All the fire stations nearby have signs outside saying when "Training Night" is. It can't be to warn neighbours of the disruption and noise, because these are minimal. Maybe it's to tip off potential audience members.

posted at: 09:56 | path: /maunderings | permanent link to this entry

Double standards have the great advantage that if one of them breaks down, you can still manage with the other one.

posted at: 10:01 | path: /simulations | permanent link to this entry

I'm not going to claim that Peter Day talking about podcasting for half an hour is intrinsically better than ninety seconds of Sir Digby Jones telling me that I don't work enough, take too many holidays and there are starving children in India who'd be grateful for my job.

What I will say is that the BBC strike has reminded me of what I feel is Radio Four's greatest failing. It can't surprise me, because I'm economically active. The programmes that look interesting in the schedules are all buried at 11 in the morning. I suppose this is because James Boyle programmed "Interesting-looking documentary, 1100" back in 1997, to counterbalance "Noddy science, 2100" later in the day. If they did broadcast something better at 2100, I'd miss it because of the stranding.

posted at: 22:02 | path: /N | permanent link to this entry

"Folksonomic" sounds to me as if it should describe an economic policy based on brute ignorance, possibly one, I think nastily, drawn up by a stereotypical old man in one of the southern states of the United States on his veranda. Reaganomics plus slavery and oppressing Catholics.

"Folk taxonomy", in contrast, is much less ambiguous. It follows the pattern of folk music, folk dance and folk etymology, which, mercifully, nobody calls folksymology. "Folk Mass" sounds as if it should be the same sort of thing, with illiterate priests conducting garbled half-remembered riddley-walker services.

posted at: 13:09 | path: /maunderings | permanent link to this entry

As a learner of Finnish, I reckon that "myself" in sentences like "I reckon that "myself" in sentences like "I reckon...

... is used essively, myself." is used essively, myself." is used essively, myself.

Similarly, in "Wash trousers inside out", "inside out" is to be understood essively (being inside out) rather than transitively (until inside out). I don't know what the barrier to inversion of a pair of trousers is, but I suspect it depends on the material.

posted at: 11:15 | path: /baltism | permanent link to this entry

People will scare you by saying that Finnish has fifteen cases. I reckon, and Google, treated as a corpus, agrees with me here, that three of these are lexicalized fossils.

How many can we add to English? There's a definite allative in -wards (homewards and towards) and what I shall call a graduative in -wise (stepwise, dropwise, piecewise). I'm sure you can think of more. Piecemeal could count as a graduative in -meal, but the opposite of piecemeal is wholesale, not wholemeal. "He removed gliadin-containing grains from his diet wheatmeal."

posted at: 11:04 | path: /baltism | permanent link to this entry

I always read Ungarn as ungern, and ungern as Ungarn.

posted at: 22:02 | path: /D | permanent link to this entry

Beware pie, nest, ogle, bite, ass and logs, because they aren't what they seem.

Apelsīns, ķiploks, ļaudis and gurķis, on the other hand, are.

posted at: 21:55 | path: /baltism/redwhitered | permanent link to this entry