Friday, November 6, 2009

Yeah, right

There's a joke, beloved by language mavens, about a professor who is giving a lecture on grammar. "A double negative is a positive," he says, "but a double positive is never a negative."

Someone in the audience replies, "Yeah, right."

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Writing = rewriting

"I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter."  ~James Michener

"The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction.  By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say." ~Mark Twain

"The wastebasket is a writer's best friend."  ~Isaac Bashevis Singer 

"Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out."  ~Samuel Johnson
 


"The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof shit detector.  This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it."  ~Ernest Hemingway
 


"Write your first draft with your heart.  Re-write with your head."  ~From the movie Finding Forrester
 


"Sleep on your writing; take a walk over it; scrutinize it of a morning; review it of an afternoon; digest it after a meal; let it sleep in your drawer a twelvemonth; never venture a whisper about it to your friend, if he be an author especially."  ~A. Bronson Alcott


"Sit down, and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer.  But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it."  ~Colette, Casual Chance
 


"Proofread carefully to see if you any words out."  ~Author Unknown

 

Wanna get ahead? Learn Mandarin

I had no idea that an estimated 7,000 languages are being spoken around the world. That number is expected to shrink rapidly in the coming decades.

Here are some factoids:
    •    6% of the world's languages are spoken by 94% of the world's population
    •    The remaining 94% of languages are spoken by only 6% of the population
    •    The largest single language by population is Mandarin (845 million speakers) followed by Spanish (329 million speakers) and English (328 million speakers).
    •    133 languages are spoken by fewer than 10 people


According to Ethnologue, a U.S. organization owned by Christian group SIL International that compiles a global database of languages, 473 languages are currently classified as endangered. Among the ranks are the two known speakers of Lipan Apache alive in the U.S., four speakers of Totoro in Colombia and the single Bikya speaker in Cameroon.

Lude, dude

illude /  i-lud / adjective

To deceive with false hope, to trick with a false impression.

Dr. Goodword notes:

Most of us use illusion as though it exists in a vacuum. This word, however, is the noun from the very legitimate verb illude. Aside from the noun, this verb sports an adjective, illusive "ghostly, deceptive in appearance, appearing to exist but vanishing as you approach". Several cousins of illude share very similar meanings. Elude is a homophone, pronounced the same as illude, but implying escape from capture, as to elude police arrest. Delude sounds different but is a near synonym, with a meaning very similar to that of illude. The noun from this word, of course, is illusion, as in that trick on the eyes, the optical illusion.

Hopes, dreams, and goals can be both illusive and elusive, so it is important that we keep these two words separate when we write: "Thom Dunderhead was illuded into thinking he could become a professional football player by his success in college sports." Remember that illude refers to deception, like an optical illusion: "The glitz and glamour of Las Vegas illuded Phyllis Limmer into thinking she would be happy as a showgirl."

History: Illude was taken from Latin illudere "to mock or ridicule". This verb is made up of the prefix in- "in, at" + ludere "to play". The N in the prefix in- is a consonantal chameleon, which is to say it assimilates with the initial consonant of any word it attaches to. So, it becomes il- before L as in illuminate, ir- before R as in irradiate, and im- before sounds made by the lips, as we see in import and imbue—all borrowed from Latin or its daughter language, French. The same root appears in ludicrous "utterly ridiculous", the English adaptation of Latin ludicrus "sportive, playful".