Your Linguistic Profile:45% General American English35% Yankee10% Upper Midwestern5% Dixie0% Midwestern
What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Yes, okay. That makes sense, I suppose. I am from New York State, after all.

Karen

( Read more... )

The Google listing looks like this:

shela days tout sur SHELA DAYS - [ Translate this page ]
... Hunter x Hunter. Honda ... http://aytaca.tripod.com/anime_music/anime_song_list.
html - 27k. ... It's ... http://www.mavarin.com ( Read more... )

Bad Baby Names

Mind you, whoever put this together wouldn't have approved of my daughter-who-never-was, Romana Jean King.  But it's funny stuff anyway.

also: Plooble is a fun visual gag blog I just came across while looking for a "Hello My Name Is" sticker image. Take a look!

Karen Christine Genevieve Funk Blocher

En route to church on Thursday or Friday, Kevin and I saw a bumper sticker that said,

Hard work pays off! 
Honor student at
O.M.O.S. School.

Took me a moment to decipher O.M.O.S. as Our Mother of Sorrows, and I couldn't leave it at that. I told Kevin that it could also stand for

Only Minimal Okra Served
or
Only Minor Ostracism Sanctioned

What ( Read more... )

Linked from Making Light:

"Jane Austen and other famous authors violate what everyone learned in their English class."

According to the article, the use of the word "their" as a singular posessive (e.g. "Each person brought their own book to class") goes all the way back to Chaucer, and has since been used by Shakespeare, C.S. Lewis and lots of ( Read more... )

1. Fred's shoes seldom need mustard ( Read more... )

A contemporaneous translation from the Nixon-Kruschev "Kitchen Debate," of an expression that just didn't translate well:

"But we, as you know, don't kill flies with our nostrils."

Good thing, too!

Source: NPR, Talk of the Nation letters segment, 3/7/05.

Karen

NameVoyager by The Baby Name Wizard graphs the rise and fall of individual baby names in the 20th century (and in 2003).  The name Karen peaked shortly after I was born, which tallies well with both what my mom told me and my own experience.  When I was in fifth grade, there were three Karens in my class, and two of us were Karen F! ( Read more... )

John Scalzi linked to a rather interesting writing tips article today, by someone named Pat Holt. I have reservations about the suggestions therein, but only because I consider anything that smacks of writing "rules" a little suspect. Taken as a list of things to watch for in your writing, it makes good sense, as long at you don't codify the ( Read more... )