verbivore]

“Food porn” – longer-named food costs more.

Dan Jurafsky, a professor of computational linguistics at Stanford University, performed a study that analysed the words and prices of 650,000 dishes on 6,500 menus. He found that if longer words were used to describe a dish, it tended to cost more. For every letter longer the average word length was, the price of the dish it was describing went up by (US)18 cents (14p).

Would you rather a “grass-fed Aberdeen Angus fillet with thick-cut rosemary fries” or simply “steak and chips”? – 52 letters v 13; I take that to mean the former would cost $7 more than the latter.

[Little Jack Horner]

I have no idea what being a professor of “computational linguisics” does. It sounds like something from the same tree as “grass-fed Aberdeen Angus fillet with thick-cut rosemary fries”. And fries, whatever they may be (French-fried potatoes?), are quite different from chips. Anyway, I prefer a decent cheese omelette and crisp chips. I go for a pub lunch most weeks and my friends are not taken in, even one little bit, by the purple prose one encounters on leather-bound menus. One often finds “wilted lettuce” which sound an awful lot like it was picked several days ago.

[Verbivore]

It's a doozie!

I found this on a YouTube page about the Duesenberg motor car.

"The builders of the Duesenberg defied the odds and entered the Depression era with the most costly, powerful, and daring auto ever built. If you were a king, a maharajah, a movie star, a gangster, or simply very rich, you had to have a Duesenberg – a Duesy. It was simply the best and fastest car on the road. It even inspired a term, 'It's a Duesy (Doozie)'. Fewer than 500 of the classic Model Js were built between 1928 and the company's collapse in 1938. But more than 400 of these desirable autos remain in the collections of lucky owners who still will say, 'It's a Duesy'."

I'm uncertain how true the above tale is, because the OED gives sources as far back as 1903, long before there was Deusenberg brand of car. It's a term I've heard (and occasionally used) all my life without knowing what a doozie was.

From the OED (no mention of the motor car):

doozy, a. and n. slang (orig. and chiefly N. Amer.).

(ˈduːzɪ)

Also doozie.

[Of uncertain origin: perh. var. of daisy n. 5. See also *doozer n.]

A. adj. Remarkable, excellent; also, amazing, incredible.

   1903 A. Kleberg Slang Fables from Afar 83 As soon as the races were billed he began to evolve schemes—one doozy scheme followed the other.    1911 Dialect Notes III. 543 Doozy,‥sporty or flossy.    1942 Berrey & Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Slang §29/4 Doozy.    1975 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 24 Nov. 59/8 Swingers Saturday Night was doozy.


n. Something remarkable, amazing, or unbelievable. Freq. iron.

[Verbivore]

Why no-one speaks Indonesia's official language, Bahasa Indonesia.

[Little Jack Horner]

The issue of spelling reform arises from time to time and most of us think it’s a lost cause and even misguided.

Karina Galperin’s talk (in Spanish with English subtitles) on TED (ted.com) entitled “Should we simplify spelling?” raises the issue in respect of the Spanish language. Ironically, I had always thought that Spanish, at least Castilian, was a language that generally employed phonetic spelling but the audience applauded her suggestions that the silent H should be abandoned and that one or other of the letters B or V should be discarded as they usually sound identical. I think the audience was less sure of how to deal with C, S and Z which are, anyway, I think, subject to clear rules.

I wonder how Ms Galperin would deal with English? I suspect devising a fully phonetic spelling system in our wonderful language would result in something almost completely unreadable.

Some time ago, I produced the following sentence as a tribute to OUGH. If one allows examples in Scottish and Irish English, there are twelve different pronunciations.

Although the lough wasn’t rough, the wind soughed in the rigging as the oughly boat ploughed through the waves in a thoroughly unpleasant manner which not only made me hiccough and cough but also broke the hough of the horse I had bought.

[Verbivore]

The Faroe Islands’ 500-year-old fight to save their language – and a man nicknamed “Dictionary”

[Verbivore]

Thrice in one day warrants a posting: appraise / apprise: twice in writing (on ABC News no less!) and once in speech (by an acquaintance) appraised was used when apprised ought to have been. I apprised the acquaintance of his error, but have given up writing to Aunty as rarely does it make any difference.

And that's about as exciting as my weekend has been; most of the two days were occupied with wood butchery of necessity.

[Little Jack Horner]

I sympathise with both you and your acquaintance, Vv. Did he appreciate your help? Of course, there are many such solecisms being perpetrated these days. I wonder how long it takes for such to become standard?

Three of my bugbears are the description of a car “careening” out of control down the road; problems, the “enormity” of which cause consternation; and the distinction between practical and practicable. One thinks also of ships thay have floundered rather than foundered: of disinterested and uninterested, of pored and poured, not to mention (although I will) bacterium and bacteria, complimentary and complementary, and affect and effect. Lots of others if one looks around the news media and blogs.

I must admit that there are some such pairings which cause me to hesitate, especially when contributing to this forum. Do you, Vv, ever need recourse to a dictionary?

[Twoddle]

Vv and LJH, you're going to get me started again, aren't you? "Epicentre" when not referring to an earthquake, "impact" (especially a negative one) when nothing has been struck, "momentarily" to mean "in a moment" … . No, I'm stopping there; I won't be tempted further.

[Verbivore]

Yes, LJH and Twod – all those are daily irritants in my work. While people keep annoying me with such confused usages I shall keep annoying them with my emendments. (And why, why, why does the spelling checker always reject emendment? Grrr!)

A dictionary is necessary even for me; I sometimes doubt my own spelling or emendments to others' because, I suspect, I encounter so many errors that they, in their profusion, start to appear "normal".

[Verbivore]

The some sum of it all

From an article on ABC News Online: 

Dr David Glance, a senior research fellow at the University of Western Australia's school of physics, mathematics and computing, wrote: “They are making vast somes of money …”. Wouldn’t one expect that a university senior research fellow in mathematics to know how to spell sum? D’oh!

[Verbivore]

If I had a  dollar for every time I've seen hair-brained for hare-brained I'd be a wealthy fellow. The latest instance was on an ABC News Online piece this evening, describing the idea of driving a car across the floor of Darwin Harbour (and not while the tide was out).

[Dave Miller]

Hello. I’ve been busy, but am back.

>> Three of my bugbears are the description of a car “careening” out of control down the road ... <<

Why? Although the usage is tagged as North American, it appears in several of my (British) dictiinaries as something like “to move swiftly and out of control” or “to proceed while moving from side to side”. Not good driving, but fair enough choice of words.

[Little Jack Horner]

Glad to see you back, Dave.

You are, of course, correct but the emergence of “careen” as a synonym for “career” is new(ish) and I am a traditionalist especially with regard to language. I hope Vv will respond with a more scholarly comment but, in the meantime, this item I found by Googling may be of interest— grammarist.com/usage/careen-career/.  As a lad, I read many a book about seafaring and I deplore the modern misuse of the word because it endangers a useful word that has no alternative.  Many, perhaps most, people misuse enormity, infer, apprise, epicentre and other semi-homophones and I agree that only subeditors and pedants care very much but where can one find pedants if not on this forum? Please may I continue to fight a lost cause?