Language

Some facts of life: Item: If, identifying yourself as a copy editor, you publish articles about language (or anything else), there are people who will pounce gleefully on every lapse and typographical error.* Some will then use the lapse to ignore the point you were making. Item: If, identifying yourself as a prescriptivist and an upholder of the highest standards of the language, you can expect a close examination of your prose. Viz., Geoffrey Pullum's extended necropsy of the texts of the Queen's English Society.

The Anne Arundel County Council passed a resolution Monday night commending the county police department — but not its chief — for decreasing crime in 2011. The council passed the resolution only after approving an amendment specifically removing Police Chief James E. Teare Sr.'s name from the language. The councilmanic move follows another council resolution last month expressing no confidence in Teare. The council said it is concerned with Teare's ability to lead the police department in light of certain allegations in the March indictment of County Executive John R. Leopold.

Commenting from Albion, the estimable Picky recently wrote: "As I look back on a very privileged life I note that although the language I spoke mostly as a child was that of the London streets, my parents (typically of the upper working class in those days they enriched English by reading Dickens and Trollope and Austen to each other in the evenings - anyone do that nowadays?) and my school together provided me also with something very close to standard English, and I traded on that, essentially made my living from it, for the rest of my life.

In an antic moment last week, The New Yorker  pitched an appeal to readers:  What word would you most like to eliminate from the English language?   Awesome  and  epic  won some votes because of overuse, phlegm  from disgustingness, but moist , which has recently taken on an evil odor, overwhelmed. In its wisdom, however, The New Yorker chose slacks  as a word worthy of extinction .  This game, as Stan Carey points out at Sentence First , always draws a lot of players . In fact, as you can see on the comments at Johnson 's post on the same subject , all you have to do is broach the subject, and people start trotting out their nominees, like so many would-be Torquemadas hustling the condemned to the stake.  The extremity of the responses speaks to how much we personalize the language.

A BBC article this week on language issues quoted me briefly on who/whom, but you already know what I think about that. Some of the other issues mentioned in the article, though, are worth considering as we consider where we want to draw the line. Begs the question for prompts the question or invites the question is, I say with regret, a lost cause. When I see a reference to a question-begging argument , I am confident that the reader, even one not familiar with the term from logic, can figure out that the writer is talking about defective reasoning.

The creators of the language-learning software Rosetta Stone have made it simple to grasp the complexities of Spanish. But can they back it up and Dougie? " Usted and ustedes if you're talking to a group. Start with the ' yo ' form and throw it for a loop!" says "E Rap de Mandatos," a Spanish-learning tune by South River High School foreign language teacher Jodie Hogan, who rewrote the lyrics to the popular song "Teach Me How to Dougie," by Cali Swag District. Hogan has created a book of songs that break down Spanish language concepts into catchy, rhythmic verses that are sung to such melodies as Ricky Martin's "La Copa de la Vida," the "Oompa Loompa Song" from "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," and the theme from "Gilligan's Island.

Hate speech is a form of vandalism. It defaces the environment, and like a broken window, if left untended, signals to other hoodlums that the coast is clear to do more damage. But unlike the proverbial broken window, which urban police departments and criminologists urge us to repair to maintain the aura of social order, nobody seems to be in much of a hurry to nip hate speech in the bud. That's because since the ill-fated attempt by several universities to regulate hate speech in the 1980s and 1990s, any discussion of reining in racist taunts inevitably degrades into charges of political correctness and ends abruptly with the invocation of the First Amendment.

Over a span of forty-one years, from Fer-de-Lance in 1934 to A Family Affair in 1975, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe displayed himself as a purist about language as well as a detective of prodigious girth and and gifts. You may recall that in the opening pages of Gambit (1962), he busies himself burning the pages of Webster's Third International because it indicates that people use infer and imply interchangeably. He is a peever. This morning I direct your attention to a short passage from Please Pass the Guilt (1973)

Janet Byron Anderson (@janetbyronander) tweeted this morning, "Tell someone you're a linguist and they say, 'Oops! Better watch my language'. Please don't watch it. We value your syllables. " English majors and copy editors, when they are incautious enough to identify themselves in public, get the same half-embarrassed, half-defiant response. Really, you should talk as you like. That's your right. Sweet land of liberty. No effort to establish an English Academy has ever gotten anywhere, and all such efforts amount to nothing more than magnets for cranks.

Jose Soto doesn't pay attention to politics in Frederick County. He's new to town and spends much of his time working at an apple-processing plant in Pennsylvania. But he heard something a few weeks ago about the county making English its official language. "I think it's a little racist," Soto said as he stopped by a Latino grocery store in Frederick before heading to work one afternoon last week. The 32-year-old was born in Guatemala and emigrated to Los Angeles as a child. Last month, the county became the first in Maryland to declare English its official language, though supporters of the measure acknowledge the move was largely symbolic because county business is done in English now. Anne Arundel and Queen Anne's counties are considering similar laws as well — part of a nationwide movement that supporters tout as a way to help immigrants assimilate.