Diacritiques

Analyse Brassens est de retour!

J’y ai fait référence dans le passage sur vénus callipyge dans le billet qui parle d’épithètes homériques et autres. (Oui, l’article est en anglais, mais faites défiler et regardez la fin!) Mais leur base de données a connu un accident vasculaire cérébral, me semble-t-il, vite signalé au webmèstre. Il l’a ressuscité et même expédié un gentil email à mon attention.

Vous pouvez donc de nouveau vous plonger dans l’analyse de la chanson Vénus Callipyge de Georges Brassens.

I half-misquoted Adolf Muschg in the last post; at the very least, I was being imprecise. His actual words were “[Die Rechtschreibreform] ist unnötig wie ein Kropf.” Unnötig (unnecessary), not überflüssig (superfluous). Former German federal president Roman Herzog, however, did call it “überflüssig wie ein Kropf” (as superfluous as a goiter).  read the post »

I finally caught up with my favourite blogs. How hard it is to get back on top of your reading after missing just ten days’ worth of blogging! Anyway, here are some commentaries inspired by the latest crop.

Mark Liberman and Eric Bakovic continue Language Log’s campaign against the regrettably pervasive phenomenon of accent prejudice. Their new articles have shifted focus from the US to the UK situation and go on to consider how disregard for accents that deviate from what is perceived as neutral or standard pronunciation, tagged as exemplary, or simply one’s own may be related to negative emotions: rooted in disgust or reinforced by shame.

 read the post »

Eric Bakovic, one of the linguists who make Language Log the great, inspiring place it is, has started his own linguistics blog, phonoloblog | all things phonology. The contributors are, again, linguists and are going to address phonology in particular. This promises to be a very interesting addition to the linguistic segment of the blogospere. Plus, […]

This is a followup to my previous post on eggcorns, ie not universally accepted variant spellings created by an individual by way of a process similar to folk etymology (“étymologie populaire” voir ici). Here is a new one: peace core. 3,360 gHits, a few of which are puns or refer to at least one bible study […]

Two days ago, at the age of 95, Henri Cartier-Bresson died. On the Libération site, there is a well-selected collection of links to online exhibitions of his work. What I find most interesting is that at this time of obituaries, the press is full of prints of photographs of, rather than by him. One […]

a site in turmoil damn Internet Explorer stand fast, dawn is nigh This is my reply when asked how I spent last night and most of the preceding day. Others, in comparable situations, have had similar reactions.

Generally, it’s called a hiatus in Blogese. Despite temperatures of over 30°C (or maybe because of the ozone pollution levels caused by the heat) I managed to catch what is called Sommergrippe in German — summer flu. It hit me pretty fiercely (I’m still coughing), and I can’t blog when my mind is feverish and […]