Let's be clear: I'm not slacking off (except in the subgenius sense — I've always pulled the wool over my own eyes). Just been pretty down after a harsh attack on the recent Petraeus / Betray us post. No, it wasn't a rightwing nut job going off on me about treason. It was a contributor to this blog who indelicately noted, in so many words, that Petraeus can't be an aptronym. And they wouldn't buy my argument that it's about homophony.Over on ADS, there's been some early stirring on WOTY candidates. One of my lackies will, I trust, nominate peevology / peevologist for most useful, if not Word of the Year directly. Aptronym isn't new but seems to have picked up some steam this year. I'm not overwhelmed by the suggestions I've heard so far ... .
PS: Nice piece in the NYT today about endangered languages, here. (Thanks, anon.)
5 comments:
Glad to see Mr. Verb is back in the saddle. We don't even need to go to the NY Times for Language Endangerment news. The WSJ has it as a cover story continued on the right side of the editorial page. It's interesting to see different 'spin' on the same story though. The NYT headline focuses on the disappearing language aspect while the WSJ piece (an associated press story) has the line "How do you say 'lonely' in Amurdag? One man knows".
How can you miss me if I won't go away. Yeah, headline writing is a creature unto itself, it seems like.
I'm wondering, myself, how you can be described as a "speaker" of a language if what you do is "remember a hundred words you heard your father use".
Yeah, technical terms like 'semi-speaker' don't make it into the media that much!
Seems like ADS should have a "Language Word of the Year" category: that would have been a deserved honor for "eggcorn" and "snowclone" in the past--and definitely for peevologist this year.
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