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January 5, 2010Words & Origins
I haven’t done anything today, unless you count the hundreds of words I’ve tagged on Wordnik.com in an attempt to create a foundation for … something.
Basically, I go to an entry for a word. I look at how the word is spelled. I tag the word based on the pattern it has of consonants and vowels. Consonant is c, vowel is v. Panda is “cvccv“. Panther is “cvcccvc“. That’s it.
The beauty of is is when you spend your whole day doing this, your job is basically to ‘think of all the words in English” and then tag them with their consonant/vowel pattern. Some of the combinations point out obvious connections between fight, right, light, might, etc, but other words in the ‘cvccc‘ pattern include birth, waltz, world, and sixth. Unexpected, neh?
I’m sure that a program could be written fairly easily to accomplish this task in minutes, but I had kind of a blast doing it manually. Actually, this blog is taking forever because every word I type here I want to go and tag on wordnik.
As I said, I’m not sure of the practical application of this. Making the connections may be the entire purpose. I mean, you can deduce that ‘deer’ and bead’ have the same pattern of cvvc, (one of the most popular ones, and therefore one I have not been tagging as much). It’s the strange combinations that seem worth making, and I’m happy to make this strong foundation. My favorite series of words is ‘vccvcvcv‘ which currently has: advocate, antelope, envelope, escalate, and ominivore.
A while ago, I brainstormed about what online dictionaries could offer that paper ones cannot, specifically because of Erin McKean’s very smart but understandable TED Talk where she explains the “ham butt problem.” There could be so many more features than we are used to settling for. Wordnik already links to Flickr, and provides etymologies as well as popularity charts on the right side, explaining when a word has come in and out of the language. Pretty sweet stuff.
For some reason, I made an example page of what I thought an online definition page should look like, and included this function. In my example, it was apple, which it turns out has the very strange combination of ‘vcccv.’ It took a long time to match up any other words with that pattern but now there are 5.
Anyway… YOU TOO CAN ADD TO THIS NEW TAGGING EXPERIMENT!
Some caveats when tagging and searching for tagged words on Wordnik:
1. I spent a lot of time on this today but I’m only one person. Anyone can add tags by creating their own free little account. Please add them if you think they should be there.
2. I started out just doing 4, 5, and 6 letter words, eventually expanding out to 3-letter and 7-12 letter words. Therefore, if they are 4, 5, or 6 letters long, it’s more likely there will be a larger database of words to compare it to.
3. For some reason today I’m having trouble deciding whether the Y in KEY should be a vowel or a consonant, so I tagged it for both ‘cvv’ and ‘cvc.’
4. So far I haven’t done any hyphenated words, but I’m sure they will fall into place easily.
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January 3, 20101. Twitter
I don’t advocate anyone’s use of Twitter but my own. For me, it’s the perfect combination of ‘things I need to say outloud for the record’ and ‘things I don’t want to bother a specific person about’ without the vulnerability of Facebook where everyone from my entire life can see my most recent anxiety attack or third-panda-plural admonishment of myself. 
2. Kingdom of Loathing
Resham told me about this pun-filled online game. It’s pretty stupid, but it’s funny enough that you don’t mind having to spend all of your adventures trying to level up, because you can drink alcohol and gain a lot of them back. It was a good way to pass the time. I think I had the most fun naming my familiars: 
(Polaris Bear the Star Starfish being the best.)
So now i’m a level 16 Accordian Thief and there’s some greater thing that I could do, but I think I’m done with it.
3. F My Life
My brother sent me this link the day after a breakup, and it felt so good to be surrounded by misery. Nowadays when I go to the site, it is more of a cringing awkward painful experience, everybody going through so much unholy disgusting trauma, but it’s still a better site than GivesMeHope which drowns me in its sappiness.
4. Nerd Boyfriend
Famous smart nerdy guys and the clothes they wore. Some of them are particularly inspired. Makes you think of famous people as normal people, but also eccentric in their fashion choices, or just clearly from another era.
5. Wordnik
I need to loiter around this site a little more, but I have high hopes for it as a progressive innovative online dictionary, because Erin McKean is involved in it, and she wore a dress at TED that I wish I owned, and I wrote to her and she emailed me back. TWICE.
6. The Sartorialist
I wish I was consistently fashionable and lived in a city where this photographer would go. I am so jealous of nearly everyone on this site, they look so awesome like they are going somewhere important, but they did not know at the beginning of the day that this photoshoot might happen. 
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January 1, 2010
I recently finished The Man Who Made Lists by Joshua Kendall about the life of Peter Mark Roget and I don’t know what to say exactly.
I was hoping this book would be a kickstart to me to attack the pile of language books I have languidly lying around my bookshelves, but not so.
From the first pages, I was writing “awwwww” in the margins because the front and back sheets are his handwritten list of animal names in Latin and English.
The book goes through his biography, and I don’t like how it’s written, like the author had a Pastwatch-esque ability to know where Roget is looking and what he is thinking as he walks down the road or in the middle of a meeting. I know there are records and he could have explained it after the fact, but I just don’t buy it and it distracts me to throw in details about the buildings he passes and their little histories. [and then suddenly…]
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November 18, 2009Last night I joined wordnik.com as TankHughes. I favorited 50 words, realizing how many words on my happy word list are not in English.
I hope to start tagging words I like, and creating categories for interesting words like ‘strengths’ the longest word with only one vowel. longest_word_with_one_vowel, one_vowel, word_records ?
More to come. Could not see a direct way to volunteer to be helpful to the site, so I’ll just try some things on my own before reaching out officially.
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November 2, 2009
Recently I poked and prodded around the internet, Portland libraries, and even had my mother in California send me a book in the mail to get an example of Delfín Carbonell Bassett’s “Unialphabet.”
Here is why: I think it’s potentially brilliant. It’s a simple gesture that could really change the mindset of students learning language.
Here is what it is, in theory: Instead of having and English/Spanish and Spanish/English division in bilingual dictionaries, put them all together in one alphabet, with some sort of key to distinguish which comes from which language. It breaks down the artificial wall, and lets the languages live in the same universe. It may lead to more ‘Spanglish’ writings, but it also stops kids from learning unconsciously that their language of reference can only be thought of one word at a time in the other language, one arrow going to Spanish, one arrow back to English. With the Unialphabet system, all the words are living in bunk beds next to each other, forced to recognize the others’ presence AS WELL AS exponentially increasing the element of serendipity, finding words you weren’t looking for, because now all the words are available all the time as the main words. It also can visually show someone “hey, English has a lot more words in the W section than Spanish, why is that?” pushing a student to think about the fundamentals of language earlier than the day some crazy word enthusiast, such as myself, pushes word facts down their throats without warning.
Here is the problem: The book my mother sent me was a Dictionary of Proverbs, which was on the list of books which used the system on Wikipedia. I know Wikipedia is not the king of information, but by god I thought I could trust it just a little further than I could throw it. Anyway, the red and yellow cover, as you can see, clearly divides it into two sections. One thing it does do is explain English idioms in Spanish, and Spanish idioms in English. Ok, that’s good, but WHY ARE THERE TWO ALPHABETS. UNI! ONE! WTF! I want to love this, I want to write to Erin McKean and tell her for the Dictionary Society of America I want to write a proposal that encourages bilingual dictionaries to be printed unialphabetically for American textbooks, and pocket dictionaries! BUT I DON’T HAVE A REAL EXAMPLE!
In fact, the most true example of a unialphabet that I have access to is my very own “Mellifluous Verbosity,” the list of all the words that make me happy.
So what now? Keep searching for my linguistic path, amuse myself with words, maybe email Mr. Señor Carbonell Bassett again, search for actual images of the Unialphabet in practice. Sigh.
Aspiring paleoverbologist out.
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October 18, 2008
Last week I got kicked in the pants by a linguistic celebrity. What happened was that at Andy’s 24th birthday party, 2 guys talking about their difficulty in finding suits their sizes were forced to talk to me by Andy. (I who was being forced to constantly drink more champagne.) I forced the conversation to linguistics as I do, and one of the smartly-dressed chaps suggested I email any famous important linguistics person I could think of in the world and ask for advice. Well I did, and I expected a surrogate response or a cokkie cutter statement but NO, Erin McKean the editor of the New Oxford American Dictionary and all-around good American lexicographer, WROTE BACK… TWICE. It was almost too much to take.
Anyhow she suggested that more than having a job in the industry or taking specific classes what I should really be doing is keeping up on Historical Linguistics literature. I almost jumped out the door to buy some big happy books when I realized I already have 8 that I’ve tried to start and then lost motivation for. “If you think it will be hard to motivate yourself to do the reading set yourself a public goal and blog your progress,” said the mighty lexicographer. And so I am. [and then suddenly…]
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September 2, 2008This review contains spoilers, I guess.
I LOVEThe Last Crusade. It is one of the movies that you should not watch with me unless you love people saying lines right before they happen, and little “eeeee!!!” noises all through the hours. I am only annoying fangirl like that with Dead Poet’s Society and State and Main, but nothing is as bad. Examples of little girl explosions:
- “We’re turning around, they’re taking us back to Germany”
- Vintage dirt bikes with sidecars!
- World War II Tanks!
- X marks the spot!
- Nazis! (I have a theory all movies with Nazis are good, including Illinois Nazis)
- “The penitent man shall pass.”
- (not) dying off the cliff.
- The leap of faith.
I LOVE it, ok? [and then suddenly…]
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June 2, 2008