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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
bugger up
to ruin, spoil, mess up
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Idiom of the Day
live the life of Riley
To lead a life of great ease, comfort, or luxury. The phrase is likely of early 20th-century Irish-American origin, but to whom Riley refers is uncertain. Watch the video
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Language Log
French Horn Church
Mark Swofford stumbled upon this church in Taipei:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/frenchhorn.jpg
The Chinese part of the sign reads:
fàguó hào língliáng táng
法國號靈糧堂
"French Horn Hall of Spiritual Food"
This may be a branch of Táiběi língliáng táng 台北靈糧堂, which calls itself "Bread of Life Christian Church in Taipei" and has a history that goes back to 1948-1958 in Shanghai. Another translation of "língliáng 靈糧" is "manna".
The next time I'm in Taipei I will go visit this church because the French horn has special meaning for me. I played it from the time I was in high school, including professionally in the Canton Orchestra and various bands. I even trekked it up into the mountains of Nepal where I was a Peace Corps volunteer for two years and people from valleys far away could hear me playing it.
The French horn is notorious for being the most difficult instrument to play since it is prone to burble (I think that's because of the tight, twisted acoustics of all that tubing), but I love the rich, smooth sound it produces when you control your embouchure perfectly. That takes a lot of practice, but when I was good at it, I could play melodies with my lips alone. I am grateful to my high school band director, Donald M. Kennedy, for guiding me to the French horn and helping get one of my own when I was a freshman.
By the way, you're no longer supposed to call the brass instrument under discussion a "French horn". It's supposed to be just a "horn". I don't know who decided that and why, but it's now the politically correct thing to do. It doesn't make sense to me, because there are so many other kinds of horns out there. Much as I am partial to it, why should this one alone be the horn? I still call it a French horn, but if someone made a good case (historical, musicological, or otherwise) for calling it a "German horn", I'd be open to such a proposal.
Selected readings
* "Les Baguettes à Pékin" (7/2/12)
* "Names and Systems of Naming" (4/18/08)
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Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Malcolm is out-bratting himself #CreatorsforKamala #DNC2024 #BratSummer
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Language Log
Is there a finite number of pronunciations for anything?
Below is a guest post by Corey Miller.
Azi Paybarah of the Washington Post quoted Trump as follows:
“There’s about 19 different ways of pronouncing it, right,” Trump said falsely, during a speech in Michigan on Thursday. “But Kamala is, at least it’s a name you sort of remember.”
The most interesting part of this to me is the assertion that it was a false claim. I suppose the intuition is that there are two common ways to stress Kamala, either initially/antepenultimately or medially/penultimately, so that Trump's "nineteen" is clearly hyperbolic.
What do we mean when we speak of a number of pronunciations for a word? One interpretation might be “how many ways can we represent the pronunciation of a word, as spoken by a fluent speaker interpreting the phonemes of a relevant variety of the language in question?”. Under this interpretation, three American English pronunciations of Kamala come to mind:
1. ˈkɑmələ
2. ˈkæmələ
3. kəˈmɑlə
Pronunciation 1 seems to be how the Vice President pronounces her own name and the preference of a majority of younger speakers at the Democratic National Convention. Pronunciation 2 is one I hadn’t considered, but noticed it was very popular among older speakers at the DNC; it seems to be on analogy with Pamela, which to my knowledge has only 1 pronunciation under the definition above. I assume Pronunciation 2 wouldn’t be considered an affront in the way Pronunciation 3 is, but this could be investigated further. As a final note on Prounciation 2, it is related to an interesting phenomenon I first read about in an article by Geoff Lindsey and that was further developed in my classmate Charles Boberg’s dissertation and discussed more recently by him here.
Pronunciation 3 seems to be the preferred pronunciation used by those seeking to needle the Vice President, but it seems like it can be used “innocently enough” given the predilection for penultimate stress in such words as suggested by the English Stress Rule as formulated in Liberman & Prince and elsewhere. For example, Malala (Yousufzai) seems to be a name that we hear uniquely with something like Pronunciation 3.
There is another pronunciation noted occasionally in the press for Kamala that is more “native” to the Sanskrit origins of the name, meaning “lotus flower”. Using standard American English phonemes and their IPA labels, this might be something like Pronunciation 4:
4. ˈkʌmələ
The first syllable could just as easily have been transcribed with a stressed schwa by those who admit such things. [ɐ] is used in the Sanskrit etymon for all vowels in the word in Wiktionary. This phenomenon of the “Indic short a” is also encountered in words like pundit and Punjab which are sometimes written as pandit and Panjab.
So, are there only four pronunciations? There are certainly other possibilities using IPA interpretations for various varieties of English, American and otherwise. The letter 'a' can also of course be pronounced as [ej], but perhaps using such a pronunciation in Kamala would be considered particularly outrageous. But maybe it could occur in the speech of someone less familiar with English, or someone learning to read?
Of course, there are indefinitely many pronunciations, if we consider "pronunciations" as the articulatory and acoustic signals implementing a word, rather than IPA-ish symbols. But I assume the lay view of what it means to be a pronunciation is more along the lines of the IPA alternatives I gave above, and this is reflected in a long line of pronunciation dictionaries like Kenyon & Knott or indeed the curious symbols used in American dictionaries.
In summary, I think Mr. Paybarah was right to call Mr. Trump’s claim of 19 pronunciations false; but I think it could be litigated…
Above is a guest post by Corey Miller.
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Language Log
"Bone Apple Tea"
The "ABOUT COMMUNITY" description from r/BoneAppleTea:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/BoneAppleTea.png
There's also r/BoneAppleTypo, and the #boneappletea Discord channel.
[h/t M.O.S.T.]
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: circumvent
This word has appeared in 169 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
let out (1)
to allow somebody or something to leave a place
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Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Still no luck on chord M #vmas2024 @johnmayer
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Learn English Through Football
Newspaper Headline: Snakes bite
In this football language post we explain the newspaper headline, 'Snakes bite' from the Guardian newspaper about England's win over Ireland in the Nations League.
The post Newspaper Headline: Snakes bite appeared first on Learn English Through Football.
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
on the level
honest, truthful
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Idiom of the Day
letters after (one's) name
A series of abbreviations indicating the various levels of higher education or military honors one has received, thereby denoting a presumed level of intelligence, wisdom, or respectability. Watch the video
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Word of the Day
cocksure
Definition: (adjective) Marked by excessive confidence.
Synonyms: overconfident, positive.
Usage: He was arrogant and cocksure but also sensitive and understanding, and I loved him dearly.
Discuss
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Language Log
Quantifying the debate
Following up on "Type-token plots in The Economist" (9/6/2024), I lost some sleep last night doing some analyses of the presidential debate, which I shared with writers at The Economist to be published as "An alternative look at the Trump-Harris debate, in five charts", 9/11/2024. They lead with a type-token graph:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Economist2024DebateTypeToken.png
One of their other "charts" is a table of each candidates most-used words. In some cases the explanation is obvious, like Harris using "former" 15 times while Trump uses it only once. But sometimes the difference may seem puzzling, like the fact that Trump used the word "they" 230 times, while Harris used it only 10 times. Why?
Scanning the contexts of use helps make the political content clear. Many of Trump's "they" referents are of two kinds, exemplified already in his opening turn — 5 references to the Biden administration, and 8 references to immigrants:
In fact, they never took the tariff off because it was so much money. They can't it would totally destroy everything that they've set out to do. They're taking in billions of dollars from China and other places they've left the tariffs on.
On top of that, we have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums. And they're coming in and they're taking jobs that are occupied right now by African-Americans and Hispanics. And also unions. Unions are going to be affected very soon. And you see what's happening. You see what's happening with towns throughout the United States. You look at Springfield, Ohio, you look at Aurora in Colorado, they are taking over the towns, They're taking over buildings. They're going in violently. These are the people that she and Biden let into our country. And they're destroying our country. They're dangerous. They're at the highest level of criminality.
More later…
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
owe to (1)
If you owe something to someone, you feel that you only have it because of the person's help or support.
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Word of the Day
laic
Definition: (adjective) Of or relating to the laity.
Synonyms: lay, secular.
Usage: He was a laic leader, but many of his followers believed him to be a prophet.
Discuss
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Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Points were made #StonedDebate #Politics #Debate #2024Election
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Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Pennsylvania State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta Does Not Approve of Outside Clothes On The Bed
Malcolm Kenyatta, the first LGBTQ+ person of color to be elected to General Assembly in Pennsylvania, chats with us about indefensible topics, no brainers, and how to be better at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
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Learn English Through Football
Learn English Through Football Podcast: 2026 World Cup Qualifiers (September 2024)
In this football language podcast we look at some language from the recent 2026 World Cup qualifiers from both the South American and Asian regions.
The post Learn English Through Football Podcast: 2026 World Cup Qualifiers (September 2024) appeared first on Learn English Through Football.
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
dis | diss
to show disrespect to someone by saying or doing something insulting
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Idiom of the Day
a licence to print money
An activity, business model, or company that yields very high profits but requires little or no effort to do so. Primarily heard in UK, Australia. Watch the video
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Word of the Day
lore
Definition: (noun) Accumulated facts, traditions, or beliefs about a particular subject.
Synonyms: traditional knowledge.
Usage: He had taught the children something of the forest lore that he had himself learned from Tiger Lily and Tinker Bell, and knew that in their dire hour they were not likely to forget it.
Discuss
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Funny Or Die (Youtube)
masterclass on debate decorum #2024Election #HarrisTrumpDebate #WillFerrell #zachgalifianakis
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: consternation
This word has appeared in 149 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
muck up
If you muck something up, you do it badly and fail to achieve your goal.
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He's just your average John #VMAs2024 #WritersRoom @johnmayer
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He has concepts of a guy #2024Election #TrumpImpression
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Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Wayne & Mike are warming up for the @MTV VMAs tonight #EveryLittleStep
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