Demetri Martin, Linguist???

One of my sons recently purchased comedian Demetri Martin's book, "This is a Book". As I was flipping through it, I noticed that Demetri Martin appears to have a true appreciation for the many aspects of language and how they can be manipulated to humorous effects. Much of his humor involves morphology, syntax, semantics, semiotics, pragmatics and orthography.

Here are some examples from the book.

Pragmatics

Syntax

"Nearly 1/2 of all people in the United States are torsos."


Semantics

"The boomerang is Australia's chief export (and then import)."


Semiotics

Morphology

A Palindrome

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN A MAN AND HIS YOUNG SON. THE MAN IS TRYING TO TEACH THE YOUNG BOY THE NAME OF A PIECE OF FRUIT AND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SINGULAR AND PLURAL:

-Son, say a papaya.
-Papayas.
-No "s."

Orthography

NEW YORK CITY or New York City - Street Sign Orthography

New York City has used all-capital letters on its street signs for over a century but recently decided to change the signs to both upper and lower case letters. According to The Week magazine (October 15, 2010 issue), the Federal Highway Administration feels that the new signs will be easier to read and thus drivers will spend less time studying signs and more time with their eyes on the road.




Compare this image of New York City street signs to one of Seattle street signs.

I have to say that I agree; it is much easier for me to read signs with upper and lower case letters than just upper case letters. I think the credit goes not just to the combination of the two cases, but maybe even more so to the ascenders and descenders of the lower case letters. If I am looking for a street that ends in the letter "y" it is much easier to identify the street from a farther distance when I can spot the descender of the lower case "y" than when the letters are in all caps and the "Y" is the same height as all of the other letters.

Click on images for credits.

A Rebel Schwa

I recently noticed a bumper sticker on a car that read (rebəl).

My first thought was that the car must belong to a rebel phonetician.

This phonetician obviously rebels by using parentheses instead of backslashes and by combining International Phonetic Alphabet symbols with standard English orthography (if it wasn't for the schwa I might not have even noticed).

Little did I know, there is a Christian rapper named Lecrea and (rebəl), spelled as such, is the title of one of his albums.



By the way, here is the complete phonetic transcription of the word rebel:

/rɛbəl/

Teabonics Schmebonics

This photo illustrates what has been dubbed in political circles (and written about on numerous language blogs including Language Log, Mighty Red Pen, Guardian and NYDailyNews.com to name a few) "Teabonics".

The photo is from a flickr post that includes a collection of similar photos as well as the following description:

"These are signs seen primarily at Tea Party Protests.

They all feature 'creative' spelling or grammar.

This new dialect of the English language shall be known as 'Teabonics.'"

It seems obvious from the description that the term "Teabonics" is a blend of "Tea Party" and "Ebonics".

Interestingly, "Ebonics" is itself a blended word according to the following entry found on merriam-webster.com:
Ebonics
Pronunciation: \ē-ˈbä-niks, i-, e-\
Function: noun plural but singular in construction
Etymology: blend of ebony and phonics
Date: 1973
: black english: a nonstandard variety of English spoken by some African-Americans

What bothers me most about the neologism "Teabonics" comes from the contradiction in its definition with that of the definition of "Ebonics", upon which is supposedly based.

The "phonics" portion of the Ebonics definition is defined by merriam-webster.com as: the science of sound : acoustics. And even the definition of Black English refers to the fact that Ebonics is a variety of spoken English.

So if Teabonics is based on the creative spelling or grammar found on written signs, why not name it something that has to do with writing and not sounds.

Teagraphy or Teapography, anyone?

Before There Was Ghoti - An Earlier Example of Spelling and Pronunciation Inconsistencies in English

A previous post on this blog was about George Bernard Shaw's alternate spelling of the word 'fish' as ghoti. He supported using this spelling to demonstrate the inconsistencies in English spelling and pronunciation.

According to "The Word Weavers" by Jean Aitchison, before the spelling ghoti was used for 'fish' there was another word with an alternate spelling used by an individual who was unhappy with the spelling of English words.

In 1845, Alexander Ellis spelled the word 'orthography' as eolotthowghrhoighuay based on the following sounds: George, Colonel, Matthew, knowledge, ghost, rheumatic, Beauvoir, laugh, and quay.

The Curious Case of the Camel

The case of the camel is no mystery, it is actually just a writing style that uses a different variation of the standard upper and lower case orthographic mix.

CamelCase is the method of writing compound words or phrases by starting each individual word with an upper case letter and not using spacing between the individual words - which results in a word that looks like a camel with humps.

This style is popular in branding and can be recognized in many corporate names, including: MasterCard, BlackBerry, RadioShack, YouTube, and MySpace.

By the way, the CamelCase orthographic method has some other fun and descriptive names too - BumpyCaps, BumpyCase, CamelBack, CamelCaps, HumpBack, and NerdCaps to name a few (a double-few to be semantically accurate).

Thank you JD (Engine Room) for calling my attention to this fun word.

The Semiotic Orthography of Leetspeak

A while back I posted about the semiotic use of the number "3" for the letter "E" in the title of an album by T-Pain. There is actually an orthographic computer language called Leetspeak that uses numbers and characters to replace as many letters as possible in a computer communication.

S3mi07i(5 i5 7-3 br4\(- 0f 1i\gui57i(5 7-47 i5 (0\(3r\3d wi7- 7-3 r3147i0\5-ip b37w33\ 4 5ig\, w-47 7-3 5ig\ r3pr353\75 4\d -0w p30p13 i\73rpr37 7-3 m34\i\g 0f 7-3 5ig\.


Leetspeak was named after the "elite" status classification used on bulletin board systems in the 1980's. The unusual orthography was originally used to encrypt communications but it also became a way to indicate a person was knowledgeable about computers and the culture of computer users.

Georgia's Pole Tax - What a Difference that "e" Makes

Apparently the state of Georgia is considering passing a tax that would charge gentlemen's club visitors an extra $5 fee at the door. The tax has been humorously dubbed the "pole tax" as a playful variation on the well-known "poll tax". Regarding the name of this new tax, in the March 16th issue of Newsweek a writer commented about "what a difference that 'e' makes."

Well, what difference does that "e" make? It is certainly not a phonetic difference because poll and pole are homophones. The "e" definitely makes a difference orthographically, however, because the difference is noticeable in print. Obviously, though, the most important difference the "e" makes, and the difference to which the writer was undoubtedly referring, is the semantic difference.

A poll tax is a fixed amount of money that a person must pay as a requirement for the right to vote.

And a pole tax is...well, you get the idea.

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On a separate note, it is not just the "e" that makes the difference it is also the deletion of one of the "l's." If it were simply adding an "e" to poll then we would be talking about a chicken tax.