A Walk in the WoRds : January 2013

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Linguistics Definitions as Edited by Up-Goer Five

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

This is Not a Bunch of Bunk

Earlier this month, Wayne State University's Word Warriors released its fourth annual list of "eminently useful words that should be brought back to enrich our language." Included in their list of "top 10 words worth reviving" is the word buncombe.

Buncombe: Rubbish; nonsense; empty or misleading talk. What a relief to have the election over -- that great festival of buncombe that so distracted the nation for months.

The phrase "that's a bunch of bunk" was so common in my youth that I never really gave much thought to where it cam from. When it popped up on the Word Warriors' list, I decided to find out. Here is what I learned about the etymology:

buncombe (n.) see bunk (n.2). bunkum (n.) variant of Buncombe. bunk (n.2) "nonsense," 1900, short for bunkum, phonetic spelling of Buncombe, a county in North Carolina. The usual story (by 1841) of its origin is this: At the close of the protracted Missouri statehood debates, supposedly on Feb. 25, 1820, N.C. Representative Felix Walker (1753-1828) began what promised to be a "long, dull, irrelevant speech," and he resisted calls to cut it short by saying he was bound to say something that could appear in the newspapers in the home district and prove he was on the job. "I shall not be speaking to the House," he confessed, "but to Buncombe." Bunkum has been American English slang for "nonsense" since 1841 (from 1838 as generic for "a U.S. Representative's home district"). MR. WALKER, of North Carolina, rose then to address the Committee on the question [of Missouri statehood]; but the question was called for so clamorously and so perseveringly that Mr. W. could proceed no farther than to move that the committee rise. [Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, 16th Congress, 1st Session, p. 1539]

I wish the Warriors would have included a bit about the etymology in their definition; it is as fascinating as the word is useful.

To see the other 9 words that should be revived as well as a list of weekly words, please go to: wordwarriors.wayne.edu.

Etymology via Online Etymology Dictionary

Friday, January 18, 2013

Typography Terms

I was trying to figure out how to adjust the kerning in an an MS Word document when I came across this wonderfully appropriate newer term that is related to kerning.

Keming
In 2008, photographer David Friedman coined the term "keming" on his blog, defining it as improper use of kerning. Keming is a visual reference to bad kerning which causes the letter pair "rn" to appear as "m".

Definition via Wikipedia
Comic via XKCD Forum

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Phonetics, Numbers and Memory

Where do phonetics, numbers and memory meet?

The answer to the question from last week's post Happy Sinuous Idiom - A New Year's Quiz is The Major System.

The following is excerpted from the Wikipedia page titled Mnemonic major system:

The Major System (also called the phonetic number system, phonetic mnemonic system, or Herigone's mnemonic system) is a mnemonic technique used to aid in memorizing numbers.

The system works by converting numbers into consonant sounds, then into words by adding vowels. The system works on the principle that images can be remembered more easily than numbers.

Each numeral is associated with one or more consonants. Vowels and the consonants w, h, y and x are ignored. These can be used as "fillers" to make sensible words from the resulting consonant sequences. The most popular mapping is:

Numeral	Associated Consonants	Mnemonic
0	s, z, soft c	"z" is the first letter of zero. The other letters have a similar sound.
1	t, d	t & d have one downstroke and sound similar (some variant systems include "th")
2	n	n has two downstrokes
3	m	M has three downstrokes and looks like a "3" on its side
4	r	last letter of four, also 4 and R are almost mirror images of each other
5	l	L is the Roman Numeral for 50
6	sh, j, soft "ch", dg, zh, soft "g"	a script j has a lower loop / g is almost a 6 rotated
7	k, hard c, hard g, hard "ch", q, qu	capital K "contains" two sevens (some variant systems include "ng")
8	f, v	script f resembles a figure-8. V sounds similar.
9	p, b	p is a mirror-image 9. b sounds similar and resembles a 9 rolled around
Unassigned	Vowel sounds, w,h,y,x	These can be used anywhere without changing a word's number value

The groups of similar sounds and the rules for applying the mappings are almost always fixed, but other hooks and mappings can be used as long as the person using the system can remember them and apply them consistently. The magician Derren Brown, for instance, chooses the number 5 to map to the f and v sounds because the word 'five' uses both of those sounds.

Each numeral maps to a set of similar sounds with similar mouth and tongue positions. The link is phonetic, that is to say, it is the consonant sounds that matter, not the spelling. Therefore a word like action would encode the number 762 (k-ch-n), not 712 (k-t-n); and ghost would be 701 (g-z-t), while, because the gh in enough is pronounced like an f, the word enough encodes the number 28 (n-f). Similarly, double letters are disregarded. The word missile is mapped to 305 (m-z-l), not 3005 (m-z-z-l). To encode 3005 one would use something like mossy sail. Often the mapping is compact. Hindquarters, for example, translates unambiguously to 2174140 (n-d-qu-r-t-r-z), which amounts to 7 digits encoded by 8 letters, and can be easily visualized.

I learned about the Major System while reading the book Fooling Houdini by Alex Stone. This outstanding, non-fiction book is subtitled: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks and the Hidden Powers of the Mind. I highly recommend it to geeks and non-geeks alike. It is a fascinating and enjoyable read written in a very entertaining and informative style.

For more fun with the Major System check out the Phonetic Mnemonic Major Memory System Database. It contains 32,320 unique keywords for 13,221 numbers.