Tag: Language

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By KirkianWanderer

| February 17, 2020

If I were being responsible right now, I would be just finishing an essay analyzing Brodsky’s cultural influences in Russian (as it is I’m 70% done with the essay and 100% done trying to connect my “ы”s to my “т”s while maintaining the proper stem), or reviewing my infinitives for my return to Hebrew tomorrow. […]

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By Zafar

Member

Zafar

1921812,768

I was born and grew up in India, went to the US for college and grad school, lived there for 10 happy years, then moved to Australia and have lived here since.

| November 30, 2019

86 COMMENTS

I’ve had some conversations on Ricochet where setting clear and measurable assimilation standards for migrants (specifically migrants from MENA to Europe, as refugees or not) has been raised. (@GrannyDude – see, I was listening.) There is a jurisdiction in the West that has done just that for migrants (and has recently kicked it up a […]

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Made-up Words? Covfefe, I Say!

By ExcitableBoy

Member

ExcitableBoy

| October 15, 2019

13 COMMENTS

I have two related thoughts that I think explain why the left and the youngs are the way they are.

An idea that penetrated from the heights of American culture down to elementary schools around the turn of the century was the idea that being judgmental was a vice rather than a virtue. This is contradictory because it is a moral judgment itself. It is the ethos of puritanical nihilism: the only morally correct way to live is not to acknowledge that right and wrong exist.

By Eridemus

| July 19, 2019

Having solved the overuse of natural gas in homes problem now the city of Berkely has moved on. From USA today and other sources: Berkeley’s municipal code will no longer feature words like “manhole” and “manpower,” and instead say, “maintenance hole” and “human effort” or “workforce.” The measure passed unanimously Tuesday and replaces more than […]

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Linguistic Colonialization

By Boethius

Member

Boethius

| June 10, 2019

38 COMMENTS

My biggest pet peeve in the last two years is the term “Latinx.” It is the most ignorant neologism that I can think of from the last round of language revisions in the past few years.

I teach Latin, and so I am used to a gender structure to language. But I didn’t start out the way. My primary language is English, and most words in this language are genderless. What gender would you attach to “English” if you could? The only gender left in English is those words that are intrinsically gendered: man, woman female, etc. and pronouns.

By Aaron Miller

| June 2, 2019

Here’s a light but difficult topic for a weekend: What are the rules of looking at people? Learning when and how to look at people, what a stare or gaze communicates, is one of the unspoken lessons of any culture. I expect the rules vary between cultures as do rules governing distance between speakers, pacing […]

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By WillowSpring

Member

WillowSpring

105201,300

Retired Manager/Engineer/Programmer. I specialized in embedded systems – that is, systems where it isn't obvious there is a computer. Willow Spring is the 1803 log home where we now live (Wife, 1 remaining Deerhound out of our pack of 3) The picture is of Leap (Flying Leap, officially) on the porch looking towards the Apple orchard where the deer sometimes come. Behind here is the corner of the Summer Kitchen, a separate one room building with a VERY large fireplace for cooking.

| March 19, 2019

4 COMMENTS

I was reading this articlehttps://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/03/democratic_presidential_candidates_perfect_orwells_language_manipulation.htmland it had several fascinating quotes from George Orwell’s essay: http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit More

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By Eridemus

| March 16, 2019

https://www.ecolandscaping.org/03/landscape-design/when-your-contractor-is-not-familiar-with-ecological-design/ I was glancing over this article (I only link it to show I’m not imagining things) where pretty far into it, an issue came up that I had never expected in the sane world. So you don’t have to plow through it, essentially public construction work or at least landscape construction can end up […]

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By Unwoke Caveman Lawyer

Coolidge

Unwoke Caveman Lawyer

Once I was out hunting on the frozen wastes when I slipped and fell into a crevasse. Later I was discovered by some scientists and thawed out. I then went to law school and became . . .

| February 3, 2019

33 COMMENTS

We’ve all heard people criticize the church or Christians or evangelicals (from within or without) for choosing Trump—but whatever his merits or demerits, Trump was not the choice of Christians. Peter Beinart in the Atlantic: More

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By Kephalithos

Member

Kephalithos

12656

I am a mustachioed bas-relief sculpture wearing some sort of bivalve as a hat. I used to spend my days (and nights) glowering at the n’er-do-wells who shuffled, handcuffed, into Fremont, Ohio’s jail. But the jail closed long ago, so I now glower at n'er-do-wells of a very different sort — the bureaucrats. Just kidding. I am, in fact, a newly minted Hillsdale graduate with hopes of becoming an architectural historian. (Post)modernity is my foe; the archaic, my muse… [more]

| January 8, 2019

31 COMMENTS

First Paddy’s piece, and now this. It’s one of those mornings. During the weekend, a New York meteorologist lost his job. What offense did he commit? Why, the offense of speaking too quickly, of course: More

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Member Post

By Kephalithos

| October 12, 2018

In politics, language matters. (Here, I must insert an obligatory Orwell reference.) Marginal theories can seep into the mainstream when marginal vocabulary seeps into the mainstream. Such is the case with identity politics — and, in particular, the trendy phrase “people of color.” I’ve noticed, even within the conservative commentariat (Reihan Salam, I’m looking at […]

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Member Post

By She

Reagan

She

35118710,999

"She can milk She brews good ale She can sew She can knit She can wash and scour She can spin She hath many nameless virtues . . ." She is a recovering IT professional living on a farm in Southwestern Pennsylvania with a numerous sheep, goats, rabbits, cats, dogs, and a long-suffering husband.

| October 6, 2018

14 COMMENTS

I love words. You might say that I am “zealous” about words. All sorts of words, it matters not how long or short, or from whence they come. Nor how exalted or rude their origins. I’m as fond of the monosyllabic, four-letter words for body parts, bodily functions, and natural activities, that came into English […]

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Standards and Anti-Standards

By Kephalithos

| July 27, 2018

lol i dont know why sooooo many millennials hate grammar but whatchya gonna do about it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Joking aside, this phenomenon drives me mad. Scarcely a day passes when I don’t see some flagrantly ungrammatical Facebook posting by someone who should know better. Twenty-something scientists, mathematicians, historians, poets, journalists, and even editors — editors, for goodness’ sake! — all write in the same quasi-illiterate nonstyle. When the social-media output of America’s aspiring literati is indistinguishable from that of its middle-school dropouts, something is deeply, deeply wrong. Our language’s Millennial gatekeepers haven’t merely abandoned their posts; they’ve joined the barbarians in storming the castle.

By Kephalithos

| July 13, 2018

Provost Rosenwald: “We in the Anywhere State University community — and, especially, the good folks at the Sarah E. Simmons Center for Diversity and Inclusion — are proud to welcome Taylor Williams to our annual Gender and Sexuality Symposium.” Loud applause ensues. More

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Language and Reality: How the Left Uses Ambiguity to Frame Issues

By M. Brandon Godbey

Member

M. Brandon Godbey

I am a high school (and sometimes college) English teacher, a rabid capitalist, and a libertarian. The teacher in me reads Hemingway, Poe, Emerson, & Whitman. The libertarian reads Ayn Rand, Thomas Sowell, Thomas Paine, John Locke, Milton Friedman, and of course, Jonah Goldberg. (Liberal Fascism changed my life). I'm here to edify and to be edified.

| March 26, 2018

54 COMMENTS

A couple of weeks ago, I had an in-class discussion with one of my students regarding the limits of language. I asked the student, point blank, if language merely described reality or if language could create reality. It’s a slippery subject, and the young man in question took considerable time before answering that he believed that language could only describe reality, not create it.

I pressed him further. “Suppose, young man, I said something about you that was truly hurtful, something that wounded you to your very core. Would those words not create a chemical state of being in your mind? Would these words not create a series of endorphins pulsing through your brain that we colloquially refer to as anger? Would I not, in some way, have created a reality in your mind?”

By Eridemus

| February 7, 2018

I don’t have a lot to add to this but just wanted to share language improvement projects when they come to public attention. So, you know, everybody is up to date and all: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42952220 More

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Member Post

By Stina

Member

Stina

97216,502

The hated primary Trump Supporter, suburban mom of three. Luddite, computer programmer, mathematician who can't do math. Seamstress, tatter, singer.

| December 12, 2017

11 COMMENTS

The story of the ancient city of Babel is that the people grew and built a great civilization. At its peak, they determined to build a tower that reached the heavens. God looked down and saw what they had achieved and confounded their tongues, causing them to speak in many languages. More

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Member Post

By Misthiocracy ingeniously

Member

Misthiocracy ingeniously

3932343,513

misthios (ancient greek): salaried, hired, hired labourer krátos (ancient greek): power, strength misthiocracy: Rule by the staffers.

| November 20, 2017

17 COMMENTS

“Unacceptable.” It’s a word that’s thrown around a lot these day. What does it mean, exactly? More

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By Ben Schumacher

Member

Ben Schumacher

| November 4, 2017

2 COMMENTS

I’ve noticed something curious. Many people on the progressive side now seem to use the word body in a way that a previous generation would have used soul or spirit. Rhetorically, the very pinnacle of oppression these days would be to do violence to the body, rather than (say) crush the soul. Thus Ta-Nahisi Coates writes […]

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One Small Step for Crew, One Giant Leap for Crewkind

By Tim H.

Member

Tim H.

118261,797

Mild-mannered college professor by day, astrophysicist by night. Methodist, Southerner, East Tennessee hillbilly. I'm a traditional Southern conservative with a strong libertarian streak. A sunny disposition and a trust that America will survive the problems we face.

| February 21, 2017

48 COMMENTS

I should write a technical post on the emerging post-Shuttle age of manned space flight, but I’ll leave that for Rand Simberg, James Gawron(?), John Walker, and the others who are more knowledgeable. Instead, I’m going to bring up a NASA language peeve: The tendency to misrepresent the meaning of “man” and “manned.”

NASA, depending as it does on public relations, has probably always been a PC kind of place, at least in the public face it puts on. There is a great Bloom County cartoon satirizing the tendency to promote “firsts” in space by race, sex, and ethnicity. Those of you old enough to remember the Apollo days or earlier will no doubt recall discussions of “manned spaceflight.” But since at least the 1990s, and I suspect the 1980s, the term “manned” has been suppressed in NASA use in favor of the clunkier “human spaceflight.” Today, that inelegant phrase is increasingly replaced by the unfortunate-sounding “crewed.”

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