Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Welcome to another newsletter from A Way with Words. We've got cheese!

It was our second week in a row talking about the books of David Crystal. (He deserves it!) This time, we plunged into the rich pages of his book "As They Say in Zanzibar" and brought you a few proverbs that caught our eyes.

We also talked about "spittin' image," why we use "it" in "It is raining," and why folks say "umm" and "you know"--they're not signs of stupidity, they're normal English. Listen here:

https://waywordradio.org/never-bolt-your-door-with-a-boiled-carrot/

We also posted an online-only language headlines minicast today. Check it out:

https://waywordradio.org/language-headlines-minicast-081006/

Elsewhere:

Joe Clark is a Canadian expert in closed-captioning, but he's branched out this time with a book about Canadian English spellings. He finds that it's under threat from spellcheckers, which let American and British spellings sail through even if you've told the software to use Canadian English.

The book is "Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours: How to Feel Good About Canadian English." Find out more here:

http://en-CA.org/

This week we also heard that the Oxford University Press office in Canada has fired its entire Canadian dictionary-making staff and will now be running the operation out of the United Kingdom. This comes just a few years after a similar restructuring of the US Dictionary program.

http://tinyurl.com/3wed6l

Market realities being what they are, this is no doubt not the last we've heard of unhappy events like this from all quarters of publishing. It goes hand in hand with the slow purging of copy editors from the staffs of newspapers and other periodicals.

Even the peevers will have a laugh at this one: it's a bit of satire from the London Telegraph, in which Craig Brown invents a series of messages from listeners of the sort who are constantly badgering the BBC about some language mistake, real or imagined, that it has made.

http://tinyurl.com/4hknn2

To close, we have not one, not two, not three, but FOUR separate articles on the accent of Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin:

Linguist Stephen Pinker in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/opinion/04pinker.html

Linguist and NPR language commentator Geoff Nunberg responding to Pinker:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=673

Daniel Libit in Politico:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/14138.html

OED editor Jesse Sheidlower in Slate:

http://www.slate.com/id/2201318/

Best wishes to you,

Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett
Co-hosts of A Way with Words
https://waywordradio.org

Call or write with your language questions 24 hours a day:
(877) WAY-WORD
(877) 929-9673
words@waywordradio.org

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