12571 items (10055 unread) in 90 feeds
Photos from chai wallah's contacts
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Fed by Birds
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Diary at the Centre of the Earth
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Architectures of Control in Design
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aviary.dk
Rogue Semiotics
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heyoka (slowlight)
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unlixes!
(1 unread)
baraquel
de vertalerin
blue cat
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max richter: blog
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static caravan
michael
Stephen Fry
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Times Online | Games & Puzzles | Polygon
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[london] smog
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et cetera
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dhammarati
The language of cities
(82 unread)
the national bibliographical society
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Speechification
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separated by a common language
(56 unread)
melinede [flickr]
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nicolasix [flickr]
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nicolasix: seventhirty - 365x2 [flickr]
Muxtape
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London Cycle Chic
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polysemic
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Spaghetti Junction Style
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stitches and hos
what was my name again !
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HEL LOOKS
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languagehat.com
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Moustaches
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cloudpilot
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Language Log
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Tim Johnson
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Homologue
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Holdings
My phonetic blog
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PONY AND PINK
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swords and dreams
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needled
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neat but not gaudy
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howies - brainfood
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Fighting Tiger
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A Simple Apology feed
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riks raks poks
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grammatolatry
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Things Of Interest
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BIG CHILL DIARY
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honkjazz - The Musical Allotment (a story by Herbert Westchester & Brazil Banks)
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Between things
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Phonology
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Kemp Folds
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ACE dance and music
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Archival Sounds
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One & Other / participants / sarra
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Making a Slow Revolution
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Bluestocking Blog
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Going Underground's Blog
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red deer club / Latest Releases
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Red Deer Club Recordings's MySpace Blog
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SEEING IS STEALING
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gathered.
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More Canals than Venice
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Thenewcomer's Weblog
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Sharon O'Dea
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The Event
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curatorcharlie
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my ideal novel
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Going Postal
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superuseless superpowers
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Militant Medical Nurse
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Edible Geography
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Paul Evans - he of the recent Shingle Street - turns his talent for atmosphere and listening to nature to fiction, in this disturbing drama in collaboration with frequent Speechification cruch, sound recordist extraordinaire Chris Watson.
Enter the disturbing world of Slaughton Ditch, where an obsession with hidden sounds has terrifying and fatal consequences. [MP3]
I'm interested in the way a whole stratum of the liberal literati (Rushdie, to some extent Ian McEwan, A C Grayling, obviously Amis and Hitchens) - the very people you'd have expected to be guardians of the liberal flame of tolerance and understanding - have, at the very first assault, rushed into these caricatured postures driven by panic. I'm very struck by how those who are making ugly, illiberal, supremacist noises about the superiority of the west are precisely the sort of literary and liberal characters from whom you'd expect more imagination, openness and sensitivity...
There are some nice examples in Leah Rozen, "Hey, Ryan, Talk to the Dress", NYT 2/10/2010:
RYAN, Ryan, Ryan. It’s Journalism 101: who, what, when, where and why, as in, “Who are you wearing?” […]
Susan Kaufman, editor of People StyleWatch, said she lost it when Mr. Seacrest didn’t immediately quiz an elegant-looking Sandra Bullock — who would later win as Best Actress — about her shimmery frock (by Marchesa). “I’m screaming at the TV: ‘Ask her who’s she wearing!’ ” Ms. Kaufman said. “I was so angry, my husband was laughing at me.”
Different versions of the same question come up in Elizabeth Wellington, "Mirror, Mirror: So, E!, whatever happened to 'Who are you wearing'?", Philadelphia Inquirer 2/10/2010:
Erica Salmon, president of Mullica Hill-based Red Carpet MVP (formerly the Fantasy Fashion League), wholeheartedly agreed. In the online game that mirrors fantasy football, points are awarded for how many times designers' names are mentioned by the media during red carpet season. The Oscars are the championship game.
"We can't just use E! anymore," said Salmon, who has been forced to use InStyle.com because E! didn't give her players enough information. "Sometimes I wish I had a direct line to Ryan's mike and I'd say, 'Dude, please ask who are they wearing?' " Salmon said. "That's what we need to know."
And dozens of other news outlets are discussing the same question, as they've been doing more and more often over the years (about 35 times more often than "Who are you reading?", apparently). The earliest example in Google's news archive is "Red Carpet, Big Smiles, Tight Security", San Jose Mercury News, 3/26/1991:
Peggy Lipton, Dianne Wiest and a buxom Egyptian model named Kelli fielded the evening's most pressing question: "Who are you wearing?"
However, a search in ProQuest's Historical Newspaper Archive turns up Genevieve Buck, "Chili, Bud kick off Chicago fashions", Chicago Tribune 4/11/1984:
"Who are you wearing?" turned out to be the game of the evening.
So (pending Ben Zimmer's discovery of a citation in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's diary) it appears that this is an expression that emerged in the 1980s in a general fashion-show context, and became a touchstone of Oscar-night reportage at some point over the past decade or two.
It also turns out that Who Are You Wearing? was a reality TV show, as of a couple of years ago. Somehow, I managed to miss it.
Dan Parry-Jones is a Bristol based illustrator. He is one of the artists showing this week-end at the Affordable Art Fair in Battersea.
1541 posted a photo:
On the 31st of March, the Itchy Chin Club will be discussing Capitalist Realism by recent RSB interviewee Mark Fisher: Candid Arts Trust Cafe, 3 Torrens St, London, EC1V 1NQ, 6:30pm for a 7pm start.
}{}{}{}{}{}{ posted a photo:
44 pages, 4.5" x 5.5"
xeroxed and original drawings, hand-colored lithograph cover with screen-printed sleeve.
edition of 10
edenve.bigcartel.com
more pictures here: www.edenveaudry.com/eden%20veaudry/m1.html
}{}{}{}{}{}{ posted a photo:
44 pages, 4.5" x 5.5"
xeroxed and original drawings, hand-colored lithograph cover with screen-printed sleeve.
edition of 10
edenve.bigcartel.com
more pictures here: www.edenveaudry.com/eden%20veaudry/m1.html
More rhetorical analysis-by-synthesis here.
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Pete Ashton posted a photo:
"Extreme optical noise" artist Atsuhiro Ito playing his lightbulb at Vivid.
www.capsule.org.uk/event/atsuhiro-ito-guests
Long exposure with tripod.
Copenhagenize the planet. And have a lovely day.
Back in 2003, Songdog alerted me to a pair of synonyms, gennel and snicket (and the resulting post sparked off almost three years' worth of enjoyable discussion); now he draws my attention to an interesting column by lexicographer Erin McKean (discussed many times on LH, e.g. here and here) about synonyms:
Distinguishing between close synonyms (is the ground marshy or boggy?) is a point of pride for the word-minded, and being able to argue whether someone was nonchalant or blasé is a pleasurable parlor game, made all the more fun by there being no right answer. We may not agree as to the exact shade of difference, but were sure there is one.All well and good, but she goes on to discuss a phenomenon I find bizarre, the attempt to find semantic distinctions between spelling variants:Our desire for each different word to have its own meaning has deep roots. When children first learn language, one of the tenets of the language-acquisition process is a learning strategy called the principle of contrast, which posits that two words should never have the same meaning - and if they do, theres something wrong with one of them. Children internalize this principle and eventually, with enough reinforcement, replace nonstandard forms with the correct ones. When a child says, I did that goodly, an adult will usually respond, Yes, you did that well!, and well eventually bumps goodly from its slot in the childs vocabulary.
lillian may posted a photo:
Please get involved with my new book project, a collection of maps of Bethnal Green drawn purely from memory. And spread the word!
www.lillianwilkie.co.uk/current/
anna.list posted a photo:
George Benson 'Deadset'
Hilton Vasey's 'Tesla Thought Photography Helmut'
Andrew Spackman's 'Foundation Stone' and Lee Stowers' pieces
Anne Guests 'Moth-er Fokkers'
Harry Blackett 'Broken Wing Lucifer Placard'
A few days ago, Cyndy Ning sent me this Website for learning pinyin pronunciation. It has both female and male voices which you can activate by clicking on nánshēng 男声 and nüsheng 女声 just above the initials D, E, and F at the top of the table. I also found similar tables here and here.
This is a neat tool, BUT, in playing around with it, I discovered that nearly all of the 4th tone -ANG syllables in the system come out sounding like -AN. A similar phenomenon holds true for all other 4th tone syllables ending in -NG; that includes -ENG, -IANG, -ING, -IONG, and -ONG, -UANG. This is especially the case with the male voice, where I have to strain very hard to hear even a semblance of a [ŋ] at the end, and sometimes I can't hear it at all. Mind you, this is only on the 4th tone! I can hear the final [ŋ] well enough on all of the other tones spoken by the male voice, and I can even hear it fairly well for 4th tone syllables when listening to the female voice.
I asked many Chinese-speaking friends their opinion about the phantom velar at the end of 4th tone syllables spoken by the male voice. About half of them said it didn't bother them and they thought the male voice was adequate as a model. Some colleagues, however, were more critical. For example, here is what Liwei Jiao had to say:
When I was in China, I was Guo2jia1ji2 Pu3tong1hua4 Shui3ping2 Ce4shi4yuan2 (Tester of Proficiency of Standard Chinese, National Level). According to my training and experience, "bang4, hang4, lang4, qiang4, tang4, wang4, xiang4″ in your link could be judged as "wrong", while "ang4, jiang4, kang4, nang4, pang4, rang4, zang4″ could be judged as "defective". Basically your judgement is correct.
In truth, there seems to be a range of realizations of 4th tone final -NG according to idiolects, sociolects, and topolects. For example, the final velar of 4th tone syllables ending in -NG is clearer on this site with a female voice.
I wonder, though, whether there may not be some physiological-cum-phonological factors at work that lead to the vanishing velar at the end of 4th tone syllables. In particular, the tonal contour is such that it finishes at the very bottom of the speaker's vocal register, and this may make it difficult to clearly and fully enunciate the velar at the end. Bear in mind also that the ending point of the female voice is at a much higher pitch than that of the male voice. All of these factors may be significant in the phonological and acoustic realization of the spoken syllable.
I should also note, along with several of my colleagues, that — particularly with the male voice — the vowel quality changes as the final [ŋ] is reduced.
Moreover, it seems that velars have a tendency to disappear in many other environments beside Mandarin 4th tone final -NG. Here at Language Log, we have recently been discussing G-dropping. And last summer there was an intense debate over whether there really was a velar hidden in the middle of "Uyghur" (here and here). And that segued into an analysis of the missing medial velar in some renderings of yoghurt.
As a sort of addendum to the list of English "pronouncers" for Uyghur that were mentioned in those posts from last summer, I may add that, in the University of Washington announcement for an intensive Uyghur summer program, the suggested pronunciation is ooey-GHUR.
Incidentally, some people seem to think that the medial consonant of "Uyghur" is a voiced uvular fricative [ʁ], while others consider it to be a voiced velar fricative [ɣ]. You can listen to the two sounds on this page (by clicking on the IPA symbol).
You can hear the word "Uyghur" pronounced by a native speaker here. Most educated Uyghurs I know say that their ethnonym should be pronounced with a voiced velar fricative in the middle, but some of my professional phonetician colleagues say that it sounds like a voiced uvular fricative to their ear. And then there are those who swear that there is neither a velar nor an uvular to be heard. How odd that a sound so muscular and substantial as a -GH- has a propensity to vanish into thin air!
A tip of the hat to Jiahong Yuan and John Wells.
Click here to view the embedded video.
This is a sneak preview trailer for a one off exhibition of 3 deckades of skateboard art that howies and Shiners Distribution are curating at howies 62 Queens Road store in Bristol running from April 17th.
Chris Allen of Shiner has kindly agreed to let us have access to their whole archive of decks. We’ve chosen over 200 favourites which will be on show for a month. With boards from every deckade that Shiners have been distributing the biggest names in skateboarding to the british public it will be a treat for any skateboard fan and graphic freak . There will be decks on show from
Dogtown, Sims, Sant Cruz, Powell Peralta, Vision, Schmitt stix, G & S, Zorlac, Alva, Santa Monica Airlines, plus a host of others.
There will also be a series of one off decks painted by guest artists that will be auctioned for unicef at the end of the exhibition. All boards are hand painted, Jim Phillips, Geoff McFetridge, Pete Fowler, French, Kev Grey, Will Barras, Mr Jago, China Mike, Marcus Oakley, Andy J Miller, Chris Bourke, Mr Bingo, Bowlegs, Millie Marotta, Gav Strange, Danny Wainwright, Jethro Haynes and Nigel Peake’s boards will all be on show for the month.
Dont miss it.
"Nation Shudders At Large Block Of Uninterrupted Text", The Onion, 3/9/2010.
Then again…
I still haven’t sold this. But I want it to go to a good home, so im sticking it on here
one more time…
Offers in the region of £400 would be good (although it is valued at more than that).
So feel free to tweet this, re-blog it, tell your friends, tell your brother’s mate’s cousin’s
buddy who collects 80’s bmx’s preferably.
It’s a 1985 Skyway Street Beat in the Green/Purple/White colourway
(as modelled below by the lovely Lydia).
An awesome bike, as ridden by Scottie Freeman and the late
great Neil Ruffell back in the mid 80’s. Original Dia-Compe brakes,
Skyway EZ bars, on Skyway Tuff 11 mags etc..
Looks like it was made yesterday. All built from original 80’s parts.
Now, I know this ain’t the Free-Ads, but If you want it, make me an
offer in the comment section below and I’ll get back to you.
You could be ‘cherry-pickin’ in no time.
R.I.P Neil Ruffell
Gene Buckley quoted this sentence from James R. Glenn, "The Sound Recordings of John P. Harrington: A Report on Their Disposition and State of Preservation", Anthropological Linguistics 33(4): 357-366, 1991:
[NAA] also anticipates that, once data editing is complete, information about both the Harrington sound recordings and photographs will be available on INTERNET, to which the Smithsonian recently subscribed.
Gene noted that the use of INTERNET with no article is an interesting relic of 1991 usage, and observed that for him, ARPANET never made the transition to usage with "the" (or, apparently, to lower case).
I remarked idly that "on INTERNET" is like "on Facebook", "on Google", or "on Language Log", and that when some elderly politician talks about looking something up "on the Google", you know that he doesn't quite Get It.
Geoff Pullum observed that
So Google, Language Log, and cyberspace are like Amsterdam and Vanuatu, while the Internet is like the Hague and the Solomon Islands. As I put it back in 2007 "Language Log is strong".
Now, my default hypothesis is that this is a genuinely arbitrary syntactic distinction. There's no explanation; the functionalists who (doubtless) will run around in circles trying to find a subtle semantic link between all strong proper names, and a subtle distinction between them and weak proper names, will be wasting their time. "The Internet" is a weak proper name, so the definite article is obligatory. End of story.
The question is whether anyone can propose anything to be said about this topic that can enliven my (admittedly rather dull) description and give it some semantic rationale or explanatory oomph. I am betting (though only a modest amount) that the answer is no.
Comments are nevertheless open.
[Further LL discussion can be found here, here, and here. And here.]
[And even if the distinction is an arbitrary one, there may be something to be learned by documenting the process by which recent words changed category, as internet apparently did.]
Gene Buckley quoted this sentence James R. Glenn, "The Sound Recordings of John P. Harrington: A Report on Their Disposition and State of Preservation", Anthropological Linguistics 33(4): 357-366, 1991:
[NAA] also anticipates that, once data editing is complete, information about both the Harrington sound recordings and photographs will be available on INTERNET, to which the Smithsonian recently subscribed.
Gene noted that the use of INTERNET with no article is an interesting relic of 1991 usage, and observed that for him, ARPANET never made the transition to usage with "the" (or, apparently, to lower case).
I remarked idly that "on INTERNET" is like "on Facebook", "on Google", or "on Language Log", and that when some elderly politician talks about looking something up "on the Google", you know that he doesn't quite Get It.
Geoff Pullum observed that
So Google, Language Log, and cyberspace are like Amsterdam and Vanuatu, while the
Internet is like the Hague and the Solomon Islands. As I put it back in 2007 "Language Log is strong".
Now, my default hypothesis is that this is a genuinely arbitrary syntactic distinction.
There's no explanation; the functionalists who (doubtless) will run around in circles
trying to find a subtle semantic link between all strong proper names, and a subtle
distinction between them and weak proper names, will be wasting their time. "The
Internet" is a weak proper name, so the definite article is obligatory. End of story.
The question is whether anyone can propose anything to be said about this topic
that can enliven my (admittedly rather dull) description and give it some semantic
rationale or explanatory oomph. I am betting (though only a modest amount)
that the answer is no.
Comments are nevertheless open.
[And even if the distinction is an arbitrary one, there may be something to be learned by documenting the process by which recent words changed category, as internet apparently did.]
