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I was reading around page 477 in Crystal about the large amount of spelling variation that exists even in Received Pronunciation. I was struck by the fact that all but a couple of the presented examples of spelling variation were irrelevant to American English speakers (alright/all right, judgment/judgement, maybe amok/amuck). All the rest of them (aery/airy, [...]

As I was reading Crystal 18, part of his discussion on 19th-century grammar caught my eye. While not as grammatically far removed as Shakespeare, 19th-century English still occasionally sounds odd to us. “Whenever we sense that the phrasing of a passage is somewhat ‘awkward’ or ‘old-fashioned’,” Crystal writes, “or a conversation is in [...]

(click the picture to follow the link)
Above is a link to a site where users can post mistranslations found in foreign languages that actually try to use English in conveying a message.
Most are from Japan, where the funniest mistranslations occur.
“Engrish” because the “r” sound is replaced with the “l” sound in spoken Japanese.
Example: “Surprise!” would [...]

While reading Samuel Johnson’s introduction to his dictionary, the following two sentences caught my eye:
The language most likely to continue long without alteration would be that of a nation raised a little, and but a little, above barbarity, secluded from strangers, and totally employed in procuring the conveniences of life; either without books, or, like [...]

One of the more interesting observations I realized from the Chasing the Sun excerpts was that Green heavily emphasized the idea that lexicographers see themselves as bringers of the true meaning of words, like Moses who brought down from Mount Sinai the Ten Commandments. ” Green cites Ephraim Chamber’s belief that lexicography has its origins [...]

Here’s the link to the bible translation project I mentioned in class.  Stephanie, this might be helpful to your project, since there’s a section about how to translate into lolcat.  Even if it’s not helpful to your project, it will probably be pretty funny anyway.  Check it out!
http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

I just found an interesting article by Ronald Butters.  Here’s the introduction to his article:
“The vast literature on reasons why human languages inevitably change through time focuses on two types of causation, “functional,” and “social.”  My purpose here is to explore a third category of explanation, one that has largely been ignored or dismissed as [...]

Okay, so I’m pretty sure that I want to write about the impact of “political correctness” and maybe compare its status to other forms of prescriptivism.  I also wanted to talk about its impact on lexicography and resulting neologisms, such as “African American” and “disabled” as well as discussing the evolution of “culturally sensitive” vocabulary.  For instance, “crippled” [...]

So, I’ve been thinking about my topic for the essay- came across this notion of “Jewish English.”  I think I might narrow my topic down to certain expressions that have been borrowed from Yiddish, how / why, but I’m still checking out this Jewish English for fun- if you get the chance and feel like [...]