Language
aardvarchaeology | August 17, 2017I was pleased to learn from Current Archaeology #330 (p. 65) that Chris Catling shares my distaste for the habit scientists have recently picked up of prefixing their answers to interview questions with ”So...”.
Q: Where did you find the new exciting fossil?
A: So we found it in Mongolia.
Q: How old is it?
A: So it's from the Early Cretaceous.
What annoys me about this isn't just that it's new. I know that us speakers change language over time. My irritation is down to the fact that I reserve ”So”, when used in this position in a phrase, for two other purposes. Either to mean ”thus, ergo, it…
gregladen | March 24, 2017You all know about this: It is being said that the OK sign is used to indicated "White Power" and this use has been spotted among politicians and celebrities everywhere. Is this real? I don't know. Is it a valid symbol for "White Power"? Certainly not.
The problem with the white power symbol is that it is not a symbol. Or, if it is a symbol, it is a baby symbol that doesn't know how to be a symbol yet, so don't expect much from it.
Semiotics Ahead Index (not an icon, not a symbol, but yes, it is a sign. With a sign on it.)
Try this.
Move your hands in front of you as though you were…
gregladen | January 24, 2017It is a good idea to occassionally experience history. This helps us understand ourselves, and our possible futures, better. Much of this is done through reading excellent texts. For example, I'm currently reading Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Goodwin's objective is to contextualize Lincoln by looking at him in the broader context of the individuals that ran against him for the Republican nomination, and whom he later added to his cabinet. Goodwin succeeds, at several points, in placing the reader in a time or place of great import.…
milhayser | November 21, 2016The new film Arrival, based on a story by Ted Chiang, is unlike most any science fiction blockbuster at the box office these days. It's a tense, thoughtful, somber meditation on the human condition and the nature of a higher reality. In many ways, it is a religious film that deals with eschatology (the end times or judgment day).
Unlike Chad Orzel, I haven't read the source material, so I experienced the film with fresh eyes. I was immediately reminded of Philip K. Dick and his real-life experience of being 'touched by an angel.' Dick, both a life-long Christian and prolific author of…
gregladen | August 25, 2016Have you ever wondered how "Dick" became short for "Rick"?
Probably not. But it turns out that the reason, if the following video is accurate, is interesting.
I have two questions for the historical linguists in the room. First, is there a name for this rhymification effect? Is is common? Is it confined to certain regions or cultures? Is it linked to Cockney in some way?
OK, that was a lot of questions, but really, all the same question. My second one is simpler: Where does the phrase "Swinging dick" come in? It is a Britishism for, I think, Square Mile money managers and investors.…
aardvarchaeology | August 5, 2016 1972 back-cover blurb
I bought a used copy of Maurice Lévy's Lovecraft ou du fantastique (Paris 1972) at the Fantastika 2016 scifi con, and now I'm picking my way through it with the aid of a dictionary. S.T. Joshi has published an English translation, Lovecraft: A Study in the Fantastic (Detroit 1988).
Here's how little of Lévy's literary French I understand without a dictionary. This back-cover blurb is a particularly hairy piece of writing, I should say.
The case of Lovecraft … the thick volume of fantastic literature. A limited case where … should cease: between a neurosis which, while…
gregladen | June 22, 2016Certain things that come across one’s desktop, on the internet, are hard to turn away from. Train wrecks, for example. For me, this list includes commentary about grammatical errors and proper language use.
I find this sort of discussion interesting because I’m an anthropologist, and probably also because I’ve spend a lot of time 100% immersed in a language or two other than my native English. This training and this experience each make me think about how we make meaning linguistically. Also, as a parent, I have observed how a child goes through the process of first, and quickly, learning how…
aardvarchaeology | January 22, 2016I visited Grödinge church south of Stockholm for the first time Thursday. The occasion was my great aunt Märta's funeral, an event which, though of course sombre, cannot be called tragic. The old lady was always cheerful and friendly, but by the time she passed away she was 104, severely disabled, and according to her many descendants quite tired of it all. As I like to say, I don't fear death but I certainly don't want to become disabled or isolated in my old age. For most of her remarkably long life Märta was in fine shape, and she was never isolated at all.
Grödinge is one of Sweden's many…
gregladen | March 11, 2014This is nice.
Karl Eccleston and Fiona Pepper are amazingly good actors. The writing is excellent as is the directing. The subtext. THE SUBTEXT IS BRILLIANT.
When I was living with the Efe Pygmies in the Ituri Forest, they would imitate French and English speakers while ranting about specific people who had annoyed or amused them. It was easy to tell which they were doing ... French vs. English. But it only sounded like people imitating people, it didn't sound like the real thing. I remember Sid Caesar doing this as part of his regular routine in several languages, and talking about…
dr. dolittle | February 17, 2014 Image of bonobo from Reuters. Credit: REUTERS/KATRINA MANSON/FILES
Researchers have observed that bonobos are innately able to match a beat that was created by the research team. The bonobos demonstrated their musical skills using a special drum that was created to withstand 500 pounds of pressure, chewing, etc. The favored tempo matched the cadence of human speech, about 280 beats per minute.
The ability to keep a beat is thought to be important in developing and strengthening social bonds as well as communicating. In fact, some researchers hypothesize that Neanderthals communicated using…
aardvarchaeology | January 23, 2014We interrupt this transmission for a puerile message from Medieval Bergen. It was found carved with runes on a stick at the Hanseatic docks.ion silkifuþ a mek en guþormr fuþcllæikir ræist mik en : ion fuþkula ræþr m(e)k (N B434)
“John Silkencunt owns me and Guttorm Cuntlicker carved me and John Cuntball reads me”
Philologists are not certain as to whether fuþkula, “cuntball”, means clitoris, or a well-padded mons veneris, or “cunt cavern”. All the three mentioned men are historical figures known from other sources, but apparently they are usually referred to there as John Silk, Guttorm Licker…
aardvarchaeology | April 8, 2013I found something pretty wild in an essay by J.L. Borges this morning. There's a 13th century Norse saga about the Buddha. And the story has other fine twists as well. This all revolves around a legendary tale of the Buddha's early life.
In the 6th century BC a son was born to a petty king in what is now Nepal. He was named Siddharta, and it was prophesied shortly after the boy's birth that he would become either a great king or a great holy man. His father then kept him carefully protected from contact with religion and human suffering, apparently to keep the boy away from the holy-man…
aardvarchaeology | March 16, 2013The Grey Mouser, along with Fafhrd the Northerner hero of Fritz Leiber's genre-defining sword & sorcery story cycle, is the archetype of the Dungeons & Dragons thief. He began his career however, Leiber informs us, as apprentice to a "hedge-wizard" who taught him some simple magical cantrips. I never understood what a hedge-wizard was, until now. I imagined it had to do with living in a squalid cottage out in the fields and being in touch with nature, druid-like.
Reading Avram Davidson's story "The King Across the Mountains", I now came across a hedge-parson. And googling, I found out…
esiegel | March 10, 2013"When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images." -Niels Bohr
Although I may write to you exclusively in English, I am fully aware that around half of my readership comes from outside the United States, and that English is the first language of only about 40% of you. Like most Americans, I learned Spanish as my second language when I was in school, and then studied a few other in college, formally, and tried to pick up the language of any country I traveled to. But I am by no means fluent…
gregladen | January 7, 2013Until a few minutes ago, I didn't even know what the heck Vocal Fry is. Apparently some people have gotten really annoyed about it, as it is a speech mannerism that has emerged among young folks, who are always annoying, and especially females, who are always annoying. Apparently. (I also did not know that until a few minutes ago! I'm learning a lot of new stuff today!)
It's been written up in a scientific journal (see below), in popular media, and it was brought to my attention by a facebook post of Debby Goddard's. But of all the sources I've seen, the following video best describes the…
cevans | December 13, 2012"This one will look like a jellybean," the session director warns us. "Or, you know, when you empty a hole punch? The circles of paper that fall out? One of those." She's talking about Neptune, and I am about to step, carefully, up a ladder painted industrial yellow and wheeled into place in front of the centenarian eyepiece of the 60" Hale telescope at Mt. Wilson Observatory, incidentally the very place where Edwin Hubble, in 1925, discovered that our galaxy was not the entirety of the Universe, and later, that our Universe was expanding.
A jellybean, a piece of confetti: it seems her…
cevans | July 27, 2012To scientists, "experimental" is a technical word, one with a precise meaning: that which relates to a procedure of methodical trial and error, to a systematic test for determining the nature of reality. I got in trouble on this blog once, with commenters, for using the word "experimental" too flippantly.
But artists experiment too, of course. Their method of inquiry is different, free from the rigidity that characterizes the scientific method. Artistic experiments are designed to be singular; they aren't supposed to be repeated. They have no control variables. Often, even the hypothesis…
gregladen | November 30, 2011The other day, and I kid you not, I saw someone say to someone else "would you like a soda" and the person stared back and said "why would I want a soda" and a third party repeated the question, only saying "would you like a pop" and the person said "yes, very much, thank you."
I grew up in Soda Country, where 80 to 90 percent of the time people used the word soda. Now, I live in Pop Country where 80 - 100 percent of the time people call soda pop. For a while, I lived in the Soda Enclave along the shores of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin, where soda is commonly used but there is enough nearby…
sastyk | July 19, 2011Ok, folks, I'm taking a poll - what do you call a society and an economy that can't keep growing, but can get better in ways that haven't been part of the conventional measures. What I'm looking for is a word or a couple of words that are evocative, not boring, not too wordy or wonky and appealing.
Obviously, this is not a new concept - lots of writers and thinkers have played with this one. The problem is that I haven't liked any of their language. "Steady State Economy" is way too boring. "Ecocentrism" sounds way too close to "egocentrism." I like the word "subsistence" but let's be…
gregladen | April 2, 2011At TEDxDubai, longtime English teacher Patricia Ryan asks a provocative question: Is the world's focus on English preventing the spread of great ideas in other languages? (For instance: what if Einstein had to pass the TOEFL?) It's a passionate defense of translating and sharing ideas.