Strong Language 2: Swear Harder

Back in December I introduced Strong Language, a new group blog about the use, culture, and linguistics of profanity cooked up by James Harbeck and me. While some of you are now regular readers, others may be unaware of it or glad of a reminder or an update, so this post can address that. The language below may offend, so caveat lector.

Strong Language started well and this year has gone from strength to sweary strength. We’ve redesigned its appearance, partnered with Slate’s Lexicon Valley, and added more writers to the team of regular contributors. The @stronglang Twitter account ties in with the blog but does its own stuff too, such as film stills and swearwords of the day.

I’ve written ten posts for Strong Language and have as many more in various stages of completion or planning. Published posts look at filthy old songs, Irish English shite, multilingual swearing, and Rob Chirico’s book Damn!, among other things. I also compile ‘Sweary links’ – like the ‘Link love’ posts here on Sentence first, but swearing-related.

Strong Language: A sweary blog about swearing

I rarely post here twice in one day, but I have some news to share: Strong Language is a new group blog about swearing set up by sesquiotic linguist James Harbeck and me. This is how it started.

As James puts it, the blog:

gives a place for professional language geeks to talk about things they can’t talk about in more polite contexts. It’s a sweary blog about swearing.

At the bottom of the new blog you’ll see some familiar names among the contributors. More will be signing up, and we’re very open to ideas for new material. The associated Twitter account is @stronglang.

"We begin to swear before we can talk." —Mark Twain, Following the Equator (1897)

— Strong Language (@stronglang) December 12, 2014

Some of you may find the idea unappealing, and will not wish to read further. I won’t hold it against you.

It’s early days, and we’re still figuring out the details, but there are several posts up already on a range of topics, including the phonology of cusswords, whether shit is a contronym, and one from me today on great moments of swearing in the horror film The Thing.

If swearing gives you lalochezia or interests you linguistically, culturally or ineffably, then bookmark, subscribe and follow at will, and spread the word if the notion takes you.

Updates:

My first Strong Language post is featured on the Paris Review blog:

Great moments in swearing: an utterance in John Carpenter’s The Thing helped define our sense of a treasured obscenity.

Ben Zimmer introduces Strong Language to Language Log readers:

There’s a new linguablog that’s definitely worth your time if you’re not put off by vulgarities. And if you revel in vulgarities, well, you’re in luck. . . . James and Stan have enlisted a great lineup of contributors (I’m happy to be one of them).

Eugene Volokh gives Strong Language his nod of approval at the Washington Post.

Strong Language just got picked up by MetaFilter.

Language Hat is also happy about it.

Dave Wilton spreads the word at Wordorigins.org.

Katy Waldman at Slate‘s Lexicon Valley blog welcomes the “cheerful temple to the vulgar and profane” that is Strong Language.

Jazmine Hughes at The Hairpin praises Strong Language‘s “scholarly, robust, cool-as-shit deep dive into when and why we swear, where our curses come from, and what, exactly, they mean”.

Laura M. Browning selects Strong Language as a staff pick for the A.V. Club:

Although the blog’s authors are serious about language, they don’t take themselves too seriously, so the posts are as hilarious as they are informative. Plus you’ll pick up some language that would make Malcolm Tucker proud.

And here’s a progress report from March 2015: Strong Language 2: Swear harder.

Top 100 language lovers 2014

Language portal bab.la is having its annual “Language Lovers” poll. I’ve placed well in recent years but I don’t read much into the results; nor should you. Twitter’s “Follow Friday” is used as a scoring metric, for example, despite being as spammy and arbitrary as it is edifying.

Still, it’s a bit of fun and a fine way to discover new language-related resources. You can vote for Sentence first – or a blog of your choice – in the Language Professionals poll, and if you’re feeling generous you can vote for @StanCarey in the Language Twitter Accounts poll.

Macmillan Dictionary Blog, to which I’m a contributor, appears in the Language Learning Blogs list. There’s good browsing material on all these pages. For more information about the competition, go here. Voting ends on 9 June.

Four blogs on language and linguistics

Today I want to briefly mention* four language/linguistics blogs that deserve your attention and might not have broached your radar.

Actually I linked to Glossologics lately, but there’s lots of new posts since. Its emphasis is on etymology – origins of words and phrases – but there’s plenty of other stuff too: on foreign grammar, writing systems, language learning and more. Writer Alex Tigers updates it regularly with tasty linguistic morsels – and apparently she makes the best chocolate cake, though regrettably I can’t confirm this.

Word Jazz is “a celebration of linguistic creativity” from Matt Davis, a linguistics postgrad in London who is fascinated by all things language. The blog debuted at the start of this year and so far has looked at several aspects of linguistic creativity, such as vowels in pop music, lexical combinations, and the colourful life of adverbs (“the garden glittered greenly in the sun”).

the mashed radish will also be of interest to etymology fans. It’s written by language hobbyist John Kelly, who by his own admission is obsessed with English etymologies and the “stories our words tell about us”. Over the last few weeks he has delved into the histories of bask, self and other, and various citrus fruits: all sorts of everything etymological.

Finally, …And Read All Over is the brainchild of linguistics major Joe McVeigh, champion of free-form grammar and Robert Burchfield, Original Gangster. Notwithstanding its satirical tendencies, the blog has a serious side; recent posts have discussed the language instinct debate, and academic and marketing applications of corpus linguistics. He reviews books too.

All four are well worth visiting, and perhaps bookmarking or subscribing if their subject matter and style appeal.

*

* Not I want briefly to mention, which would mean something quite different, split infinitive watchers.

Bab.la top language lovers

Language portal bab.la is holding its annual competition of top language lovers, and Sentence first is honoured to appear in the Language Professionals category.

Click the image below to see the 100 shortlisted (if that’s not an oxymoron) and vote for Sentence first or another blog of your choice:

My Twitter page (@StanCarey) was also selected, so if you’re feeling generous you can vote for me here:

Though I placed respectably last year (see the badges in the sidebar), my expectations in these contests are modest; tireless self-promotion is not my strong point. But they’re a good way to find new language writers, and they’re also an opportunity to welcome new visitors.

Finally, if you’re in a voting or browsing kind of mood, there are also polls for Facebook pages and language-learning blogs. The latter includes Macmillan Dictionary Blog, to which I contribute regular posts.

New language blog: Caxton

Caxton is a new blog about language from Barrie England, an Oxford graduate who has studied English literature, foreign languages, and older varieties of English. It is named after printing pioneer William Caxton, who, as Barrie writes, “by using technology to reach a wider public . . . can be seen as the progenitor of the digital age”.

Barrie wrote Real Grammar before its host pulled the plug; I’ve linked to it here in the past, most recently to his post on the rise of Swiss German dialect. Some of you may also know him from his insightful comments at Sentence first.

Since setting up Caxton and importing his old posts, Barrie has been blogging regularly, offering astute and balanced observations on such subjects as the value of linguistics, the early shapers of English, education, reflexive pronouns, dialects, grammar, and Jacques Brel. Rummage around and you’ll find all sorts of good material.

If you’re interested in the usage, history, politics, and beauty of English – or language generally – I recommend visiting and bookmarking Caxton. I’ve also added it to the links in the sidebar of this blog.

Updates: More thoughts on Caxton: Language Hat wishes it a “long and prosperous career”, while You Don’t Say celebrates “a new voice of sense and informed judgment”.

Ozwords, Lexico Loco, and A World of Englishes

Today I’d like to introduce you, in no particular order, to three new language blogs.

*

Ozwords is a blog from the Australian National Dictionary Centre; the focus, accordingly, is on Australian words and lexicography. Entries are short and entertaining and cover usage and history, often concluding with a draft dictionary entry and inviting readers to contribute. As they put it: “a definition is only as good as the available evidence”.

The first post, published two weeks ago, was about women dictionary-makers, and since then there have been entries on: ranga (from orang-utan), an offensive word for a red-haired person; stormstick, meaning umbrella (I might adopt this one); budgie smugglers, a colloquial term for men’s swimming briefs; and Johnniedom, a rare word used to refer to fashionable young men or their social world.

*

Lexico Loco is a new blog written by Diane Nicholls, a freelance lexicographer, editor, and natural language processing enthusiast. She has written many articles for MED Magazine (MED = Macmillan English Dictionaries), which is where I initially encountered her writing.

Diane’s first post, “You lost me at knickers!”, takes its title from the line “a corner shop that sold everything from paraffin to knickers”, which may well make you wonder what exactly the shop sold. This is known as a false range — another example is “everything from Alexander Solzhenitsyn to Sue Townsend” — and Lexico Loco offers a funny and thoughtful assessment of this popular but incongruous formula.

*

A World of Englishes comes from Jane Setter, a senior lecturer in phonetics at the University of Reading, UK, and co-editor of the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary.

A World of Englishes, as its names suggests, is about the varieties of English around the world, for example Hong Kong English, Singapore English and Jamaican English. Its author investigates such topics as teaching, research, attitudes and intelligibility; she describes it as

a fascinating area, not just because of the richness of different varieties around the world — including the UK — but also because of the socio-political and economic issues involved.

*

All three blogs are likely to be of interest to anyone who enjoys reading about words, language, and linguistics.

Update:

The redoubtable John E. McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun has followed up with his own thoughts on false ranges. He has written about them more than once before, and says this is our last chance to swear off “wrapping some meaningless gimcrackery in alliteration and pop references”.