The prime minister doesn’t ‘commentate’ on opinions polls. Or should that be ‘comment’? Piers Kelly investigates the history of these distinct meanings.
READ MORE
Up-goer Five
Big words and jargon confound and conceal – it’s a common claim. James McElvenny looks at the recent Up-goer Five craze of explaining complex topics using only the 1,000 most common words.
READ MORE
Ingrid Piller scoops Talkley Award
A belated congratulations to Ingrid Piller, winner of the 2012 Talkley Award for an individual who has done the most to increase public knowledge about language. Ingrid is a very worthy recipient of this new prize due to her outstanding work as a blogger, her regular media appearances, her promotion of bilingual education and her [...]
READ MORE
Lingua Franca
Piers Kelly writes: I’m on Lingua Franca this Saturday talking about Fully (sic) and why it’s … fully sick (and reading this post). I’m afraid that under pressure I revert to a monotone, like cornered prey trying to blend in with in with the sound of the circling wasps. For best results, I suggest you [...]
READ MOREDialects in the mist
ABC’s Jane Cowan ran into some accent issues in Alabama, USA. She also discovered the joy of discussing language differences in a new place. Discussing and laughing together over different words and pronunciations is a great way to break the ice in a new place. Everyone can find something that’s distinctive about how they speak where they’re from – a word, a particular way of saying something or odd sayings.
READ MORE
‘Kind of butthole’
James McElvenny writes… I always thought of Archie as a nice boy, but now I see that he is in fact a very rude young man, possibly due to the strain of being a teenager for the last seventy years or so. But even early on in his perpetual adolescence, back in 1947, he used [...]
READ MOREHappy Passive Voice Day
It was decreed, by somebody, that April 27 shall be celebrated by all as Passive Voice Day. The passive voice is always encouraged by us at Fully (sic), especially when clarity is increased. Passive Voice Day is a day when people of all walks of life are asked to embrace the passive, and to ensure [...]
READ MOREThe importance of supporting endangered languages
Yesterday on Radio Australia, Phil Kafcaloudes interviewed linguists Vaso Elefsiniotis, Simon Musgrave, and Ghil’ad Zuckerman about Australia’s endangered languages. Phil asks some tough but good questions, revolving around a central theme that I’ve heard many times before; why we should be ‘preserving’ or ‘maintaining’ these languages when no one is speaking them, to which Zuckerman [...]
READ MORE“Tweetorialising”
Fairfax media’s reply to a heavily-critical Murdoch tweet includes a useful new word: “tweetorialise”: “Proof you can’t trust anything in Australian Fairfax papers, unless you are just another crazy,” he tweetorialised this morning. Although the word may have been used before just now, this is, according to Google, the first time it has occurred in [...]
READ MORE
