I agree.
Linguistics
Absolutely Fascinating for Language Nerds
Absolutely fascinating if you like language and technology, like me. And don't miss the video. HT: Brian Collins
I Don’t Think Our Language Is, Like, Going Down the Tubes Any Time, Like, Soon
Most of the time you say something, you want to be understood. So you use the linguistic and other signs—words, gestures, facial expressions—that you know by long experience to be shared by others in your culture. Even when you (deceitfully) purpose to be...
Illustrating the Etymological Fallacy
I love words, and I love languages. I'm always running across little interesting tidbits when it comes to words; often those tidbits have to do with etymology. There is a logical fallacy that should immediately come to your mind when you hear that word "etymology."...
Usage Determines Meaning (Applause Please)
When my three-year-old son asks while we sit in a large crowd, "Why are the people clapping?" he's essentially asking, "What is the meaning of this applause?" My answer is going to be very situation-specific: are we in a concert hall at a concert—and is the clapping...
Loglan, Lojban, and Bible Interpretation
I thoroughly enjoyed Arika Okrent’s In the Land of Invented Languages. One of the stories that stuck with me was Okrent's description of how the megalomaniacal inventor of the language "Loglan" thought he could come up with a worldview-neutral language. "Loglan" is...
Usage Determines Meaning, Even in Esperanto
I just read a fascinating book recommended to me by Alan Jacobs, an English prof at Wheaton who recently completed the task of reading literally every book there is. This particular book was Arika Okrent's In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars,...
Randy Leedy on Greek Pedagogy
Logos Bible Software has put out a new first-year Greek/Hebrew course that is apparently selling like hotcakes and promises to eliminate memorization of vocab and paradigms and focus immediately on language use in exegesis and sermon prep. Rod Decker's most recent...
Standard English
From the American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition: Standard English n. The variety of English that is generally acknowledged as the model for the speech and writing of educated speakers. USAGE NOTE The term Standard English is sometimes used to denote the variety...
Irregardless
Fish Is Brain Food
Stanley Fish is a legal scholar, and as best I can tell, he got into that line of work because of his fascination with interpretation in general—he started out as a literary critic and theorist. Law certainly furnishes many fascinating case studies, and when judges...
Is that a Word?
I recently ran across an article in which someone wrote something like the following: For all you Googlers (is that a word?), there's an easy way to find the restaurant's website. "Is that a word?"—this is a common question. It's not a question expecting an answer, I...