Tag: language
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Every Book Its Clean Reader
I was ready to scoff at the makers of Clean Reader, an app that blocks swear words from being seen on ebooks. Jared and Kirsten Maughan offered rationale for their app in the FAQ: The number one argument against Clean Reader is essentially that an author is an artist and they put specific words in…
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Irregardless Is A Word, But A Bad One
Ta-Nehisi Coates went all TNC the other night on Twitter (which is just plain fun to watch) to address the evergreen “___ isn’t a word” debate, a favorite parlor game of pedantic English majors everywhere. Addressing whether irregardless should be sanctioned as a real word when regardless was already acceptable, he ventured: “Worst argument is…
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DDC 440-449: Foux Du Fa French
A Teach Me How To Dewey production This Is How We Dewey: 440 Romance languages; French 441 French writing system & phonology 442 French etymology 443 French dictionaries 444 Not assigned or no longer used 445 French grammar 446 Not assigned or no longer used 447 French language variations 448 Standard French usage 449 Provençal & Catalan…
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DDC 430-439: Polyglöts Ünite
A Teach Me How To Dewey production This Is How We Dewey: 430 Germanic languages; German 431 German writing system & phonology 432 German etymology 433 German dictionaries 434 Not assigned or no longer used 435 German grammar 436 Not assigned or no longer used 437 German language variations 438 Standard German usage 439 Other…
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DDC 420-429: Nouns and Pronounce
A Teach Me How To Dewey production This Is How We Dewey: While I know a little Spanish, English is (obvs) my primary language. And what a weird language it is. I’m so glad I didn’t have to learn it later in life, because in some ways it makes no sense. Especially pronunciation: this well-known…
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DDC 410-419: Linguistics alfredo
A Teach Me How To Dewey production This Is How We Dewey: 410 Linguistics 411 Writing systems 412 Etymology 413 Dictionaries 414 Phonology 415 Structural systems (Grammar) 416 No longer used—formerly Prosody (linguistics) 417 Dialectology & historical linguistics 418 Standard usage; Applied linguistics 419 Verbal language not spoken or written Regarding the post title: what…
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DDC 400-409: Learn ALL THE WORDS
A Teach Me How To Dewey production This Is How We Dewey: Gotta admit this up front: I friggin’ love words. As an English major, a writer, a reader—pick the reason. I love them so much that I keep a list of cool words I’ve encountered that I want to remember. (*pushes up glasses*) So…
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Notes on Shady Characters
Keith Houston’s 2013 book Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks is like catnip for word nerds. It’s rife with historical trivia about the more uncommon punctuation marks that have littered language history, including the pilcrow (¶), dagger (†), and interrobang (‽). It also provides background on the symbols we…
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The Word Exchange
Warning: Here be minor spoilers. I collect cool words. It started with Daniel Okrent’s Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition: words like calumny, bugbear, abstemious, and postprandial popped out as I read that great history of Prohibition a few years ago, and I wanted to remember them, so I wrote them down. I’ve done that…