Stuffis

Still "Brent's pile o' stuff" but at least now there are sections.

Language

NEW The Secret Language Code: it turns out that statistical analysis of a writer's use of pronouns reveals that they are correlated to lots of demographics about the writer, e.g. gender, age, social class, etc.

Netspeak: a nifty little tool that uses web search to tell you if phrase X or Y is more popularly used

Stephen Fry on Language (kinetic typography): big reveal at the end

Google Labs presents the Books Ngram Viewer: chart/compare the usage of words/phrases in books over time

The McGurk Effect: what we see can override what we hear (even when we know about the effect)

Lexicalist ("a demographic dictionary of modern American English"): breaks down words (e.g. found in Twitter) by age, gender, and geography

For all but one inflection, there are two ways to express the negative contraction form of "to be", e.g.: "you aren't" and "you're not", "he isn't" and "he's not", etc. "I" is the exception, which has only one form: "I'm not". Now: When the negative contraction of "to be" is placed at the end of a sentence, as a question-confirmation, it has to use the "n't" form, e.g.: "You're planning to cheat, aren't you?", "He's very smart, isn't he?". The trouble is that there's no "n't" form for the "I" case. Since we can't say "amn't I" we end up using "aren't I", e.g., "I'm going to fail, aren't I?" — which is not grammatically correct. (I'm trying to break this habit myself.) Captain Von Trapp sets the example for us. [Who thinks about this stuff?]

Negative questions in English are generally a bad idea. If you say, "You don't have any money?" and I reply, "No," am I disagreeing with you because I do in fact have money, or am I asserting I have no money and thus agreeing with you? Why ask a question that's likely to require an immediate follow-up question? Apparently German has a way to handle this: In addition to ja and nein you can answer doch — which always carries the meaning that you are contradicting what the speaker said or asked.

The Unrecognized Death of Speech Recognition

MLA interactive map of 'speakers per language in the USA'

Very insightful article on why Google offered free GOOG-411, the new Android speech-search app, etc.: It's to build a large phoneme database to improve speech-to-text which will then allow them to index video (YouTube).

Sometimes Google doesn't help when all you have to go on is a phonetic exchange. From That Thing You Do:

Guy: "If Jimmy's a genius then I'm [oo tahnt]."
TBP: "Who's [oo tahnt]?"
Guy: "He's the sec— Forget it."

Language Links

• Ambigrams Ambigrams: words that can be read in more than one way or from more than a single vantage point
• Confusing Words
• grimblepritz and blurfldyick: nonsense words used in the Perl "Configure" script and autoconf, when checking how grep behaves on some platforms
• aargh, hmmm, and ahhhhhh
• Baby Name History
• Survey of "Pop" vs. "Soda", or this one
• Speech Accent Archive
• The Bad English League: Interesting site that shows how many web pages use an improper word/phrase compared with the proper one they should use. My contributions:
  • "a whole nother" vs. "another whole" (one I've been training myself out of) - currently at #4. I can understand people speaking this one, but I'm amazed someone would type "nother".
  • "should of" vs. "should've" - currently at #9. I realized the other day that it's hearing the "'ve" contraction that makes people learn "of". See also the "could" and "would" variations on this.
  • Also try "alot" vs. "a lot". Remember, The Alot is Better Than You at Everything.
• Omniglot: a guide to writing systems
• Apparently I am not the only one who is compelled to blurt when remembering something with regret. ;-)

My contact information, brief autobiography (such as it is), and family tree. back to Nordist.net