Language Trainers Blog

Source: blogs.nytimes.com

The New York Times are currently running a fascinating series of articles about American speech throughout the years. The sixth part is a compendium of the vocabulary of the average 1962 traffic policeman, and contains some interesting definitions. It seems that quite a few are still in use today.

The specialist vocabulary came about as a result of the nature of the job, and the language is of a “highly confidential nature, being used almost exclusively on the job or in talking about the job, and usually in speaking to another policeman, to an insurance investigator, or to a traffic engineer”. A lot of it is quite coarse, too, due to it being part of a male-dominated profession.

Some of the vocabulary is amusing, some of it interesting from an etymological point of view, some of it is surprising that they needed a term for a particular person or situation.

Some examples from the article:

American taxpayer: A traffic law violator who loudly proclaims immunity because he is paying the policeman’s salary.

Bag case: A fatality in which a corpse is in such condition that it must be transported in a rubber bag or sheet.

Chinese fire drill: An accident scene of great confusion, such as a school bus or cattle truck upset.

Hunt owls: To have headlights so high as to blind other motorists.

Pajama badge: An overly zealous officer. “When he goes to bed, he even wears a pajama badge!”

Toe ticket: The last citation that a habitual violator receives-the identification ticket that is tied to the great toe in the morgue.

Volunteer: A motorist, usually a teenager of either sex, who deliberately commits a violation in front of a patrolman. No patrolman interviewed could offer any explanation for the conduct.

Living in Shanghai is always interesting, and learning Chinese even more so. How else could I have come across a Chinglish gem like this?

The Mandarin word “gĕilì” (给力) literally means “to give more power” or “to give more force”. Thanks to the ever-increasing spread of English in China, this has given rise to the wonderful portmanteau “ungelivable”.

A mixture of “gĕilì” and “unbelievable”, the slang word originating on the internet has come to mean “not strong enough”, and is an interesting example of how two very different languages can sometimes fit together to create a fairly seamless compound.

While it’s not going to be making its way into the English or Chinese dictionaries any time soon, “ungelivable” also shows how powerful the internet is as a tool to spread ideas. The word spread so quickly, especially among the younger generation, that knowledge of it has rapidly become commonplace – even if usage has not.

Source: thestar.com

The latest rendition of the world’s best-selling book is being criticized for taking a step backwards in terms of some of the language used. Those responsible for the latest translation – the committee for the New International Version of the Bible – have reverted to using more traditional terms in certain passages containing terms like “him”, “his”, “he”, “son”, “father” and “brother”. In the previous 2005 version of the TNIV (Today’s International Version) Bible, these pronouns and nouns were not gender-specific (“them”, “theirs”, “they”, etc.).

Even though the scholars maintain that 95% of the text has gone unchanged, this reversion to traditional patriarchal language has sparked controversy, especially amongst the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, though they are still happy to admit that the new NIV version (released online this month and in print next March) showed “significant improvements” over the TNIV.

The Council do acknowledge that using gender-specific terms such as “man” and “mankind” does give a greater accuracy of translation from the Hebrew and Greek texts, but are pushing for a more contemporary version, clearly reflecting today’s perceptions of gender equality.

Personally I find gender-specific terms to be awkward more often than not, and since there are few texts as traditional as the Bible, I think the message is more important than the language. Given that there have been countless versions of the Bible – all considered “new”, all revisionist – I think it’s more important that people ensure that the latest versions do not kowtow to specific ecclesiastical or cultural agendas (for example, the Westboro Baptist Church), rather than relatively smaller worries such as gender specific pronouns!

Even for (or rather, especially for) people like me who write often, a decent dictionary can be critical – not simply as a tool to check that you’ve spelled a word correctly, but also to continue to expand your vocabulary.

Of course, thanks to the internet you no longer have to leaf through a hefty tome of definitions to find the word you’re looking for – simply typing your word into your favorite dictionary web site will take you to the definition within a second, and even if you’ve spelled it wrong it will still intelligently take a guess at what word you meant.

However, as someone who uses a dictionary often, I’ve found my method of looking up words evolving further. I used to go to dictionary.com and search for the word. I later found out about Firefox’s address bar shortcuts, and discovered that I could simply type dict in the address bar, followed by the word I wanted to define.

However, upon discovering the nifty online dictionary NinjaWords, it has now become my main dictionary.

Why? Well, firstly because it’s fast. Really fast. It doesn’t reload the entire page to find your definition, it gives you the results inline. That saves about a second in itself, and makes the whole experience more instantaneous.

Secondly, it leaves a trail. Sometimes I’ll look up a word, then look up another, and look up another, and then decide that I preferred an earlier word. Rather than traipsing back through my history with the browser’s ‘back’ button, I can just scroll down and see my history, still complete with definitions. It even keeps a history of words you’ve looked up in previous sessions.

Thirdly, like so many things nowadays… there’s an app for it. Much as I am loathe to jump on Apple’s bandwagon, the iPhone app for NinjaWords is what it claims to be (and what ninjas are): smart, quick, and deadly accurate – and the biggest bonus of all is that it doesn’t require an internet connection to work.

Highly recommended!

Source: lifehacker.com

Smartening up your grammar skills doesn’t have to be a boring affair – in a previous post I linked to humor site The Oatmeal for their guide to correct apostrophe use, presenting the rules of one of the most oft-misused marks of punctuation in a series of bizarre and surreal cartoons.

Lifehacker.com – a site mostly known for its tech articles – has recently collated and published a list of the best sites to go to for brushing up your grammar skills without having to force yourself to read through dull, instructional texts and rules. The collection of sites all aim to educate while entertaining, and include favorites such as The Oatmeal, Grammar Girl, and blogs where embarassing errors are uploaded and showcased for the obsessive grammarians out there to laugh at – sites like Apostrophe Abuse and The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar.

All of these resources will help you if you ever have problems like remembering when to use an apostrophe and when not to, which variant of their/there/they’re to use, whether you mean e.g. or i.e., and other common confusions.

Alternatively, you can have a look over my previous “annoyances” posts, which aim to help you avoid common mistakes that tend to irritate anal obsessive compulsive people… like me.

Source: latimes.com

I remember when I was younger and was watching TV with the family, my parents would balk at any rude words uttered on-screen. It’s not that I didn’t know the words already, but it’s traditionally a parent’s duty to shield their children from things that are harmful, and in many ways bad language is harmful for those at the more impressionable ages.

However, prime time US TV has over the years increased its familiarity with what is considered ‘mild swearing’ – words like “ass”, “crap” and “hell” have become commonplace in recent times. Words with sexual connotations, mostly slang for various areas of the body, are also uttered on TV before 10pm far more often than in the past.

From the article:

On Monday night’s episode of “Two and a Half Men,” there were references to cocaine, prostitution and two women being intimate with each other. No, they weren’t reading from star Charlie Sheen’s diary, it was just business as usual for the hit CBS sitcom.

[...]

According to “Habitat for Profanity: Broadcast TV’s Sharp Increase in Foul Language,” a study released by PTC (Parents TV Council) on Tuesday, there has been an almost 70% jump in bad words on broadcast TV (ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and the CW) in the last five years. Most disturbing to the PTC is that the time period showing the biggest gains is not the 10 p.m. hour when more adults are watching, but the 8 p.m and 9 p.m. hours, which attract younger viewers.

Many years ago I listened to George Carlin’s infamous “7 Dirty Words” sketch, where he outlined the 7 words you absolutely cannot say on TV. However, since that sketch some of these words have crept onto late-night shows, so it makes you wonder how long it will be before Carlin’s list becomes obsolete.

Is all this foul language really necessary? Is swearing an essential part of comedy? Certainly not. Does it make a show ‘cooler’ for younger viewers? Perhaps.

Perhaps if the writers of Two and a Half Men – generally considered to be a ‘family show’ – concentrated more on making the script funny, rather than littering it with mild profanity, the PTC would not be complaining so much…

Following on from a recent post on sign language over cellphones, it seems that even A-listers are hopping on the sign language bandwagon. Pop ‘singer’-turned-fashionista Victoria Beckham – perhaps more famously known for being the wife of footballer David Beckham – has decided to learn sign language.

Mrs Beckham and her 3 children – Brooklyn, Romeo, and Cruz – have taken up sign language as they have family friends who are deaf, and they want to be able to talk to them more easily. I applaud Victoria Beckham for encouraging her kids to take up sign language. Learning these things from a young age will help it stick with them for the rest of their lives!