Category Archives: Language
Lolling all over the world
From Swedish radio’s Språket I’m glad to hear that there’s now a Swedish verb “lolla” – to LOL. Swedish language purists are probably tearing their hair out, but it made me grin. Not only have they adopted an abbreviation for … Continue reading
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Comme une langue Étrangère
For the past three months, I’ve been spending a short time each day learning French. Why? Well, first you have to understand why not. I don’t completely lack a background in French… like just about every British schoolkid, I learned … Continue reading
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Alf Clausen and the Simpsons
Working through the vast backlog of “ooh, that looks interesting” podcasts I’ve downloaded recently, I found a great little feature on Alf Clausen, composer of all the background and incidental music on “The Simpsons”… basically, everything except for Danny Elfman’s … Continue reading
Posted in Art/Culture, Language, Music
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Paul Ford’s Passivator
Ouch. I like to think that I have a competent grasp of my native language, even though I don’t claim to be a virtuoso performer. I’m not a writer, as such. Well, I’m a writer in that part of my … Continue reading
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Soon, you’ll all be using this word
Blog. Blogging. Blogger. See Jack blog. For a hobby/fad/lifestyle choice which is (or isn’t, depending on who you believe) taking the materialistic portion of the world by storm, it’s a pretty stupid name. Childishly lopping off an unwanted syllable isn’t … Continue reading
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Subtitling vs Dubbing
A few days ago I mentioned (or rather hinted at) my preference for subtitling foreign-language films, rather than dubbing them. Maybe it’s because my interests lie more with sound than vision, I dunno, but sound is an important aspect of … Continue reading
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The right to offend
But seriously… the Kilroy thing annoyed me in one particular way. It’s not the first time he’s made seriously prejudiced comments in the press, but so what? A failed MP, low-grade journalist and irrelevant daytime TV presenter? No biggie. The … Continue reading
Posted in Language, Politics
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The euphemised language of war
Lubin Odana writes of the effect of war on language. We’ve already had the eye-popping stupidity of Freedom Fries, but look out for lots of euphemistical and tactical mangling of the English language during the coming days/months/years (delete as fatalistically … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism, Language, Politics
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Freedom fries
Via Michael Pierry in the alt.music.mike-keneally newsgroup comes the story of freedom fries. If there are any French people reading this blog, I suggest you go out and burn down your local McDonalds.
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The voice on the Tannoy tells me to Hoover up the Biros
Call me naive, but I like it when people I admire and respect keep on doing more things that make me admire and respect them. In most cases, I’ve been lucky. Even when my favourite musicians, authors, actors or even … Continue reading
Posted in Language, Technology
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