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 an English phrase, they’ve taken it from written language to spoken language, where it’s now [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Language'
Comme une langue Étrangère
May 27th, 2006 · 2 Comments · Language
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 French from the start of high school, continuing up to O Level standard. However, by [...]
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Alf Clausen and the Simpsons
May 4th, 2006 · No Comments · Art/Culture, Language, Music
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 title music. I’ve always been intrigued by the process of creating music around the structure [...]
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Paul Ford’s Passivator
March 29th, 2004 · No Comments · Language
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 work involves writing for a guitar magazine, but I’m not a Writer. Nonetheless, I like [...]
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Soon, you’ll all be using this word
March 23rd, 2004 · No Comments · Language
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 generally a sure-fire way of creating a great buzzword (yes, you people who refer to [...]
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Subtitling vs Dubbing
February 2nd, 2004 · No Comments · Art/Culture, Language
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 cinema for me. Even in the most sympathetically and accurately dubbed dialogue, there are nuances [...]
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The right to offend
January 15th, 2004 · No Comments · Language, Politics
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 annoying thing is the impassioned defence of “Free Speech” which has blown up in the [...]
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The euphemised language of war
March 20th, 2003 · No Comments · Journalism, Language, Politics
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 applicable). On BBC Radio 4′s Today programme this morning, James Naughtie interviewed Democrat Congressman Brad [...]
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Freedom fries
March 11th, 2003 · No Comments · Language
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
February 26th, 2003 · No Comments · Language, Technology
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 friends have done things I haven’t really appreciated on an aesthetic level, I’ve generally been [...]
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