Spelling Counts…

in Comedy, English Language | March 4th, 2011

Today is Nation­al Gram­mar Day, and maybe it’s a stretch to lump spelling under gram­mar, but it’s casu­al Fri­day here on OC. So we leave you with this. Have a great week­end..

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English and its Evolution

in English Language, Stanford | August 9th, 2009

A lit­tle some­thing for the lan­guage buffs among us. The Struc­ture of Eng­lish Words (iTunes) is anoth­er Stan­ford course. To be exact, it comes out of the Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram (my day job), and we’re open­ing enroll­ments for our Fall term next Mon­day. (If you live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, give our offer­ing a look. If you live out­side the Bay Area, then you may want to check out our pop­u­lar series of online writ­ing cours­es.) You can find the course descrip­tion for The Struc­ture of Eng­lish Words, taught by Pro­fes­sor Will Leben, direct­ly below. To find hun­dreds of oth­er free cours­es, then check out our col­lec­tion of Free Online Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es:

Thanks to his­tor­i­cal, cul­tur­al, and lin­guis­tic fac­tors, Eng­lish has by far the world’s largest vocabulary—leading many of us to have greater than aver­age dif­fi­cul­ty with words, and some of us to have greater than aver­age curios­i­ty about words.

Our his­tor­i­cal and lin­guis­tic study will cov­er both eru­dite and every­day Eng­lish, with spe­cial atten­tion to word mean­ing and word use, to both rules and excep­tions. Most words orig­i­nat­ed with an image. “Reveal” = “pull back the veil,” “depend” = “hang down from.”

Change is con­stant. “Girl” once meant “a young child of either sex;” an ear­ly syn­onym for “stu­pid” was “nice.” Despite resis­tance to change among some experts and some mem­bers of the gen­er­al pub­lic, new words are enter­ing at an accel­er­at­ing rate, from “Franken­food” to “ungoogleable.” Are there good changes and bad ones? And who gets to decide? Explor­ing the his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary rich­ness of Eng­lish will sug­gest some answers.

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Best Online Language Tools for Word Nerds

in English Language | June 9th, 2008

Life­hack­er is run­ning a good piece today that high­lights a series of web-based lan­guage tools for any­one look­ing to fig­ure out a word’s def­i­n­i­tion, trans­la­tion, pro­nun­ci­a­tion, syn­onym, or antonym. Word nerds, this could be your lucky day…

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Top 10 Grammar Myths

in English Language | March 9th, 2008

For Nation­al Gram­mar Day (March 4), The Gram­mar Girl (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site) issued anoth­er pop­u­lar pod­cast that out­lines and debunks 10 com­mon gram­mar myths. If you’re already up to speed on these (pre­view them here), con­grats. If not, give a lis­ten.

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Learning Foreign Languages the Mango Way

in English Language, Language Lessons | December 4th, 2007

What’s an easy way to learn a new lan­guage at no cost, when­ev­er and wher­ev­er you want? One is to take advan­tage of our exten­sive col­lec­tion of Free For­eign Lan­guage Lessons. Anoth­er is to check out Man­go Lan­guages, a web site that offers free online lan­guage cours­es that will teach you the basics in French, Ger­man, Eng­lish, Ital­ian, Span­ish, Man­darin Chi­nese, Japan­ese and more.

We’d usu­al­ly out­line the pros and cons of learn­ing lan­guages the Man­go Way. But there’s no rea­son to rein­vent the wheel. So we’re direct­ing your atten­tion to Jon Gor­don, the host of Future Tense, whose recent broad­cast took a short look at Man­go’s offer­ing. You can lis­ten to it here (MP3 — RealAu­dio — Feed) and read some more here. You can also access Future Tense on iTunes.

NOTE: To get start­ed with Man­go Lan­guages, you will need to reg­is­ter with the web­site.

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100 Great American Speeches

in Audio Books, English Language, History | August 30th, 2007

mlk.jpgAmer­i­can Rhetoric has com­piled its list of the top 100 Amer­i­can speech­es, all of which can be con­ve­nient­ly accessed as mp3 files. Most of the speech­es list­ed here are known for their elo­quence, and many for the piv­otal role they played in effect­ing major polit­i­cal and social change. The com­pi­la­tion lets you lis­ten to F.D.R. lead­ing the US through the Depres­sion ( “There is noth­ing to fear but fear itself” ) as well as through World War II with his Fire­side Chats. Then, there is Tru­man and Kennedy ( “Ich bin ein Berlin­er” ) fight­ing the Cold War, Nixon bol­ster­ing sup­port for the Viet­nam War with his “Great Silent Major­i­ty” speech, and Mar­tin Luther King ( “I Have a Dream” ) and Mal­colm X ( “The Bal­lot or the Bul­let” ) press­ing for civ­il rights in their dif­fer­ent ways.

The speech­es can be heard large­ly in full, and, while most are polit­i­cal in con­tent, some gems are not. Take for exam­ple William Faulkn­er’s Nobel Prize accep­tance speech, Lou Gehrig’s Farewell Address, Ursu­la Le Guin’s “A Left-Hand­ed Com­mence­ment Address,” and Elie Wiesel’s “The Per­ils of Indif­fer­ence.” Give these speech­es some time, and it might be a while before you come back up for air.

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The New Grammar Podcast on the Block

in English Language | August 21st, 2007

grammargirl.jpgIt did­n’t seem like an obvi­ous block­buster at first — at least not to me — but The Gram­mar Girl (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) has remained one of the most down­loaded edu­ca­tion­al pod­casts on iTunes. To be pre­cise, each week, about 100,000 peo­ple down­load these short pod­casts that offer “quick and dirty tips” for clean­ing up your writ­ing. And thanks to the endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of her free audio lessons, plus an appear­ance on Oprah, Mignon Fog­a­r­ty, the cre­ator of the Gram­mar Girl, has also man­aged to spin-off an audio­book ($9.95) that has dri­ven strong sales. Plus she’s got a good, old-fash­ioned pulp book some­where still in the pipeline.

It was per­haps, then, only a mat­ter of time before Fog­a­r­ty faced some friend­ly com­pe­ti­tion. The Gram­mar Grater (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) is a new pod­cast that approach­es lan­guage issues from a slight­ly dif­fer­ent angle. It focus­es on “Eng­lish words, gram­mar and usage for the Infor­ma­tion Age,” which is to say that it deals with gram­mar issues that often arise when we write emails, blog posts, instant mes­sages and beyond. Luke Tay­lor is the host, and, with him, you get a well-pro­duced, often enter­tain­ing, pod­cast that touch­es on gram­mar issues that you’re bound to encounter in your dai­ly elec­tron­ic writ­ing. Give the Girl and the Grater both a lis­ten and you’ll almost cer­tain­ly learn small bits that’ll make a big dif­fer­ence.

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Ten Podcasts to Build Your Vocabulary

in English Language, Podcasts | July 12th, 2007

Recent­ly Mer­ri­am-Web­ster announced that they’re adding “ginor­mous,” “speed dat­ing” and a few oth­er gems to the lat­est edi­tion of their dic­tio­nary. In their hon­or, we present ten pod­casts to help you expand your vocab­u­lary. Enjoy!

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