Rosemary Kirstein

5 Responses to “Because linguistics!”

• Lindig Says:
  November 21st, 2013 at 10:45 pm

  Well, then, you’ll love this:

  http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/

  posts by working linguists on all sorts of topics, including lots on foreign languages. Some of it is way over my head but it’s still fascinating. Enjoy.
• Michael Grosberg Says:
  November 23rd, 2013 at 9:33 am

  I don’t know where it originated but I have some vague recollections of similar language used in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Maybe not “because [noun]” – might have been “But [noun]!” – anyway it always sounded Whedonesqe to me.

  But more importantly, now I know not only there’s a word to describe inserting an expletive in the middle of a word, but that it’s in textbooks!
• Brian Says:
  December 6th, 2013 at 2:17 pm

  We can improve:

  Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
  Or close the wall up with our English dead.
  In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
  As modest stillness and humility:
  But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
  Then imitate the action of the tiger;
  Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
  Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
  Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
  Let pry through the portage of the head
  Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
  As fearfully as doth a galled rock
  O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,
  Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
  Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
  Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
  To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
  Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
  Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
  Have in these parts from morn till even fought
  And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
  Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
  That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you.
  Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
  And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
  Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
  The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
  That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
  For there is none of you so mean and base,
  That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
  I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
  Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
  Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
  Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’

  with:

  Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
  because ENGLISH!

  Yeah, that’s a lot better.
• Rosemary Says:
  December 7th, 2013 at 9:58 pm

  Were we each a Shakespeare, what wonders of wordsmithing
  Would we then fling, undaunted, unparalleled. How we would vie
  In the grace of our rhetoric. How we would sing,
  Or declaim, or discourse.
  Even our ranting would soar.

  But we are what we are. When we try, and then fail,
  as we sometimes must, we can at least hope,
  From our common ground, from what we all know,
  that the true understanding can still be approached
  by that common address, by the known, by the shared.

  We have breath, we have hands. Dreams old and new.
  When we want it, history; when we recall, futures.

  When our hope for contact outstrips our small skill,
  Even then we persist, and attempt. Because Human.
• Rescued from the comments section | Rosemary Kirstein Says:
  December 12th, 2013 at 9:55 pm

  […] this popped up in reply to my “Because Linguistics!” post of a couple of weeks ago,  when I talked about an article in All Things Linguistics, dealing with the “Because […]