This is too good. You simply must read it. The logical end to linguistic prescriptivism is a strange world. HT: Mike Aubrey
Linguistics
Usage Determines Pronunciation, Even of Obscure Old Testament Names
My post on Puritan names brings up an incidental point. I have heard preachers and laypeople alike trip up many times over the pronunciation of obscure Old Testament place and people names. I myself recently flubbed “Kibroth-hattaavah” in Sunday School. Who can blame...
BibleWorks Favorites
I can read English, Spanish, Greek, Hebrew, German, and Latin, in that order of fluidity. Truth be known, my German is mainly structural, my Latin mainly vestigial—though the latter is strengthened by my Greek. This mix of training means I can piece together a good...
Agape Love
One of the most popular linguistic and exegetical fallacies in modern times is that the Greek word for love, agapao, carries in it the implication of a divine love that is unconditional and comes to us in spite of our sin. That is not true. Context must decide if...
A Disinterested Observation
I had an English major for a dad, so vocabulary quizzes were never difficult for me in school. I remember a particular classmate—who bore more than a passing resemblance to Scut Farkus—looking at me with a mixture of incredulity and loathing as I said, "Mrs. S., I...
Forks and Finnish
Don’t blame my parents, but I didn’t know until I was 27 that the two different-sized forks in the silverware drawer had different names and purposes. (Don’t blame me either. Blame the Democrats, I think.) One fork is for salad, while the other is a dinner fork. The...
Quarrels About Words
Some months ago Dane Ortlund posted an excellent meditation on 1 Tim 6:4, …an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people… “Quarrels about words.” That hit...
Love Makes the Top Ten
Love is the third most looked-up word on Merriam-Webster.com. The editors note wisely, “We're guessing that many people arrive at our site with a question—‘what is the meaning of love?’—that actually requires answers beyond a dictionary definition.” Kudos to the...
The Degradation Of Language And Why We Should, Such As, Care
A teacher of mine heard me expounding my Usage Determines Meaning doctrines and sent me a courteous e-mail in which he offered one rejoinder to my laissez-faire attitude toward usage. He pointed to a sentence he had just read in a student paper: At the extreme were...
“Decker,” Etymologically Speaking, Means “One Who ‘Decks’ Linguistic Errors in Exegesis”
Rod Decker nails it in this brief paper he delivered at the recent Bible Faculty Leadership Summit, a get-together of professors from Fundamentalist Protestant schools. Decker knows whereof he speaks, having published a work on linguistics (pictured) in Carson’s...
One More Excerpt from Alan Jacobs’ Latest Book
Jonathan Swift, Jacobs says, looked for “some method . . . for ascertaining and fixing our language for ever.” Jacobs comments: This is a recurrent theme among linguistic academicians and their allies: a deep conviction that the dominant usage of their own time—or,...
Alan Jacobs: BBEdit Freak, Essay Master
I keep insisting to my wife that I’m not a real reader. I play at it. I pretend by force of will to be a reader. I wanna be one when I grow up. That’s all. But there are those writers who turn me into a reader by their force of will, their skill and verve and depth....