On this page I present my links concerning language use and misuse.
My text is in black. Text copied from the Net is in maroon or, as highlighted by me, in red.
. . . Advertising blunders ___ Ambiguity ___ Bias ___ Bloopers ___ Cryptography ___ Doublespeak
. . . Foreign language ___ Legal drafting ___ Misunderstanding ___ Other ___ Persecution
. . . Postmodernism ___ Precision ___ Proper English ___ Signs and notices ___ Theory ___ Translation
Flaming Flag 6 Advertising at Its Best Religion or Supersition: http://thor.prohosting.com/~fflag/6/p12.htm . . . In order to have a healthy, intelligent population, people must liberate themselves from oppressive superstitions and seek their own comfort through the self. . . .
Teabaggers: http://teabaggers.pitas.com/ don't touch the template. it's very hot. Many links.
Jokes on Translation and Languages - page 1: http://www.fortunecity.com/business/moo/1132/Jokes.html/ Variety of topics, jokes, bloopers. English & French dictionaries and translation services.
Mathematics as a language. Ambiguities in the plain language: http://www.cut-the-knot.com/language/plain.html In Plain English. Links.
Biased Language: http://el-nino.ur.neu.edu/styleguide/4_0.html Northeastern has a strong commitment to making its publications inclusive of all types of people.
Can editing be funny: http://www.magi.com/~angelpub/homfunny.htm Writing tips, mis-translations, student bloopers.
HUMOR: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/4855/01humor.html CLASSIC CHURCH BULLETIN BLOOPERS.
Duke's Place Humor: http://people.ne.mediaone.net/jabshire/humor/writingandlanguagebloopers.html WRITING AND LANGUAGE BLOOPERS. ACCIDENT REPORTS. Church Bulletins. Hospital Charts. Welfare Correspondence. . . .
Language Bloopers: http://www.teamexpansion.org/stories/991013languagebloopers.htm . . . stories submitted to me by our mission family members. . . .
Things People Said: http://rinkworks.com/said/ Wide range of odd sayings.
Misinterpretation and encryption - meaningless noise and interpreted data Cryptogram: http://www.c3.hu/~szmz/4leonardo/cryptow6.html
Politics and the English Language, by George Orwell: http://www.mind-trek.com/treatise/go-patel.htm Orwell makes many important points in this essay of 1946.
What fascism is and isn't: http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/chpt1.htm No other word causes so much misunderstanding, confusion and heated debate in politics than fascism. The term has been applied to many of individuals such as McCarthy, Hoover and others, to government policies and to government themselves many times incorrectly. What then is fascism exactly?
Cross Cultural Language Bloopers: http://www.cob.sjsu.edu/facstaff/branne_m/Homework/LanguageBloopers.htm Signs and notices written in English that were discovered throughout the world..
Foreign Languages for Travelers: http://www.travlang.com/languages/ SELECT A LANGUAGE YOU SPEAK. SELECT THE LANGUAGE YOU WANT TO LEARN.
"crazing" of opals: http://www.kscourts.org/kscases/ctapp/1998/19980206/77550.htm BARBARA HARMON, Appellant, v. SAFECO INSURANCE COMPANY OF AMERICA, Appellee. Spontaneous "crazing" of opals, which is a natural physical process that often affects the stones, does not constitute "accidental direct physical loss" resulting in coverage under an insurance policy.
Re HSC Contractor Language: http://www.hrpost.ca/forums/ohs/9906/msg00062.html Depending on the size of the contractor and the degree of expertise you and your staff have in the area of the project to be completed, you may want to take a "hands on" or "hands off" approach. . . .
Find a Lawyer - Law Legal Lawsuit Firms - Lawyers.com: http://www.lawyers.com/lawyers-com/executable/today/lawstory.asp?92 Law Buzz Lite: Lawful Leisure for Summer '99. Come cool your e-heels with this week's hotter-than-July Law Buzz at a few digital destinations that can help you keep out of trouble when your lawyer is on vacation.
Potential Loopholes And Drafting Issues: http://www.advocacy.org/hsap/loophole.htm This paper analyzes the details of four tobacco control proposals. The Health Science Analysis Project (HSAP) is an Advocacy Institute project . . .
MDs' failure to use plain language can lead to the courtroom: http://www.cma.ca/cmaj/vol-155/issue-8/1152.htm Canadian Medical Association Journal 1996.
Misunderstanding medical terms hazardous to health: http://www.4women.gov/nwhic/News/Feb00/29Feb001.htm . . . many patients do not understand the meaning of the term "unconscious," . . .
What is it about the doctor?
As a doctor completed his examination of the patient he said, "I can't find a cause for your complaint. Frankly, I think it's due to drinking."
The patient replied, "In that case I'll come back when you're sober!".
Urban Legend German almost the official language in US: http://www.watzmann.net/scg/german-by-one-vote.html The Legendary English-Only Vote of 1795.
Using 'nazi' shows misunderstanding: http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/1999/10/10-13-99tdc/10-13-99dops-letter-4.asp "Now, where does that come from?" Have you ever asked yourself that question after glibly uttering a word, phrase or cliché you inadvertently learned . . .
Language Freedom and Restriction: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/NALI2.html Language Freedom and Restriction: A Historical Approach to the Official Language Controversy. Does the United States need an official language?
Singer v. Canada, Communication: http://heiwww.unige.ch/humanrts/undocs/html/vws455.htm The author runs a stationery and printing business in Montreal. His clientele is predominantly but not exclusively anglophone. Starting in 1978, the author received numerous summons from the Quebec authorities, requesting him to replace commercial advertisements in English outside his store by advertisements in French. The author appealed against all these summons before the local courts, and contended that the Charter of the French Language (Bill No. 101) discriminated against him because it restricted the use of English for commercial purposes; . . .
The author then took his case to the Supreme Court of Canada which, on 15 December 1988, decided that an obligation to use French only in outdoor advertising was unconstitutional and struck down several provisions of the Quebec Charter of the French Language (Charte de la langue française). The Quebec legislature, however, passed another legislative measure, Bill No. 178, on 22 December 1988, whose express ratio legis was to override the judgment handed down by the Supreme Court of Canada one week earlier. With this, the author contends, he has exhausted available remedies.
The complaint:
3. The author contends that Bill No. 101, as amended by Bill No. 178, is discriminatory, in that it restricts the use of English to indoor advertising and places businesses which carry out their activities in English in a disadvantageous position vis-à-vis French businesses. . . .
Dawkins Review of Intellectual Impostures: http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/dawkins.html Postmodernism disrobed by Richard Dawkins. [Published in Nature, 9 July 1998, vol. 394, pp. 141-143.] Intellectual Impostures by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. Richard Dawkins is at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Parks Road, Oxford.
Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content. The chances are that you would produce something like the following:
We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multi-dimensional machinic catalysis. The symmetry of scale, the transversality, the pathic non-discursive character of their expansion: all these dimensions remove us from the logic of the excluded middle and reinforce us in our dismissal of the ontological binarism we criticised previously.
This is a quotation from the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, one of many fashionable French 'intellectuals' outed by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont in their splendid book Intellectual Impostures, . . .
This calls to mind Peter Medawar's earlier characterization of a certain type of French intellectual style (note, in passing, the contrast offered by Medawar's own elegant and clear prose):
Style has become an object of first importance, and what a style it is! For me it has a prancing, high-stepping quality, full of self-importance; elevated indeed, but in the balletic manner, and stopping from time to time in studied attitudes, as if awaiting an outburst of applause. It has had a deplorable influence on the quality of modern thought...
. . .
The Confusing Language of Watch Accuracy: http://www.timezone.com/wwwboard/BB/messages/139.html . . . our discussions on watches remain hampered by a vocabulary that is often confusing, and sometimes incorrect. We can start improving communication by clarifying the concepts behind three frequently-used terms in watchmaking: accuracy, adjustment, and regulation. . . .
Tips on proper English: http://ifaq.wap.org/society/properenglish.html 1. Avoid alliteration. Always. 2. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do. . . .
Signs and notices (See also Foreign language.)
Funny Signs From Other Countries: http://www.fuzzydog.com/mscfunnysigns2.htm FUNNY SIGNS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES.
Language: http://www.mattababy.org/~belmonte/Publications/Books/CSaW/2_language.html Lewis Carroll: Mathematics in Literature. Slang: The Art of Architecture. Language Theory. Babbage: The First Hacker. Finite Automata. Turing and an Abstract Model of Computation. Extensions to Turing Machines. Turing Machine Encodings and the Universal Turing Machine. The Halting Problem: An Undecidable Problem. A Taste of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem.
Mathematics as a language. Ambiguities in the plain language: http://www.cut-the-knot.com/language/plain.html In Plain English. "The die is cast - you should die" may sound like an offer one can't refuse. . . .
A misunderstanding in Germany: http://home1.swipnet.se/~w-10879/index5.html Arms and the man . . .
Hilarious Sign Language Misunderstandings: http://www.zak.co.il/deaf-info/old/humor_misunderstanding.html . . . An ASL Deaf American man was having an animated conversation with a FSL Deaf French woman. . . .
Language Barrier Blamed In Report Of Alleged Robbery: http://www.journal-topics.com/mp/00/mp000426.8.html
Common Errors in College Math: http://www.math.vanderbilt.edu/~schectex/commerrs/
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You can e-mail me at waynerp@sympatico.ca