Language: Dialects of North America

From the drawl of a Texan to the dry delivery of a Bostonian, from a Newfoundlander through to a person living on the west coast, we know there are differences in the way we speak across North America. But just how many dialects and variations are there? How many dialects are out there?

If you want to explore the regional flavours of English across North America I can suggest no better place than North American English Dialects, Based on Pronunciation Patterns on Aschmann.net. Not only is there a map of all the regional dialects (with the appropriate details and differences listed) but for almost every region there is a link to a speaker of that dialect. Thanks to youtube and the rest of the web it's possible to get good samples of what the differences are. Most of the clips were recorded for other reasons and not as samples of dialects. Which makes them perfect for hearing people just talking as they normally would.

What's most impressive of all is that the entire page is a hobby. It's a sideline. But what a sideline. Computers and the internet allow anyone with a passion and an interest to collect, write, catalog, and then share their interest with everyone else. This is another incredible piece of the Longer Web.

Math: A Classic Reborn

All the talk of the long S last week reminded me of a classic math book. Actually it's a classic version of a classic text.

Euclid's Elements is a 13 book classic on geometry and math. In 1847 Oliver Byrne created a version of the first 6 books in which he used colours to indicate the different elements in a drawing instead of using letters and other labels. A scanned public domain version of the book is available thanks to the Mathematics Department of the University of British Columbia.

It may take a few minutes to get to used to the long Ss but after that... it's relatively smooth sailing. Now why didn't texts like this end up as part of my education?

Language: A Geek's Genre - Science Fiction

Every so often someone predicts that the genre of science fiction is dead or dying. It's become so cliche to assume that science fiction is not relevant or interesting anymore that Salon has an article entitled Is Science Fiction Dying?. Yet far from being a polemic against modern sci-fi or another death knell for the genre it is instead an example of the science fiction fan's third favourite pastime.

The first is reading science fiction and the second is commenting or arguing over science fiction.

The third favourite pastime of science fiction fans is categorizing science fiction and making endless lists. In the article Paul Di Fillippo surveys some recent books that fall under several categories. Going down that list I've added a few more books to my "to eventually read" list.

Should you doubt that science fiction fans spend time categorizing and listing may I present a perfect example of the lengths to which fans will go. The Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide looks like it hasn't been updated in several years. That doesn't make it any less the resource though. Starting from lists of authors (over 3,200) it includes lists of themes, magazine, and more. There is the obligatory lists of movies and tv shows as well.

One of the real treasures is the science fiction timeline. Starting century by century, and then decade by decade there are long detailed lists to get one thinking and reading. Lists of the major books released, authors who were born or died, tv shows and movies from the decade, and more. Between the book lists and the key dates you have the details to much of the history of science fiction.

While short and succinct there are wonderful little details everywhere. Many of the entries for individual books released in a year have short tidbits underneath. Sometimes mentioning the themes and the ideas involved, other times talking about the authors, and other times just pointing something out you may not have known. Here are a few examples from the 1960s:

1961 Stanislaw Lem: "Solaris" (Poland: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo) Intelligent extraterrestrial ocean is metaphysically beyond the attempts of humans to fathom in this enigmatic novel, made into a superior Russian film {hotlink to be done}

1962 Philip K. Dick: "The Man in the High Castle" (New York: Putnam) Arguably the greatest alternate history ("parahistory) novel. Here, the Germans and Japanese occupy a balkanized America, having won World War II. In a book-within-the-book, a novelist writes about an alternate world where America had won World War II. This Hugo Award-winner was written with the aid of chance or synchronicity (with Dick casting the "I Ching") and it has a nuanced view of Eastern and Western cultures. A disturbing and yet strangely uplifting masterpiece. 

1970 Poul Anderson: "Tau Zero" (Garden City NY: Doubleday) The greatest novel based on Einstein's Theory of Relativity and a modern conception of cosmology. Finalist for 1970 Hugo Award for Best Novel

The Multitude of entries like these are enough to make one realize just how much great science fiction has been written. Even if the naysayers are correct and science fiction is dead or dying there is so much to read and enjoy and think about that it will never truly leave us.

Language: When Hack Writing Becomes Popular

Quick. Think of a book you loved as a child. One that entranced you, that you reread several times. One that made an impact on your formative years.

Have you ever gone back and read that book again? This time as an older, more mature, and hopefully wiser person?

Sometimes books stand up to the test of time. Other times we wonder how we even put up with them. We see how bad they were. How inane. How insipid. How uninspired.

Back in 2005 Gene Weingarten wrote about the awful books (as in awfully popular and awfully badly written) in the Hardy Boys series. The Hardy Boys The Final Chapter.... is a look at the true story behind a series that has captured boys imaginations for generations.

The article succinctly covers why I tend not to reread any of my childhood favourites. They almost never live up to what we remember.

Language: Talking at Cross Purposes...

For anyone who thinks language is easy to understand and the English language in particular... may I simply present Abbot and Costello's Who's On First.

No wonder computers can't understand human language. What chance do they have when we can't do it ourselves?

Language: It's Not Just What You Say, It's How You Say It

I suppose that we're spoiled for choice when it comes to putting our ideas on paper or on screen. Just look at the number of fonts you have at your disposal. You can be serious, silly, or fanciful. You can evoke a past period, make things look modern, or strive for a futuristic look. Even choosing among bloggers few available fonts took me a while. The typeface something is written in makes a difference.

Most of us choose our typefaces for completely new writing or works. What happens when someone needs to choose a typeface to emulate the past? What happens when someone is tasked with faking a piece of the past and making it authentic?

Welcome to the world of movies and television set in the past. It turns out that set and prop designers don't always get period details correct. Typecasting: The Use (and Misuse) of Period Typography in Movies over at Mark Simonson Studio looks at some of the attempts to recreate the past. He's subsequently followed Typecasting with a series of blog entries under the category of Son of Typecasting.

I'm not sure I'll ever catch myself complaining about fonts in movies but I'm glad someone is paying attention.

Language: The School Essay or How To Say Nothing

We've all had to write essays for school. We all sat down at a screen and keyboard, or a typewriter, or with a pad of paper and... and... wondered what to do next to get this assignment over with. There were times when I didn't know what to do next. You probably found yourself in a similar situation once or twice. Luckily there's help.

Paul Roberts wrote books on linguistics and language all while teaching English to college students. If there is anyone more qualified to help you write an essay I don't know who it is. So may I present his classic entitle How to Say Nothing in 500 Words.

Language: Putting Words to Use

Think of some of the uses of language. Think of how great ideas and concepts can be shared amongst people. Then think of some of the seemingly less great uses of the English language.

Like computer and software documentation.

Well let me be fair. Amongst all the horrible documentation there are some very good ones. But I don't want to point you to some good documentation and say that's that. I'd rather point you towards some writing on how to create good documentation instead.

First up is Writing Great Documentation by Jacob Kaplan-Moss. Next up is Brian Forte's How to write really good documentation: Four rules and an axiom which takes us through the rewrite of a couple problematic paragraphs while explaining good documentation.

Lastly there is Writing and Programming - Next of Kin from techwriter.dk which summarizes something I've said for years. That writing and programming use the same parts of your brain and follow the same sort of steps. I've used programming to explain writing to techies and writing to explain programming to non-techies. They really are next of kin.

Language: Can You Know Too Much About a Poem?

On one of my many bookshelves sitting side by side are several books that explain writings in their historical context. The Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner explores the classic work by Lewis Carroll while Asimov's Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan takes a look at the context of Gilbert and Sullivan's light operas.

I find both books, and several more like them, incredible reading. Regardless of how well I think I knew those texts having details and context makes them all the more interesting to read. Context adds to my appreciation and understanding of the text.

This isn't just post modern deconstruction of the texts. This is placing a text and its author into its original time and place.

But how much background detail and explanation is too much? At what point do scholars add more to the work than the author intended or understood? Just because an author likes to mention flowers does it have to have some significant meaning? How much is too much?

I raise these questions because there is a fantastically detailed exploration of T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland. Richard A. Parker notes that:

Since T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land was first published in 1922 readers have had difficulty following the poem (and thus, in many cases, considering it rubbish). Part of the difficulty in understanding The Waste Land is due to Eliot's use of allusion. By taking the view that allusion is actually a different form of hyperlinking I have translated The Waste Land into a hyperlinked presentation.

And what a presentation he leaves us with. It's a view of the poem with details of allusions, seemingly endless cross references, comparisons of the finished poem to Eliot's draft, and much more. More information than you might have thought possible.

But is it too much? Of course one can just read the poem without the additional notes and explanations and just be left as befogged as one was before. Shouldn't there be a more gentle guide to The Wasteland? Something between the poem itself and a scholarly masterpiece?

Or should we leave poems without explanation and without exploration of the poet's use of allusion, metaphor, and the knowledge people would have had back when the poem was written? I find myself wanting to find the middle ground. Maybe someone can explain and introduce the great poetry of past ages without making me feel like there's volumes of explanation behind every line.

Language: The Power of Words - Journalism

Great words change the world. Great poems and prose have had a lasting impact. But what about journalism? The words of the fourth estate can change the world. It can be a noble enterprise. It can also be a for profit business that isn't always so noble. Either way it represents one of the most powerful uses of language.

Two articles caught my eye on journalism. Two articles on completely different aspects of journalism they somehow manage to remind me how powerful stories, ideas, and words can be.

You'll never mistake the words used by the National Enquirer as belonging to any other publication. Given a few minutes I'm sure you could write up a headline or two that could only come from that tabloid. It has a rhythm and style of its own. It also seems to operate in a world of its own. A world of scandals and the most outrageous stories.

It's hard to believe that it was in the running for a Pulitzer prize. In All The Dirt That's Fit To Print Alex Pappademas tells of the story that was up for the Pulitzer, the particular culture of the Enquirer, and gives us a little bit of history along the way.

The second story is about television news. Or more importantly about a particular television news channel. The Most Hated Name in News by Deborah Campbell is about Al Jazeera English (AJE). The main angle of the story is about Tony Burman. A Canadian with impecable journalistic credentials has moved from the CBC to AJE. The man who not only broke the story of the Ethiopian famine to North American audiences but also helped put a face on the famine with some truly unforgettable images.

Whether written in a tabloid or spoken on a 24 hour news channel some of the most important words of our time are the words of journalists. For every politician, for every press release, for every great work of fiction, for every poem or song, for every bit of satire and parody, and for every bit of spin we should be lucky enough to have good journalists putting out their own powerful words.

Language: You say Tomato and I Say...

I keep forgetting the spoken word. When I think of language I tend to think of writing. Prose and/or poetry. The majesty of the written, or typed, word. I keep forgetting the spoken word.

There's a whole different dimension to the spoken word. There's pronunciation involved. How one says the word and which sounds are used make up an important part of spoken word that is hard to capture in prose. It's not only hard to capture different dialects and pronunciations when writing prose it's also hard to capture what's happening to dialects and pronunciation all around us.

Which is where the Dialect Survey comes in. Or more specifically the results of the survey. This survey was conducted earlier in the decade and the results are for the continental US only but... I warn you you could get lost in the results of this survey for several reasons. First there is the geographic spread of how various words sound but mainly it's the questions themselves.

How did the writers of the survey determine which pronunciations to track? How did they decide on which  word usages to look at? The questions themselves are fascinating.

My other question is whether this research has been followed up. Can we start seeing trends and changes in usage and dialect? Or will there at least be other similar surveys by others which will allow us to watch the English language change over time?

Will surveys like this help us remember what we all used to sound like decades ago before English slowly but surely changed all around us?

Language: Correcting English

I've grown used to it online. I'm sure I've even contributed to it online. We put up with much more than we used to. The internet has lowered our threshold for correct English.

I do my best to be grammatically correct. I try to go beyond simple spellchecking. I try to give some polish to my posts. However I realize that I'm not a great self-editor. I glance over my words and tend to miss obvious errors because I know what's supposed to be there.

I've never had my writing picked apart and corrected by a talented copy editor. I'm not sure I want to go through the experience as it would most likely convince me I don't know how to use English at all.

Copy editing is a particular skill. One I haven't mastered and one I don't think I have the knack for. It must take a certain mindset and a certain set of skills that I don't have. So reading about Copy Editing at The New Yorker with Mary Norris gave me new insight into how much writing can be improved by a good editor. I have to stick with self-editing for now but I'll try to do a better job of it.

Language: Correct English?

English, like all languages, is slowly changing over time. Since English is widespread and absorbs other influences with a vengeance it's probably more likely to change. Some words and phrases change their meanings. Others words and phrases get changed because people aren't familiar with the words.

I came across a perfect example during a conference call recently. The call was between four groups of people spread out across half of Canada. Since this was the first meeting each group gave a quick background and rundown of their situation. The first person to speak up started by saying that she'd moved to Canada six years ago and that she was from the United States. She'd moved to the province her husband was born and raised in. Nice to see that people migrate across the border in both directions.

At one point during the call she mentioned one problem that her group was having that "wrecked havoc". In the conference room we were on mute and someone else in the room said that "wrecked havoc" was a particularly American version of "wreaked havoc".

I dug around a little. As far as I can tell the original is wreaked havoc. Wrecked is an incorrect substitution. My own guess is that wrecked is a much more popular and much more used word than wreaked so over time there's been a switch. In the long wrong "wrecked havoc" may well turn out to become correct usage. At the moment it's considered incorrect.

Which leads me to the interesting question of which errors are real and which errors are English in flux? Do we just accept errors or do we hold on to much of what makes English interesting and powerful by sticking to correct usage and correct meanings?

I don't know the answer. English will certainly change and evolve but hopefully much of its strength and power in having so many specific terms and turns of phrase will remain. I'm not a fan of simplified English.

If you want to see a large list of English errors the place to go is Paul Brians' Common Errors in English Usage pages. Not only is there a large list of words that are incorrectly used and a list of the commonly misspelled words but he has a list of non-errors as well. His entry on how "wreaking havoc" is incorrectly used uses "wrecking havoc" as the minor error. The glaring error is "reeking havoc".

He also has a good set of links to other resources. If you want to range far and wide wrecking/reeking and/or wrecking havoc with the English language he will give you plenty of places to start.

References like Paul Brians' may not correct English usage. They may not stop English from changing in ways many of us feel is incorrect or wrong. They will help document how the language is being misused and misunderstood now. Which may help others in the future when they try and understand what we are saying and writing now.

Language: The Language of Science Humour

We all know how science progresses. We read about it every day. In fact... we're so familiar with the language and the forms of progress that we instantly know when they're being spoofed spectacularly. It's nice to realize that even science has its own special and recognizable language.

Step one... after the research is done... the scientific paper must be written. The best illustration of this is the aptly named Chicken Chicken Chicken: Chicken Chicken (pdf) by Doug Zongker. If you've never read a scientific paper before I suggest you start here. If you have read a scientific paper before I insist you read this one as well.

Step two... the findings must be presented to a conference of fellow scientists. It's a short presentation. I do suggest you stick around for the questions. Not only is the source of funding challenged but an important question is raised which demands a follow up by the Doug Zongker.

Step three... a scientific paper is read by a journalist who shares the findings in a newspaper article. The article will be formulaic and predictable but it will be all most people will ever read.

There. Now you know how to write your own scientific paper, how to present it, and how to have it written up. Just do a search and replace for some key words and you too can write your way to scientific superstardom.

Language: Nothing Wrong With Being Homophonic

Howard L. Chace, a professor of romance languages at Miami University, wrote a story in the early 1940s. He wrote a story in which he substituted the sounds of the words with slightly different ones. English is such a versatile language with so many words of so many sounds that it wasn't hard to come up with substitutes. Originally it was a story based on the idea that war time deprivations might have to extend to the spoken word. To quote the professor:

I wrote it about 1940. It was going to be part of a little article I was writing. It was in the days of rationing during the war and I thought about what would happen if we had to ration language. If our vocabulary were cut in half, we'd have to get along with other words. Consequently, I thought I'd see how you'd get along with the other half. I've never written that article, but I've always thought of doing it.

The story he wrote was a retelling of the tale of a young girl who visits her grandmother who lives in a dark wood. You might recognize the girl in question. She had a particular taste in cape and cap. The girl in question is, of course, "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut".

I taught French, and I used the story in my class to show the importance of intonation in learning a foreign language. You see, if you take these English words and put them in columns like a spelling book and just read them, they have no meaning. However, if you read them with the proper intonation, the meaning appears for certain people. For other people the meaning never does appear.

On today's web you may occasionally hear a tale of someone who posts something and it just takes off. It becomes popular and takes on a life of it's own without any help. This happened in the case of "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut" years before the web came around.

I never submitted it to anybody, but it got spread some way or other. It's one of those things that got completely out of control. I showed it to a few friends and to a book salesman who came to see me. He liked the thing because it had to do with words. I think I may have given him a copy, and he must have given it to someone else. It first appeared in print in the Merriam Company's magazine Word Study. I think it got in Stars and Stripes (U.S. Army newspaper) because I heard from people in Baghdad, Sweden, all over the world. Sports Illustrated found it in another publication and gave me $1000 for it. Arthur Godfrey found it in Sports Illustrated, and he broadcast it and very generously told any readers that wanted a copy they could have one by sending me postage. To my surprise, I mailed about five thousand of them. After that episode, Prentice Hall asked me to write a series of stories for a book, which I did.

The book of stories was called Anguish Languish. It not only contained Ladle Rat Rotten Hut but also other Furry Tells and some classic Noisier Rams by Mother Goose, some Fey-Mouse Tells, and Lath Thing Thumb Thongs. Of the songs... may I suggest Hormone Derange.

The trick to reading homophonic stories is to read them out loud and not think to much about the meaning of the words themselves. Just let them roll off your tongue and let your mind transpose the words to the ones you really need. It also may be easier to listen to the story being read to you. That way you don't get caught up in what the words mean and you tend to listen to the sounds they make instead. Give a listen to a version of Ladle Rat Rotten Hut and see if it makes sense to you.

Language: Anything New Under the Sun?

Continuing with the theme of education since it's early September and school is just about to start here's something I found on originality.

A couple of years ago the IRC chat channel running for people who like the XKCD webcomic site started an experiment. In order to increase the general level of discourse they programmed a bot (a computer program) to watch an moderate everything that is being typed in the chat channel. The primary purpose of the bot is to collect and remember everything that has been typed and to punish anyone who types a sentence that has been entered before.

Yes... punished. Type anything that has been typed before and you're muted for two seconds. For two seconds you can't type. The second time it's four seconds. Then eight. Then sixteen. Every six hours your punishment time decays by half for the next time you violate the rules.

The intent is to force people to type interesting and original sentences. "Yeah" is going to get you muted. Any longer and more interesting phrase is much more likely to be original. You can read all about it in ROBOT9000 and #xkcd-signal: Attacking Noise in Chat.

If you think about it all the bot is doing is preventing plagiarism by punishing violators. Of course a person who logs on to a chat channel isn't expected to know everything that's been typed before. So the problem on the xkcd chat channel is not so much plagiarism as it is an overabundance of inane conversation.

Plagiarism is a problem in schools though. Thanks to technology much like the bot written for xkcd it's also easier to catch than ever before. Actually... thanks to something as simple as a Google search a person who suspects a phrase or paragraph isn't original to a student can find it almost immediately. Not only can students find information (which they may decide to copy verbatim) but the schools and teachers can spot the copies quite easily. The results could end up being an arms race between the cheats and the schools.

Luckily there are people like Steven Dutch to help stop the war from getting out of hand. Steven Dutch teaches natural and applied sciences at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay. He wrote Sense and Nonsense about Plagiarism. An article I wish all students and teachers would read.

Language: Where Does The Alphabet Come From?

From the earliest impressions on clay and the first scratchings on flat surfaces we've somehow gotten from the idea of a symbol for something to the idea of symbols for sounds.

It's a long and convoluted story and one that fascinates me. Besides the bookshelves of books on language I have a collection of books on how writing developed and changed over time. So it's a topic near and dear to my heart.

Lene passed along a link to a nice overview from ilovetypography. The origins of abc gives a overview of the history of writing. At least the history of writing words. I also found a good overview of the history of numbers in a powerpoint presentation by Tope Omitola and Sam Staton.

We've come a long way from impressions on clay yet it's amazing how similar things are. Turn ideas, words, and sounds into little pictures, pictograms, or symbols. Several thousand years later we've taken that basic idea and hopefully refined it and made it more expressive.

Language: What if I Have More Than One?

English may not be the hardest language to learn but it certainly has its quirks. The rules for plurals are one of the areas where there are a lot of those quirks. There are more than a few places that will give you the the rules. On top of the rules you need to worry about the exceptions.

While the rules for plurals and the exceptions are important for using English properly. That's not the only reason I link to them. The real reason is because of cephalopods.

I really do like the video Oktapodi. If you haven't seen it give it a look. A charming story of the lengths one octopus will go to save its mate. Which leads to an important question: If you have more than one octopus what do you call them?

When in doubt... ask an editor at a dictionary.

Language: Choice of Words is Important

If you're trying to convince people of something you have to choose the right words. The choice of words can make something sound better than it is.

So changing the words is important to help make your case. One important case is the one about what we should feed our infants. Breasts vs. bottles is an old and ongoing debate. Language in the debate can change everyone's perspective. Watch Your Language! by Diane Wiessinger from the Journal of Human Lactation points out how important language can be.

Now the article is very interesting and has a lot to say about how choosing words is important but... and there is a but. Her view on how men and women handle guilt drives me crazy. If the same paragraphs were written by a man we'd all call the author sexist. That aside the article's main point can be extended to almost any other place where you're trying to choose the right words to make your point.

It's better to make the 'other' option sound second rate than to make 'your' option superior. A lesson on language we can all learn from.

Language: English as a Second Language

Tuesday's new topic is Language. Writing, Grammar, Publishing, Printing, and anything else related to English and it's usage.

I'm unilingual. English is the only language at which I'm proficient - and I've been known to lose even English at times. I certainly can't even pretend to be fluent in any other language. Unlike myself most English speakers in the world have learned English as a second language. The numbers show 330 million people in the world who speak English as their first language. 580 million have English as a secondary language.

So how does one learn English as a second language?

One answer comes from a blogger who calls himself The Korean. He charmingly uses the third person to refer to himself. On his blog Ask a Korean! he wrote a post called The Korean's English Acquisition, and the Best Method to Master a Foreign Language, Guaranteed.

The short version? It takes work. The long version? Don't ask me... go read The Korean. It's well worth it.