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description=Language, linguistics, philology, English phonology, etymology, IPA, phonetics, pronunciation, Old English, Middle English, Dialects, and language history;
author=Michael Covarrubias;

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Text of the page (random words):
kles project zach galifianakis live at the purple onion the brothers mcmullen weeds season 2 about me name michael covarrubias location lafayette indiana us wishydig at gmail dot com my library thing profile posts to read if you haven t already let him that is without syntax got change for that when to expect what jaded on safire bananya peppers aspiration it s all about persbective oyah good fox up dare how to be like a banshee isn t it ironical improve your english blog archive 2022 1 september 1 no pun intended none taken 2014 2 september 1 june 1 2013 1 march 1 2012 1 december 1 2011 2 november 1 february 1 2010 16 september 1 august 2 july 4 may 3 april 3 march 1 january 2 2009 84 december 4 november 3 october 5 september 16 july 2 june 4 may 7 april 12 march 6 february 8 january 17 2008 194 december 24 november 12 october 16 september 20 august 13 july 11 june 15 may 19 april 13 march 17 february 15 january 19 2007 183 december 18 november 12 october 12 september 18 august 24 july 28 june 19 may 16 april 7 march 10 february 11 january 8 2006 69 december 9 november 13 october 8 september 9 august 9 july 11 june 4 may 6 favoured etymological sources oxford english dictionary and webster s new world third edition sources for usage pronunciation spelling or pluralisation the previous as well as american heritage dictionary fourth edition funk wagnalls standard dictionary of the english language 1960 and merriam webster s collegiate dictionary 11th edition primary source for phonology kenstowicz s phonology in generative grammar 1994 phonetic fonts charis sil doulos sil gentium facebook blog network name wishydig topics linguistics english join my network blog networks thursday september 08 2022 no pun intended none taken so when someone says the kids were literally bouncing of the walls i m not likely to imagine a bunch of kids pressing against the upright surface of a room s physical limit with enough force to create potential energy in the opposite direction resulting in a shift to kinetic energy away from that surface unless i ve seen it happen before some kids are pretty acrobatic my niece likes to literally climb the walls really put her in a narrow enough hallway she will climb the walls like most linguists i don t care when people use literally to mean something other than in a non metaphorical sense really i don t because words are allowed to be flexible phrases too i m getting used to begs the question when it s used to mean makes the question obvious the key here is recognizing that i ve grown accustomed to a meaning simply through a convention that is no more intrinsically appropriate than any other convention it also helps that there are plenty of ways to figure out what a speaker means when using words and phrases in a new way it s what we re constantly doing while communicating you hear a phrase and if it doesn t work with your first understanding you try another one or you read the context and figure out a more feasible understanding now consider a phrase like no pun intended it s often used when a phrase or word is used in a way that could have two meanings usually a literal one and metaphorical one one of which provides a humorous or biting or satirical comment on the topic discussed believe it or not i m willing to do a little complaining about the phrase but not on linguistic grounds what i hold against this parenthetical is that in writing it s almost always a lie and it s used to celebrate a joke that wouldn t need the attention if it was good enough in the first place when spoken it s often a quick reaction to the sudden realization that a phrase could be taken more than one way and sometimes it helps to assure the listener that no disrespect or lightness is intended a friend of mine once wrote an article about a young boy who died of aids he began the touching story with a reference to the boy s infectious laugh it was not until i read the story in the paper and called it to his attention that he caught the double meaning he really didn t intend that pun had he noticed it he would have changed the wording he would not have simply added the parenthetical disclaimer writing allows that type of edition when speaking we can t delete so the phrase is sometimes useful tho when great offense might be taken i can t imagine that a simple no pun intended is really going to do the trick it s more likely to be another similar but effectively different phrase like i didn t intend that pun probably with an apology in writing it s the annoying equivalent of an elbow nudge or worse yet that badum pum rimshot performed by overeager class clowns up until their first year in college here are two examples bad link removed from a writer who likes the trick enough to stack them back to back in the headline porn star sticks up no pun intended for gene simmons and in the lead porn star taylor wane is coming no pun intended to the defense of porn star gene simmons not intended sure sometimes the phrase lets you know there was a pun sometimes it lets you know that one is on the way in the latter case the parenthetical will often come between the determiner and the np my pods are in a holding pattern and growing at a no pun intended snail s pace here he gives jumper a no pun intended jolt of much needed electricity malware link removed or before the conjunction but no pun intended but i am in the same boat as you link broken in a comment to a woman whose husband ignores her for his fishing and hunting errands no pun intended but we thought with the navy afloat we ll be afloat dasilva says link broken so you hear the phrase and you either think or read back to find the pun or you wait for it to reach you tony rafael uses the phrase twice early in a presentation on the mexica mafia the topic and title of his book speaking in los angeles the event was hosted by the david horowitz freedom center october 23 2007 you have to wonder if it s insanity or some kind of hubris that would bring fifteen thousand known criminals out into the open in broad daylight to assemble and have essentially a gang summit within the very shadow of the los angeles police department academy and no pun intended but law enforcement at that time in 1992 as recently as 1992 really didn t consider the mexican mafia as a significant threat some gang cops saw evidence of it on the street they attributed a few crimes to it but they never really saw it as an organization until that day in september in 1992 they were literally caught flat footed again no pun intended the fact that they could do this in broad daylight really started law enforcement scratching their heads about the power and influence of this group the second use probably refers to the phrase flat footed it s an interesting use of both literally and no pun intended in reference to the same phrase he s announcing that he s aware of the double meaning but assuring us that he doesn t intend it the first use isn t so clear is he referring to the double meaning of within the very shadow it s odd that he offers the parenthetical after the and setup to the next topic but that changeover is fuzzy he might in fact be using the phrase reactively or is he really anticipating on the street as the possible pun i doubt it there s quite a gap between the two i m not sure it sounds like he thought he was about to offer a pun but he never actually puts it out there the c span2 page on the program is here you should be able to watch if you have a realmedia plugin this section is about 5 minutes in what do you think offered up by wishydig at 06 29 5 comments tuesday september 30 2014 good days i m now in another country and not just visiting my wife has a job teaching at a university and i ve taken a break from teaching to finish my own studies and writing except that now that i m in this country i m taking a language class it s an odd experience as i ve never taken a language class i took old english which used to be a language but now she s dead of course while taking this class i have to bite my tongue when the teacher says something about her language or anyone else s that my linguistic training has taught me to bark at like a drug sniffing dog it hasn t been too much of a challenge because her opinions are moderate and a lot of her views are in line with current linguistic theories and accepted facts the first good sign was when on the first day of class she mentioned that turkish is not a difficult language it s just different she said good i thought she s not going to brag about her language being more sophisticated or other languages being less logical of course less than twenty minutes after saying this she did say russian is a very hard language merely a venial sin there s usually a detoxing session after the class when buffy will turn to me and say i was wondering what you thought when she said which is a nice sign that my ranting and raving has made an impression on my loved ones they re starting to recognize what sorts of pitches i like to take a swing at don t they actually just sit down next to the drugs when they find them without barking i don t know if that s true but it feels true right now offered up by wishydig at 16 34 2 comments tuesday june 03 2014 thirteen untranslatable words i m a language lover i have been since i was a kid just about eleven months after being born i started saying words and i ve been using them ever since i probably use words every day and i ve gotten pretty good at it but there s still so much for me to learn and learning languages other than english is always a fun challenge but what makes it so much harder is that a lot of languages have words in them that we just can t translate into english who knows if it s because we don t have the concept in english which makes it impossible to make up a word to label the concept or more interestingly maybe we don t have the concepts in english because we don t have the word history s first linguist a guy named sapir whorf discovered that without a word we can t think so in my research i went out and found some of the most amazing untranslatable words in the non american speaking world here they are in no particular order mamihlapinatapei this is one of the first words i learned about as an untranslatable word it s spoken by using a ancient and primitive language from chile in tierra del fuego tierra del fuego by the way means fire having land earth dirt which land earth dirt is being this land earth dirt the word mamihlapinatapei is unfortunately untranslatable toska this is a russian word it means uhhh it s sort of like hm well it s a cool meaning but you have to know russian to understand it iktsuarpok the inuits only have one word for this and therefore altho we can t know what this word means we do know that iktsuarpok isn t important or familiar to the inuits otherwise they d have 231 words for it shlimazl the yiddish word is used next to schlemiel a lot both of them meaning something related to each other the meaning is something close to uhhhh dammit this post is hard to write friolero no idea looks spanish the you might recognize this word but there is no english translation of it it is similar to a and an but it has a meaning that those two words just don t quite capture tartle scotts talk funny don t they torschlusspanik germans use this word you might notice it has the word panik in it which is close to english panic but those other parts mean some other sorts of things wabi sabi in japanese culture you have there are these ummm it rhymes with itself like that other untranslatable word oingo boingo hwæt this old english word used to be english when english wasn t yet old once it became old hwæt became impossible to use cafuné not even speakers of portuguese from portugal can understand this word only speakers of portuguese from brazil know what it means l appel du vide altho the french have one translation of this that they can share with us the call of the void they have since given it another more interesting meaning that they are keeping from us schadenfreude this weird german word roughly translates into the english word schadenfreude offered up by wishydig at 11 02 13 comments wednesday march 13 2013 evacuate the premises an hourlong wait for the answer to a simple question gets tiresome so i m not usually a fan of detective procedurals on tv i suppose that s also why some people are so uncomfortable with ambiguous syntax polysemous words and language change more generally understanding is hard well i do like one cop show a lot the wire it s intricate precise and consistent every character on the show is fallible every soul is broken by addiction betrayal torture improper english usage murder i started watching three months ago and now i m up to the first episode of season 5 one scene brought back memories of a conversation that took place several years ago in the language blog neighborhood here s the bit gus haynes sits at his desk reading and typing he calls out ms gutierrez gutierrez get your ass over here yeah you say that 120 people were evacuated yeah they were you can t evacuate people i mean you can if you want but that s not what you want to say here another man the fat bald bearded kind offers his analysis a building could be evacuated to evacuate a person is to give that person an enema the details miss gutierrez at the baltimore sun god still resides in the details as she walks away put in her place the fat bald guy jay spry cries out with the anguish of all obsolete convictions what are we gonna do with these children today not to worry his attempt to spread uninvestigated reassurance finds a home in alma gutierrez s eager little soul she has picked up her webster s new world desk dictionary and the camera shows her staring as she reads it he s right she says you don t evacuate people we have to remember that these are fictional characters and altho the wire is riddled with characters based on real life baltimorianders we can rest assured that neither of these superstitious editors is our friend the reasonable john mcintyre but what lesson can we learn here you need soft eyes investigate know your sources put facts together neglecting or more egregiously refusing to do all that is too often what leads to peeves complaints feigned confusion and the uninvestigated reassurance that stopped ms gutierrez from a fuller understanding of the word evacuate it also trips up many of our fellow web trotters i did a little searching to find conversations about this issue and i came across a story about a bomb threat in palo alto three commenters employee darwin and sketch provide the action click to enlarge so that you can read the tiny words notice that sketch s attempt to defend employee s use of evacuate doesn t actually defend the distinction precisely the entry merely supports the sense of evacuate as leave empty in other words to evacuate a building is to remove people from the building darwin s ...