A site to help make English grammar more understandable without dumbing down either its significance or its usage.
The Japanese, as shown in my last post, have developed ingenious ways of using English properly to mask their true intention (recruiting for the Self-Defense Forces). In China, however, authorities are worried about their public displays of English translations (example shown), especially since the world came to the Forbidden City for the 2008 Olympics. The [...]
Here’s a smiling young Japanese woman, and on her t-shirt (partially obscured by some overprint) are the words "Peace People Japan." Now, I’m not sure if they intended for viewers to add punctuation, so that it would read, "Peace, People, Japan"–three different words, or whether it was more like "Peace People for Japan." When I [...]
I stumbled upon a report by someone named Deborah Amos, who was returning to visit Baghdad for the first time in four years. While the details were revealing in that the mainstream media report only the gory details to discredit Bush–and now only successes to burnish Obama–what really struck me was Ms. Amos’s discussion of [...]
From the city of Belvedere, Calif.: City Council order reads: “No dog shall be in a public place without its master on a leash." Now, I realize it often seems like my dog is pulling me while I’m walking him, but the leash is on his neck, not mine. I’d never make it in Belvedere.
Okay, so SubSpeak doesn’t really describe what’s happening to the English language in the new world of instant electronic communication, but I was (vainly) trying to come up with a variation on George Orwell’s famed DoubleSpeak (the language politicians use). I mean, if we went around talking in text abbreviations, then SubSpeak might apply, but [...]
I wonder if anybody at the Los Angeles Times realizes that today the newspaper ran an article twice. Well, not exactly, the articles were written by different people, but both the Calendar (page D4) and the Business (B3) sections featured articles on a new Web site called RunPee.com that alerts moviegoers to appropriate spots in films to run [...]