LINGUIST just told me about this book. Anyone heard of it?

THE LANGUAGE OF THE THIRD REICH LTI: Lingua Tertii Imperii

Victor Klemperer

Under the Third Reich, the official language of Nazism came to be used as a political tool. The existing social culture was manipulated and subverted as the German people had their ethical values and their thoughts about politics, history and daily life recast in a new language. This notebook, translated by Martin Brady and originally called LTI (Lingua Tertii Imperii) - the abbreviation itself a parody of Nazified language - was written out of Klemperer's conviction that the language of the Third Reich helped to create its culture. As Klemperer writes: 'it isn't only Nazi actions that have to vanish, but also the Nazi cast of mind, the typical Nazi way of thinking, and its breeding ground: the language of Nazism.'This brilliant, entertaining, profound and ultimately saddening and horrifying book, is one of the great Twentieth-Century studies of language and of its engagement with history.

HB 0 485 11526 3 PB 0 8264 5777 0 304 pp / May 2002

http://www.continuumbooks.com

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Meg is upset at the way Londoners say their phone numbers.

It's pretty obvious why people say it 'wrong' though, isn't it?

What I find much harder to believe is that BT have changed our prefixes from 01 to 071/081 to 0171/0181 to 020 in less than two decades. Hardly a sign that they're keeping pace with the cutting edge of technology, is it?

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Visiting other languages is like opening a cupboard where someone's been stashing their favourite toys. There's so much good stuff crammed in there you feel like you're going to be crushed as it falls down on your head.

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Prentiss Riddle has a language site full of fascinating stuff. His latest post is about constructed languages and people who are competing to invent the language with the smallest phoneme inventory. Anyway, go and read about Glopo. It's going to be hard to beat.

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Jennifer sent me this example from Buckie.

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My main areas within linguistics are semantics (about the general linguistic meanings of words and things) and pragmatics (about how we work out what people mean in a particular context).

These guys have stolen the name of our subject and gone to the extra trouble of putting a blooming annoying flash intro on the front of their site.

They'll give us a bad name. I wonder if they're really spiteful phoneticians or something.

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to resonance 104.4fm, which you can access via the London Musicians Collective and which I accessed by twiddling the dial on a little dusty black box I found in the kitchen. It's called a radio, apparently ;-)

No review yet or anything, but here is a brief mention of the jubilee celebration from the nme (you know, that thing the Sex Pistols used to use?).

It seems John attacked the Queen among others, which cheers me up. I was getting a bit worried by his 'not an anti-royalist' line recently (especially when comparing it with his 'not a fascist just because I'm an anti-royalist' bit in No Irish No Blacks No Dogs).

It seems he also said I'm sorry for nothing to no-one, ever. I totally agree with that. But I'm a bit unsure about the double negative. I grew up with negative concord, i.e. for us I never did nothing meant the same as I did nothing. But for those prescriptivists and others who ain't not got it, am I right in thinking that the two negatives here don't make a positive because of the kinds of negatives they are?

Intuitions fail me.

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And finally, here's the caption competition:

His blog article is number two in the blogdexcharts, second only to the spooky story about F-16s. I didn't think it was that interesting.

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William Safire has just been picked on by a blog with a name that keeps changing. Not too harshly, though. The comment is William Safire, you annoy me.

I thought the funniest bit was when Safire, who has been telling us what he thinks (about language, mainly) in the NYT for about a million years says that he doesn't want to set up a blog himself because 'I don't want anyone to know what I think'

Hard to know what to say to that, isn't it?

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Message at the front of the latest Friday Thing:

Hurrah! The Friday Thing is one year old this week. And what a year it's been. We've weathered the media downturn, survived T.T.E.O. September 11th, slapped our readers in the face by switching to paid subs only and yet have still managed to remain the UK's most successful paid-for current affairs email magazine.

Why have they done so well? My theories:

- not charging too much

- giving enough in return to justify payment

- simplicity

- a kind of independence

The independence idea might need a bit of explaining. What I have in mind is that you won't be happy with everything you read, but you know that the contributions are 'honest' and not accompanied by too much of an agenda slapping you in the face (one slap is enough, I reckon)

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This article by Bryan Appleyard in the Sunday Times seems to have divided the cycling community (well, the two I've heard from are divided anyway). It's certainly divided me.

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I recommend: a garden, a climbing frame, a paddling pool, a hose pipe, cold fruity drinks and the Cafe Del Mar.

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Oh, and keep away from Camden ;-)

Kiloh used to be a chocaholic. Then she found out about the negative connotations of the -holic bit, so now she's a chocophile.

Breakfast yesterday started with a nutella-covered pancake with sausage and fried egg. By the end she'd invented the chocolate-coated sausage, and yes, even fried egg with chocolate topping. Her next plan is to substitute chocolate for corn as the staple diet for hens.

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How exciting is this do you think? I'm really not sure.

Another link from the enigmatic mermaid

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Two languagey stories in today's Independent, both useable for teaching, I think.

This is about research which claims to show that the numbers of parents reading to kids has more than doubled in the past two years and that now 90% of parents regularly make time to read to their kids. It doesn't say whether that's 90% of parents in England, in the world, in the UK, or in Hampstead, but I must admit that I find that figure hard to believe, so I'm going to try to find out more details about the research.

This one baffles (now there's a word) me a bit. It starts by saying that a return to traditional methods of teaching reading has reversed the trend for girls to do better than boys at school. Then it says the method returned to is phonics, which my kids have been exposed to for the past 5 years. Then it says it's in Scotland and started 5 years ago. Then it says that we've been doing phonics in England since 1998 (i.e. 4 years ago) but it's more gradual down here. I think that what's being reported is a comparison between Scottish kids before and after phonics (not clear which ones were measured how as the 'before' group). But I'd like to know about English kids and what their gradual phonics is doing to them.

Funnily enough, just watched an episode of The Cramp Twins where a researcher decides to do some tests showing that Wayne and Lucien are completely alike, uses unusual methods to try to make sure the results come out OK, and ends up making them swap personality types.

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For more cock, see also Talking Cock, and the recently published Coxford Singlish Dictionary.

'Talking cock' has two meanings, btw: talking Singlish and spouting crap.

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Found this from dug via Boing Boing

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Just got a message from LINGUIST pointing to this article at Asian Time about 'Singlish', aka Singaporean English. It seems the Singaporean government have just decided the film Talking Cock: The Movie is unsuitable for minors because of what they think is 'bad grammar'

As the article puts it: Singapore's government wants its citizens to speak good English, but they would much rather be 'talking cock'.

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Come on, Ellen. Have you heard of the command 'save'? Or backing up?

Do you think all students will be writing to Apple before coming to explain now?

btw, Ellen reminds me of a certain acquaintance of mine after she has been imbibing significant quantities.

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a blog with a name that keeps changing pointed me to the enigmatic mermaid, another linguisticky site, who in turn just posted an article in Portuguese about women in Messines who were persuaded to stand around topless in order to receive a mammogram by satellite. Patrick (of a blog with a name that keeps changing) has also translated it for the nao-falo-portugues among you.

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I love ubergeek

Am I the only one who finds the actual people in the real apple ads funnier than the guy in the ubergeek pisstake?

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Anybody remember The Smirks? (This website has a lot of broken images, but hey, nobody's perfect).

For some reason, listening to The Coral made me think of them and then reminisce about that 'Power Pop' thing that came after punk. Remember The Yachts? (Suffice to say you love me, I can't say that I blame you...) Don't tell these guys I like this kind of thing, though.

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Until 12 noon tomorrow (25th July), you can hear The Coral's album here

Let me know what you think.

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Beanotown is the favourite website with the kids round here. They don't put stuff from the actual comics up there, but this week's cover is so good I put it up here

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And who is responsible for the plumbing?

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Went to see Scooby Doo. Pretty disappointing overall, but made much worse by the fact that I went back yet again on my recurring promise never to return to the Holloway Odeon. They really should change the sign outside to forgetful about focus

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Jonathan says:

contrary to reports from almost every pub in the country, and track 2 of The Residents' Third Reich'n'Roll, I am reliably informed by a letter in the Sunday Herald (http://www.sundayherald.com/news except they don't put letters up on the site) that Hitler was NOT a vegetarian

another blow for truth

And here's the letter:

. . . . . . . . .

Aaron Hicklin states in his column that Hitler may have been a vegetarian (Magazine, July 14). This myth about Hitler's supposed vegetarian diet needs to be quashed once and for all. Far from being a vegetarian, Hitler ate vast quantities of animal flesh, so much so that he suffered serious health problems. His periodic abstinence from meat was, indeed, done so as to get him on the road to better health again which, once achieved, would see him return to his heavy meat diet. One food author, Rynn Berry, was so fed up at hearing the Hitler-veggie myth that he wrote a booklet about it and also included a short chapter about why Hitler was not a vegetarian in his book, Famous Vegetarians and Their Favorite Recipies.

What a pity that not just Aaron Hicklin, but all newspaper editors and food writers didn't attend the World Vegetarian Congress held recently in Edinburgh. The horrific clips of how animals are treated - or rather mistreated - in order that we supposedly civilised humans can eat them would have hopefully been enough to put them off consuming meat and animal-related products for life.

Sandra Busell

Edinburgh

. . . . . . . . .

It strikes me, though, that if you are fed up with the Hitler-veggie myth, maybe there are better ways of attacking it than talking about Hitler in a book called Famous Vegetarians and their Favourite Recipes

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Thanks to Jonathan, I've been enjoying Hitler was a vegetarian from Third Reich 'N' Roll by The Residents, which rates nine big happy guys here.

It's great to cook to, and the perfect backdrop to semicommunication with Aki, our Japanese lodger. We particularly enjoyed it when they 'did' the Beatles Band.

Here are a few links if you want to know more:

http://www.residents.com/albums/classic/reich.html

http://www.residents.com/app/notes/reich.html

http://www.theresidents.co.uk/rthird.htm

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It's here now, although he's gone on holiday until August.

Found some interesting stuff, though. Particularly enjoyed the comments on the Wason Selection Task, which is near the bottom of the june archive (look for the post headed illogic.

If you've never heard of this task, why not try it here before reading the bouillabaisse comment? Email me your answer and I'll let you know how you did.

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When I mentioned a blog with a name that keeps changing, I should, of course, have also made sure I told you about fieldmethods.net, who have just passed on this story about a voice recognition toilet

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Thought I should mention a couple of blogs that have to do with linguistics: fabulousness, which also has lots of links to other linguisticky sites and a blog with a name that keeps changing

Sadly, bouillabaisse for the soul seems to be dead or broken at the moment B-(

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If you like the Human Clock check out the latest posting at chris.carline.org

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