"Um ..." [Was: linguistics fashionable?]

[Jonathan Lighter]

Not to mention, O crack journalist, that "O.K." was not "the product of casual early 19th- century spelling."  It was deliberately created for a newspaper as a rib-ticklin' knee-slapper..

  No mention either of HDAS's treatment, but that _would_ be asking too much.

  Makes me think of a small boy and his mom I overheard at a bookstore maybe twenty years ago.

  MOM [enthusiastically]: _Peter and the Wolf_!  Don't like to listen to that?

  SMALL BOY [_pained_]:  Noooooooooo!  It's too much like _learning_!

  JL


  Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: Re: "Um ..." [Was: linguistics fashionable?]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At 12:48 PM -0400 8/24/07, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>"Um ...". by Michael Erard, is again reviewed in the New York Times,
>today by William Grimes -- and again, somewhat unfavorably.
>
>Joel

Also in today's Times is a piece in the Escapes section on Martin Van
Buren, his beloved hometown Kinderhook, NY, and the O.K. Clubs:
http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/08/24/travel/escapes/24trip.html?ref=travel
The writer seems happy to leave it as an open question whether the
source of O.K. is "Old Kinderhook" (makes a better story for her) or
"oll korrect" (which she concedes is supported by evidence cited in
the OED, although she never mentions A. W. Read's lifework on the
topic).

LH

>
>At 8/21/2007 11:00 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>To: American Dialect Society
>>From: "Joel S. Berson"
>>Subject: Re: [ADS-L] linguistics fashionable?
>>In-Reply-To: <20070822001937.M40023 at louisiana.edu>
>>References: <200708211848.l7LFITgV013225 at malibu.cc.uga.edu>
>><20070822001937.M40023 at louisiana.edu>
>>
>>Erard's book is reviewed -- somewhat unfavorably -- by Christine
>>Kenneally in last Sunday's New York Times Book Review section.
>>
>>Joel
>>
>>At 8/21/2007 08:34 PM, Darla Wells wrote:
>>>Allure Magazine September issue has a blurb on "Bad Words" on page 146 that
>>>begins, "Linguists estimate..." and continues on to explain what eggcorns,
>>>disfluencies, Spoonerisms, blends, Mondegreens, and Freudian slips are. They
>>>are talking about a book by Michael Erard called Um...: Slips, Stumbles, and
>>>Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean. I found this to be kind of an
>>>interesting
>>>juxtaposition what with Britney Spears on the cover and being on
>>>the same page
>>>as Jessica Simpson's 2 major assets. Fashion and linguistics
>>>(lite) makes for
>>>interesting bedfellows, I guess.
>>>Darla
>>>
>>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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