One of my favorite ways to kill a little time while remaining linguistically active is perusing the Speculative Grammarian, an online journal for satirical linguistics. In other words, it's a journal for linguists to poke fun of the field while also writing about real things. You might think of it like the linguistics version of The Onion.
Besides the awesome articles and fun linguistic-related puzzles, the Speculative Grammarian is also cool because it accepts articles from anyone who has a good idea for a linguistic-related article. You don't have to be a top scholar to have good ideas for a humorous article on linguistics--you just need knowledge of the field and a sense of humor.
If you have an idea for an article, you should go to this link and follow the directions there. While you're there, you should most definitely check out the Linguistics Career Chooser--especially if you're a minor wondering what to do with your background in linguistics (and in need of a laugh).
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
"What Does English Sound Like to Foreign Ears?"
A student sent me this link to a website that has a collection of fun linguistic-y videos, one of which is a video that has a hilarious rap (performed by Italians) that is supposed to be in English. What they are speaking is not English, yet it simulates what English sounds like to them. And, I must say, they are doing an excellent job--my brain was trying to figure out what they might be saying as I listened (even though I knew full well they were not speaking in English).
After you watch that video (and all the other fun ones on that page), feel free to give a big thank you to my awesome students who send me links to fun websites.
After you watch that video (and all the other fun ones on that page), feel free to give a big thank you to my awesome students who send me links to fun websites.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Typography, Language, and Fun
I have long been a fan of the written word, and artists are taking the written word to the next visual level in videos like these:
If you liked that one, other videos like that can be found here.
If you really pay attention, you'll notice that all the videos take aspects of the words themselves and the context of what's being said to create the visual artistry of words. It's linguistics in action. And I love it!
If you liked that one, other videos like that can be found here.
If you really pay attention, you'll notice that all the videos take aspects of the words themselves and the context of what's being said to create the visual artistry of words. It's linguistics in action. And I love it!
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Video: Ultimate Caption Fail!
A student shared this video with Chris, who shared it with me. It's too funny not to share with anyone interested in language or funniness.
If any of you are going through withdrawals from school work, you should go through the original transcript and compare it phonetically to the second one. It would be interesting to see just where the program went wrong.
Examples like this raise an interesting point about the abilities of computers to work with human language--notice that in the video, the speakers often spoke fast or in different intonations. Human ears and brains are designed to work with variegated--and incomplete--inputs, but computers deal best with inputs that do not vary, and they don't work well with needing to "fill in the blanks". (Some of you may be nodding as you remember the last time you tried to speak into an automated computer on the other end of the phone, and it kept replying, "I don't understand. Repeat what you said.")
What's the funniest misunderstanding you've had with a computer?
If any of you are going through withdrawals from school work, you should go through the original transcript and compare it phonetically to the second one. It would be interesting to see just where the program went wrong.
Examples like this raise an interesting point about the abilities of computers to work with human language--notice that in the video, the speakers often spoke fast or in different intonations. Human ears and brains are designed to work with variegated--and incomplete--inputs, but computers deal best with inputs that do not vary, and they don't work well with needing to "fill in the blanks". (Some of you may be nodding as you remember the last time you tried to speak into an automated computer on the other end of the phone, and it kept replying, "I don't understand. Repeat what you said.")
What's the funniest misunderstanding you've had with a computer?
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
French in the Summertime
For all those students who have taken FRE 131 and haven't quite decided when to take 132, you should seriously consider taking it this summer.
That way you can ... watch a French movie without needing subtitles, travel to Paris and order lunch at a local bistro in the native language, and feel exotically chic as you bust out your French.
If you're looking for a more academically sound reason to take French, it goes hand-in-hand with studying linguistics--it helps with research (you might be surprised how many linguistics articles are written in French), and it helps with understanding English from a historical perspective. All of my students who have taken French have told me how surprised they were that French and linguistics courses focusing on English complemented each other.
This summer, you have the opportunity to take FRE 132:
Even if you can't take the course, please help us spread the word by letting your friends know!
If you have any questions, contact Dr. Joyce Johnston at jjohnston@sfasu.edu.
That way you can ... watch a French movie without needing subtitles, travel to Paris and order lunch at a local bistro in the native language, and feel exotically chic as you bust out your French.
If you're looking for a more academically sound reason to take French, it goes hand-in-hand with studying linguistics--it helps with research (you might be surprised how many linguistics articles are written in French), and it helps with understanding English from a historical perspective. All of my students who have taken French have told me how surprised they were that French and linguistics courses focusing on English complemented each other.
This summer, you have the opportunity to take FRE 132:
Even if you can't take the course, please help us spread the word by letting your friends know!
If you have any questions, contact Dr. Joyce Johnston at jjohnston@sfasu.edu.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Fall 2011: ENG 442 Course Description
We are planning on offering a section of ENG 442: Topics in Linguistics with the topic of Second Language Acquisition in the fall. It will most likely be offered during the TTh 9:30-10:45 time slot. For Linguistics minors, the course could satisfy the core requirement or an elective in Categories II or III. English majors and minors could use the course for their required linguistics course, and other students could count the course as an upper-division elective.
The course description is included below:
This course will focus on both former and contemporary approaches to how humans learn a second (or third) language. Discussions will include a range of languages (no knowledge of a second language assumed). We will examine the nature of language, multilingualism, heritage language acquisition, the roles of the first and second languages in second language acquisition, formal approaches, typological and functional approaches, language processing, socio-cultural views of second language learning, and the psychology of second language learning.
If you are interested in the course, please e-mail Chris at samsc@sfasu.edu in order for him to find out if the course topic has enough student support to run.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Garden Path Newspaper Heading
Newspapers are well-known for potentially vague and ambiguous headings for stories, but the following heading, for me, was really just confusing:
I had to read that several times before my brain made sense of it.
I don't normally think of newspaper headings as garden path sentences, but I think this might qualify as one--the problem for me is the "4 hours" bit. If it had come after "in the bank vault", some weirdness could have been avoided: "crying toddler in shut bank vault 4 hours". That kind of sounds better, but it leaves me wondering what advantage that has over putting in the preposition 'for' in front of "4 hours". And was the 'crying' necessary? Why not cut out 'crying' in favor of words that would help in understanding the heading? After all, I can't imagine a toddler being stuck in a vault for 4 hours without some crying involved.
In reading the article, though, some of the sentences inside the article were also a bit, uh, interesting in their structures:
My issue is with the "after the child apparently strayed into the open vault as the bank was closing Friday" clause--it comes in an odd place to logically follow the flow of the story. If police and firefighters summed a locksmith, then it would have to be after the child had already gotten stuck in the vault. My thought is that the story would have been more clear if the bit about how the toddler got stuck in the vault in the first place had been placed before the police and firefighters summoning a locksmith.
Here's the real question: Am I just being picky? Or do other readers find the piece a bit jilted because it jumps back and forth in the telling?
Police: Crying toddler 4 hours in shut bank vault
I had to read that several times before my brain made sense of it.
I don't normally think of newspaper headings as garden path sentences, but I think this might qualify as one--the problem for me is the "4 hours" bit. If it had come after "in the bank vault", some weirdness could have been avoided: "crying toddler in shut bank vault 4 hours". That kind of sounds better, but it leaves me wondering what advantage that has over putting in the preposition 'for' in front of "4 hours". And was the 'crying' necessary? Why not cut out 'crying' in favor of words that would help in understanding the heading? After all, I can't imagine a toddler being stuck in a vault for 4 hours without some crying involved.
In reading the article, though, some of the sentences inside the article were also a bit, uh, interesting in their structures:
Authorities say police and firefighters couldn't free the toddler and feverishly summoned the locksmith after the child apparently strayed into the open vault as the bank was closing Friday — before an employee shut the vault door for the day.
My issue is with the "after the child apparently strayed into the open vault as the bank was closing Friday" clause--it comes in an odd place to logically follow the flow of the story. If police and firefighters summed a locksmith, then it would have to be after the child had already gotten stuck in the vault. My thought is that the story would have been more clear if the bit about how the toddler got stuck in the vault in the first place had been placed before the police and firefighters summoning a locksmith.
Here's the real question: Am I just being picky? Or do other readers find the piece a bit jilted because it jumps back and forth in the telling?
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