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In defence of unnecessary words
A conservative criticism commonly levelled at new words is that they are “unnecessary” – that we already have a perfectly good and proper word for whatever it is, so why introduce this needless...
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Amn’t I glad we use “amn’t” in Ireland
From ‘An Irish Childhood in England: 1951’ by Eavan Boland (full poem on my Tumblr): let the world I knew become the space between the words that I had by heart and all the other speech that always was...
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Language police: check your privilege and priorities
Earlier this year Ragan.com published an article titled “15 signs you’re a word nerd”. Alongside a couple of unobjectionable items (You love to read; You know the difference between “e.g.” and “i.e.”)...
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The developmental overkill of language
In his excellent natural history of language, The Power of Babel, linguist John McWhorter describes dialects – and it’s all dialects – as “developed far beyond the call of duty”. He’s referring to the...
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British Council seminar on language learning
Yesterday evening I watched a seminar from the British Council on language learning, which took place in Cardiff and was broadcast live on YouTube (video below). There were two talks, each followed by...
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Phatic communion, and lay vs. lie
Over at Macmillan Dictionary Blog I have a couple of new posts on language matters. You’re the one for me, phatic offers an overview of phatic communion, a useful term from anthropology that refers to...
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The problem with Weird Al’s ‘Word Crimes’
I’m late to the story of Weird Al and his word crimes, and I’m too busy to do it justice, but luckily there has been a glut of good commentary already, some of it linked below. First, the song, in case...
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Link love: language (59)
Link love is back! I took a break from this regular feature a year ago, for reasons, but never intended that break to be permanent. So here’s a selection of language-related articles and other material...
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Book spine poem: Unlocking the language
Bookmashing, for the uninitiated, is when you stack books so the titles on their spines form a poem, or a mini-story, etc. It also has the more transparent name book spine poetry. It’s a fun game – and...
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Non-apologies and their many names
Non-apologies are a curious beast. I mean the kind of statement that purports to be an apology – e.g. for bad behaviour or hurtful remarks – but isn’t a sincere apology at all. Linguistically and...
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Link love: language (60)
It’s been almost three months since the last collection of language links: definitely time for another. There are lots, so get comfy and don’t read them all at once. The Historical Thesaurus of English...
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Signing and sociolinguistics in Ed McBain’s ‘Axe’
I went on a binge of Ed McBain’s crime fiction recently, enjoying his keen ear for language and tight storytelling style. Below are three language-themed excerpts from Axe, written in 1964, which...
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Banned words and flat adverbs
‘Banning’ words is not an impulse I can relate to. My recent post at Macmillan Dictionary Blog, The vogue for banning words, takes issue with this popular practice: Lists of words to ban make effective...
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Strong Language: A sweary blog about swearing
I rarely post here twice in one day, but I have some news to share: Strong Language is a new group blog about swearing set up by sesquiotic linguist James Harbeck and me. This is how it started. As...
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“Nope” intensifies, diversifies grammatically
Remember the transformation of fail and win 5–6 years ago? Fleeting online slang phrases like bucket of fail and made of win may sound dated now, but terms like epic fail/win and FTW (“for the win”)...
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Link love: language (61)
It’s a couple of months since I did a language linkfest, so before it gets out of hand again here’s a selection of linguistic and word-related items I’ve enjoyed over the last while. A dictionary of...
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Do be doing be’s: habitual aspect in Irish English
She be’s out on that bike every Sunday They do be up late chatting Everyone knows about grammatical tense – it involves placing a situation in time, using inflections and auxiliaries to mark temporal...
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Strong Language 2: Swear Harder
Back in December I introduced Strong Language, a new group blog about the use, culture, and linguistics of profanity cooked up by James Harbeck and me. While some of you are now regular readers, others...
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Cutthroat compounds in English morphology
A houseboat is a type of boat; a boathouse is a type of house. This illustrates a common pattern in English morphology: the rightmost part of a compound (houseboat) is usually the ‘head’. In other...
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Gender differences in listening signals
Deborah Tannen, in her 1991 book You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation,* describes how easy it is for a speaker to get the wrong idea about a listener’s behaviour if the listener is...
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