National Grammar Day
I'm reliably informed that today is National Grammar Day: Language is something to be celebrated, and March 4 is the perfect day to do it. It's not only a date, it's an imperative: March forth on March 4 to speak well, write well, and help others do the same! Inspired by this, Alex Knapp's "He Got Hung" post, and an off-topic discussion ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 4, 2010 13:32
Newspapers Need Better Writing
In a devastating takedown, Michael Kinsley argues that one reason print journalism is struggling is that its writing is "encrusted with conventions that don’t add to your understanding of the news" whereas we on the Web "get to the point." Among these are the inverted pyramid style, use of quotations that say nothing newsworthy, and hype language that adds nothing ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on January 5, 2010 16:31
Web’s Latin-Only Policy Ending
Starting in two weeks, users from countries who don't use the Latin alphabet will find using the Internet much easier, FT reports. Latin script’s monopoly in internet domain names will end next month, a development that could usher in a fresh wave of internet usage from Bulgaria to China. So far, finding web addresses has required some basic familiarity with Latin letters ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 30, 2009 14:28
How to Pronounce ‘2010′
The gang at Esquire give some thought to a question that will soon be everywhere: How will we pronounce the year 2010? Twenty ten Suggested. Two thousand ten Eh. Two zero one zero Amusing but impractical. Two oh ten Come on. Ten Nah. Really, the first two are the only plausible options. My preference is for the first. During the last century, we pronounced years ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 19, 2009 12:54
Public Option a Loser, Choice a Winner
A bipartisan NBC News poll shows that only 36 percent of Americans think "Barack Obama's health care plan" is a "good idea" even though 51 percent approve of the job he is doing as president. In the same survey, 43 percent favor "creating a public health care plan administered by the federal government that would compete directly with private health ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 21, 2009 08:35
Australia Native Language Bailout
"Australia has pledged 7.8 million US dollars this year to help save more than 100 indigenous languages which are in grave danger of dying out," AFP reports. Arts Minister Peter Garrett said the money would be spent on translation services, tests for children and a feasibility study for a national centre for Aboriginal languages. "These languages are... a significant part of ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 10, 2009 15:13
More on the Honduran Crisis
I was able to find the exact text of the plebiscite that Manuel "Mel" Zelaya wanted to proffer to the citizens of Honduras this past Sunday. The text and a photo of the ballot that was to be used can be found here. The odd thing, and a fact that hasn't made it into a lot of press accounts or ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 30, 2009 12:24
Language Shapes Thought
Stanford neuroscientist Lera Boroditsky passes along the consensus in her field that "people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world." She provides a fascinating example: Follow me to Pormpuraaw, a small Aboriginal community on the western edge of Cape York, in northern Australia. I came here ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 29, 2009 08:53
English Iran’s Lingua Franca
Hilzoy and Andrew Sullivan pass along this interesting tidbit from Slate's Christopher Beam: Post-election protests continued in Tehran for the fifth day on Wednesday. In many photos, riot police wear uniforms with the English word police on them. Ambulances, too, bear the word ambulance in English. Why not use Persian words instead of their English equivalents? Because everyone knows English. Like many ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 18, 2009 08:01
Bloomsday Honors Book No One Reads
NPR has an amusing bit on "Morning Edition" by Rob Gifford on Bloomsday, the annual festival wherein "Thousands of people descend on Dublin each June 16th to celebrate Joyce's epic novel Ulysses by recreating the events in the book. The novel chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin on a single day — June 16, 1904 — a day, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 17, 2009 09:01
Obama ‘Fires’ Gay Arabic Linguist
UCSB political scientist Aaron Belkins' HuffPo piece "Obama To Fire His First Gay Arabic Linguist" has drawn quite a bit of blogospheric attention. Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and officer in the Army National Guard who is fluent in Arabic and who returned recently from Iraq, received notice today that the military is about to fire him. Why? Because he ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 8, 2009 07:34
Obama Winners and Losers
I mentioned Newt Gingrich's article "Are You an Obama Winner? Or an Obama Loser?" at the tail end of Wednesday's episode of OTB Radio ("Republican Party, RIP?") but never got around to blogging it. It is both a classic Frank Luntz-inspired use of obnoxious language to paint a dire picture of the Democrats -- and thereby quite amusing -- and ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 8, 2009 06:31
Not Enough Pashto Speakers but Pashto is Not Enough
Stephen Walt repeats the popular lament (and specifically Gareth Porter's) that the United States Government employs a ridiculously small number of Pashto speakers and that this negatively impacts us in Afghanstan. Pat Porter agrees but issues some important caveats: 1) Languages are extremely hard to develop at a sufficient level. Except for the most outrageously talented, most folk can study intensively ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 4, 2009 06:14
Obama on That Awful Austrian Language
Barack Obama doesn't know what the word for "wheeling and dealing" is in "Austrian." Naturally, this verbal faux pax is generating some good natured ribbing from Glenn Reynolds, Ed Morrissey, and others. Kate McMillan awards Quote of the Week honors to Mark Steyn for "We now know that Barack Obama, who urged us all to learn a second language, does not ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 7, 2009 08:05
Do Zeroes Cure Inumeracy?
Janet Beihoffer has a modest proposal for cutting federal spending and generally restoring some sanity to our financial life. A simple but effective approach may be to include all the zeroes in these bills, current and future. Far too many people hear "million" and "billion" and "trillion" and simply don't understand the magnitude of these numbers. [...] A wake-up call occurred with one ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 17, 2009 12:36
