Linguistic Cartoon Favorites - Evolving Language

From American Hell

Pronouncing the Th-Sound

Whether it is the theta or the eth, here is a bit of humor for those students in an introductory phonetics class.


from: http://www.lgpcards.com/cards/card20.html

Creative Phraseology with Yahoo

SUBJECT: If I hop in the shower, am I turning into a rabbit?

I made an accidental but entertaining discovery today; clicking on the subject button when writing a Yahoo e-mail will generate a random and amusing phrase in the subject line of the e-mail. Many of these phrases succeed in being humorous thanks to the writer's creative use of morphology and semantics.

Here are a few that I enjoyed:

Cinco de Mayonnaise
Shake it, don't break it, took your mama 9 months to make it.
Cannibals are what they eat
this body is slowing and my mind is reverse growing
Did you say Yute? What's a Yute?
cycling over melons
Some Powdered Muffin with your Starfish, Dr Arbuckle?
My dog eats nuts
Pressing business at the dry cleaners
Save some funk for Sunday
Alarming drop-out rate of sky diving classes
My mono isn't getting better...it could turn into stereo

I would love to know who writes these so I could thank them/him/her for not recycling boring old catch phrases.

Thanks to Toothpaste for Dinner for the great cartoon.

Adjective Verbing Nouns

from Toothpaste for Dinner

Pragmatics Experience Required

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Words

Halloween Pragmatics and Etymology

Pragmatics

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ETYMOLOGY

Just in case any readers are not familiar with the etymology of Halloween, here it is compliments of the Online Etymology Dictionary -

Halloween: c.1745, Scottish shortening of Allhallow-even "Eve of All Saints, last night of October" (1556), the last night of the year in the old Celtic calendar, where it was Old Year's Night, a night for witches. Another pagan holiday given a cursory baptism and sent on its way. Hallowmas "All-saints" is first attested 1389.

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By the bye, Happy Halloween to all linguists and to all linguists a good night. Hope you have fun with language tricks and enjoy some treats.