Word of the Day

I subscribed to Merriam-Webster's word-of-the-day service a few months ago to improve my vocabulary.  I'll be taking the GRE in August and every bit of vocabulary practice helps.

Merriam-Webster has not been very helpful in improving my vocabulary.  It has been much more entertaining.

Very few of the words are useful for vocabulary building.  Most of the words are either obscure or common.  I've managed to build up a fairly large vocabulary, so common is a relative term here.  The definitions are what one should expect from a professional dictionary.  They are succinct and helpful.  The best part is the etymology (or word history).  I think they're informative and funny, and that's not just because I'm as much of a language geek as the lexicographers.

Appropriately, the word of the day for today is lexicographer, or someone who writes dictionaries.  I used to think writing a dictionary would be a boring job.  That was back in the day when I scribbled poems all over brightly colored notebooks.  Now I think being a lexicographer would be fascinating.  I could pour through modern literature and the internet, searching for new words and new uses of words.  I could find out where those words come from, digging deeper into the ever-evolving English language.

Anyway, I would recommend Merriam-Webster's word of the day to any lover of words. 

Coming Soon...

I'm only a chapter away from finishing You Are What You Speak.  It's kind of petered out towards the end so I'm not going to stay up late just to get that last bit.  So, coming soon: book review of You Are What You Speak.

Also, I would like to revise my previous posting goal.  It is now reduced to one post per week.  Two seems excessive and with summer classes starting soon, it may be difficult to keep up with.

Since this is a short post with no linguistic tidbits, I will at least provide a list of possible future posts:
-What can you do with a degree in linguistics, Elizabeth?
-What do linguists study? (these are related questions)
-The Philosopher's Stone of Linguistics
-Language Geeks and their behavior
-More about Ukrainian

Telephone Pictionary

This is a little bit late but better late than never.

My friends and have have started playing this game called Telephone Pictionary in the last month or so.  I recently had the idea that this game could be used in a linguistics study somehow.  I'm not sure how exactly, and even if I did know, it would probably be outside my area of interest.  It would have something to do with how people interpret and describe symbols in a picture.  Anyway, it's great fun.  Here's how you play:

1. Get together a group of people.  The game is best played with 5-10 people.  Each person needs a stack of papers about the size of an index card.  They will need as many pieces of paper as there are people playing the game.  We usually assign a number to each player and put that number on each of the cards in case they get mixed up.

2. Each person writes down a phrase on their first piece of paper.  This can be a movie quote, a cliché, song lyrics or a made up sentence.  Your group can put limits on this as you see fit.  You'll see why in a minute.

3. Everyone then passes their entire stack of paper to the person next to them.  It doesn't matter whether you go clockwise or counter-clockwise, just make sure everyone passes the same direction every time.  

4. Everyone has one minute to draw the phrase on the next paper (someone will have to time this).  At the end of that minute, put the first paper behind the stack and pass it to the next person.  A picture should now be on the top of the stack.

5.  Everyone now has one minute to guess what phrase describes the picture and write it down on the next piece of paper.  At the end of the minute, put the picture on the bottom of the stack and pass the stack to the next person.  A phrase should now be the top paper of the stack.

6. Continue in like manner, alternating between pictures and phrases, until everyone has back their original stack of paper.

It's hilarious what you end up with at the end.  Take turns sharing what each person got with the rest of the group.  Everyone wins.

Shibboleth

"The Gileadites seized the fords of the Jordan before the Ephriamites arrived.  And when any Ephriamite who escaped said, "Let me cross over," the men of Gilead would say to him, "Are you an Ephriamite?"  If he said "no," then they would say to him, "Then say 'Shibboleth'!"  And he would say "Sibboleth," for he could not pronounce it right.  Then they would take him and kill him at the fords of the Jordan.  There fell at that time forty-two thousand Ephriamites." Judges 12:5-7 NKJV

I never came across this Bible story in Sunday School.  I didn't even come across it in Christian Scriptures class in college.  I have to credit the book I'm currently reading, You Are What You Speak, for bringing this particular gem to my attention (even if the author didn't quite cite it right.)  In the book, the author, Robert Lane Greene, uses the term "shibboleth" to refer to any linguistic cure that a person can use to differentiate between an insider and an outsider.  And he comes up with quite a few modern examples.

I don't mean to pass judgement on people who use language to categorize people.  "Shibboleth" was a useful term from the Gileadites' standpoint.  It helped them to differentiate between fellow tribesman and tribal enemy.  It was a useful tool of war, even if we are supposed to be rooting for the Ephriamites (they were a tribe of the people of Israel).

It's a very extreme example, but the story shows us how defining our idiolect (the way each individual speaks, like a dialect for one person) can be.  Whether they know it or not and whether they mean to or not, other people are constantly putting you and I into categories based on the way we speak.  And it can be based on something as small as how we say a single sound.

Update:  Just read a post in Language Log where the author uses the term "shibboleth" in the same way.  Apparently, this term is more widespread than I thought.

Messages to Nobody in Particular

In Moody Memorial Library at Baylor University, there are places where students go to hide themselves away from the world.  As the student moves through the labyrinth of shelves, the isolation becomes more and more complete.  In theory, this isolation should lead to better studying, but the study carrels show the psychological cost of this study habit.

On the sides of the study carrels, one can find messages to nobody in particular.  On them are written everything you need to know about the reputations of every sorority on campus.  Many of the messages talk about studying.  Someone wrote on one carrel "this is the original twitter."

These messages are only one example of the human need to communicate, even when we think no one will listen.  They are an outcry, an attempt to break the isolation.  Blogging is like the messages on the carrels in that way.  Most blogs have few regular readers, but people continue to write them.  As I write this post, I have no way of knowing how many people will actually read it.  It's a message to nobody in particular.

But, high readership isn't the point for me.  I have something I want say; I need to see it typed out on the computer screen.  If I can hold myself to my goal of two posts per week, then I will have done something to break my personal silence, even if nobody hears.  

How to get to Ukraine: step 1

I decided about a month ago that I would try to get a Fulbright Fellowship.  Fulbright Fellows travel to a country outside of the US for about ten months where they do research.  They also have a program where students go to a foreign country and teach English.  That sounded perfect for me.  I found out about this program from a friend who was applying at the time.  She was recently accepted to go to Scandinavia     

Anyway, this seemed like a great opportunity to travel and learn about other languages/cultures.  After much research, I determined that the best country for me to visit would be Ukraine.  I want to go to Eastern Europe and Ukraine has the benefits of a large program without the drawback Russia has: a strict language requirement.  The best part is, the US government will pay for it, if I can get in.  That's the hard part.

Technically, step 1 would be to start filling out the application, but that wouldn't make for an interesting blog post.

Step 1: begin to learn Ukrainian

The Teach Yourself Ukrainian book is sitting on my bed right now.  The UPS guy literally delivered it as I was starting to write this post.  Opening the package will be my reward for finishing this post.

One of my goals this summer is to learn basic Ukrainian.  I currently have two semesters of Russian completed.  This could be a big help or a big hindrance, I don't know which yet.  Russian and Ukrainian very similar languages.  I have trouble keeping Spanish and Russian strait.  They mix in my head.  It's like my brain has a section for English and then a section for other languages.  So, if I randomly speak Ukrainian in Russian class next fall this will be why.

Now to open the package and begin.