vodka snowclone

Last night James and I were playing the Extreme Engineering drinking game again, and there was an episode about an indoor ski park in Dubai. I swear to god, one guy announced that "Eskimos have 200 words for snow." That is when I decided/realized that if you are a linguist and playing a drinking game--and I don't care what it's based on or what the rules are--if someone says that Eskimos have n words for snow, you must drink an entire drink. In fact, I think that you need to drink an entire drink even if you are not currently playing a drinking game.

but wait there's more

There's an article by Jane Fonda at The Huffington Post with the headline

Adolescent Pregnancy Must Become a Priority for All Americans

So get out there and start impregnating teens, people! Jane Fonda says so.

syntax is your friend

Headline spotted this morning on MSNBC:

MRS. EDWARDS TALKS ABOUT HER HUSBAND JOHN'S AFFAIR WITH OPRAH

turns out I *was* dreaming

I was clicking around the New York Times site just now and came across a short piece discussing Sarah Palin's accent and speaking style, and it pointed out that pronouncing 'nuclear' as 'nucular' is an instance of a phenomenon (called metathesis) common among the world's languages and that it's no different than when someone pronounces 'iron' as 'eye-ern' rather than 'eye-ren.' And I got all excited because OMG! A layperson in the mainstream media who actually did some linguistics homework instead of spouting untenable prescriptivist crap!

And then I scrolled up to see who the writer was, and it was Steven Pinker. As in, the MIT linguist Steven Pinker.

Doh.

unhappy

One of my favorite teachers has died:

New York Times obituary for Ed Klima

I still talk about his Linguistics and Poetics class that I took over 15 years ago. I definitely learned some new ways of thinking from him.