Category Archives: Language
Damia
Damia. ‘Mond ychydig o wythnosau yn ôl penderfynes i gyhoeddi mwy yn y Gymraeg, yn enwedig wrth sgwennu am fy mab. A ddoe ysgrifennes i ddau gofnod newydd amdano yn Saesneg. #Ochenaid hir# Mae arferion yn anodd eu torri. Wel, … Continue reading
Filed under Language, Thoughts and rants
Iaith/language
In spite of the title of this blog, I write almost every post in English, not Welsh. This is for several reasons: Most of the people I know speak English; I haven’t lived in Wales for over a decade (and … Continue reading
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On grammar and transphobia (with an idea for an experiment)
Many people take a dislike to the word they or their being used to refer to a single individual (as in “You say you met a rather interesting individual today? Could you tell me more about them?”) or with antecedents … Continue reading
Filed under Language, Sexuality and gender, Thoughts and rants
On language, reason, and lego
I’ve touched on prescriptivism a little in this blog (there are some relevant links here), but I haven’t said much about how strong the bias towards it seems to be, and how strong the emotions can be. Language Log, not … Continue reading
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Hitler killing a child
When I was in primary school I had a friend who claimed that his grandfather, fighting in World War II, had once seen Hitler kill a child. I found this very unlikely even then, and rather silly. When I challenged … Continue reading
Correctness, a one-sentence summary
I go on far too much about linguistic correctness in this blog. In a meta-sense, though: not about which usage is or isn’t correct, but what it means to say that someone’s usage is or isn’t correct, and when that’s … Continue reading
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Wordle of my PhD thesis
I don’t know why I took so long to do this. It doesn’t leave much doubt that I did experiments on language:
Filed under Language
European Spanish is just better
While in Boston, I took the opportunity to meet up with some friends who live there, which was very nice. At one point a conversation arose that I think is worth mentioning here. Two of the friends are Catalan and … Continue reading
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Chomsky
I’ve been at this year’s CogSci conference in Boston this last week. I didn’t present—I started my new job after the submission deadline, having failed to get my act together sufficiently to simultaneously apply for jobs and submit to conferences … Continue reading
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More common sense
I’ve said before that I think common sense can be a dangerous term. My argument then was as follows: If someone tells you that x is the case, based on common sense, then I think they mean that x being … Continue reading
Filed under Language, Thoughts and rants
