Category Archives: language

pure pure pitiful me

Posted on Thursday, 2003 March 13 by Anton

Another lustrum, another haircut. A lustrum is a period of five years; I’ve known that for about three lustra, but until now I never thought to look up why it’s so called and what the Romans used it for (which … Continue reading →

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names on the pays

Posted on Sunday, 2003 March 09 by Anton

New toy: Dictionnaire Étymologique des noms de lieux en France, by Dauzat & Rostaing. I’m a bit disappointed that it lists only towns, not rivers, but that’s a detail. (Many river-names are too old to analyze anyway.) It’s fun to … Continue reading →

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øuch

Posted on Sunday, 2003 March 02 by Anton

Yesterday I leapt over a shrubbery, twisted my right ankle (mildly), and landed hard on my left knee. Somehow this stiffened the muscle(s) behind the knee. I think of it as a learning experience: like, I never noticed before how … Continue reading →

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letters on sticks

Posted on Tuesday, 2003 February 18 by Anton

Ian Frazier visits a typewriter wizard (Atlantic Monthly, 1997). Martin Tytell has stories to tell about converting typewriters for other alphabets: There he received his hardest job of the war – a rush request to convert typewriters to twenty-one different … Continue reading →

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not French, dammit (not that there’s anything wrong with that)

Posted on Wednesday, 2003 February 05 by Anton

In the first few minutes of my new temp assignment, two people said: “You must be Antone? Antoine?”

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I do not talk funny!

Posted on Tuesday, 2003 January 28 by Anton

Learn new words from the (US) Dialect Survey Results. (I wish there were some factor analysis.)

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dialect, chronolect

Posted on Friday, 2003 January 10 by Anton

Ken MacLeod’s novel The Sky Road is set at least a few centuries in the future. I once argued that there’s a limit to how far it can be, because the protagonist plays some voice-recordings from our time without mentioning … Continue reading →

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