Big day for ESPN correspondent
 

Yeah, that's pretty dense.

What's the plural of "virus?"
 

"The plural of virus is neither viri nor virii, nor even vira nor virora. It is quite simply viruses, irrespective of context. Here's why."

NOT Not NTTAWWT
 

I received a set of Requests for Admissions recently that were all worded in undecipherable double and triple negatives. I objected to all of them (and then answered them in full sentences instead of just "Denied" for fear of having them all automatically admitted for nonresponsiveness or answering them the wrong way by mistake). I'm not sure if the writing was calculated to trip up my (previously pro-se and uneducated) client or the other attorney is just an idiot, but it sure made answering them a pain in the ass.

-TL

What's the plural of "virus?"
 

So what is the plural of coitus?

What's the plural of "virus?"
 

Do try to keep up:

coitüs (well, not an umlaut, but with a long u)

The article is a bit unpersuasive: it seems to say essentially, "we don't know what the latin plural was, so let's just use the english plural. and we don't know the latin plural only because no one ever appears to have used the word in written latin of which we still have a copy."

but why would you ever have a need for plural coitus?

Rumsfeld Doesn't Know if He's Lost His Mojo
 

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Thursday he does not know whether or not he has lost his mojo, as a leading news magazine suggested, because he doesn't really know what mojo is.

So what's the plural of "mojo?"

Rumsfeld Doesn't Know if He's Lost His Mojo
 

it's a mass noun, not a count noun. so no plural.

What's the plural of "virus?"
 

Well, you seem to be saying no one can tell the difference between the singular and plural of coitus anyways.

Is this based on experience, or academic research?

From the N.Y. Times, no less:

"Rather than simply lamenting the the economy, the Democrats now say that one good quarter does not erase three sluggish years. The growth has not caused a rebound in the job market, they note, and large budget deficits loom for years."

Tsk. Tsk.

Women are all the same, it seems.
 

The Final Frontier
 

Since when has it been acceptable to use the term "space" to apply to markets? If I read another biz-speak article saying shit like "In 1998, TechnoCom.com was the first to realize the potential of the live B2B chat space for CRM inquiry tracking and response" I'm gonna scream.

It's a metaphor that's actually less illustrative and visual than all the words it replaces.

The Final Frontier
 

Since people in the tech. business decided not to be governed by the traditional rules of the English language. It's hellish. Have I related the story of an ad that runs in DC in which some guy is spouting a bunch of techno-jargon like "space" and "tasked" and "paradigm" and blah blah blah, and the company says something like "if you want results, and a company that speaks your language, call us. We're an IT company that talks a language you know." So effective I have no idea what the name of the company is. But it's a funny ad. If you were there, of course.

Peppermint, Hamburgers, and now, RICE!
 

The Washington Post isn't safe either:

". . . farmers in recent decades have learned to grow wild rice in patties in flooded fields, which allows growers to harvest the rice using combines."

And I thought only hamburgers were grown in patties.

From the Department of Redundancy Department
 

From deanforamerica.com:

". . . we've cut our state's child abuse rate nearly in half, and child sexual abuse of kids under 6 is down by 70%."

Who would've thought that Vermont had a serious problem of children molesting other children?

International Olympiad in Linguistics
 

Problems (and solutions) from the First International Olympiad in Theoretical, Mathematical and Applied Linguistics.

The problems are not unlike those that the NSA gives you during a screening interview, except that the NSA's problems are less wordy.

Strong Bad's Rhythm 'N Grammar
 

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail89.html [spree: contains audible stuff]

At the very end, be sure to click on Trogdor's arm (that muscular arm thingy sticking out next to "a> back"). When a CD cover appears, click on it (with each click, a different grammatical admonition is sung out of tune).

Heard on NPR
 

Indeed.

It was corrected in the transcript, but the ears don't lie.

In defense of the double modal.
 

I.e., "I might could come tomorrow."

I take it from the lack of activity here that everyone has learned to speak and write proper English much better since this board was first created.

So the job is done.

In case you haven't noticed, this board is called Language, not English, which is a subset of the former. Therefore, until everyone has learned to speak properly every language in existence, our work is not done.

min-uh-SOAH-tah
 

If you've ever wanted to know how to properly pronounce the names of your favorite Minnesotan lawmakers, here are the official pronunciation guides:

For State House Members.

For State Senators.

MIN-uh-SOO-tah
 

It is a sad day when Minnesotans need to be instructed on how to pronounce Knoblach (with or without a "u").

Recockculous Headline
 

From the New York Times, no less:

Tests Suggest Scientists Have Found Big Bang Goo

"Big Bang," eh?

dubya-speak
 

http://www.dubyaspeak.com/

I could have posted this on the Politics Board, but the linguistic artifacts* were just so atrocious.


* E.g., "At this Thursday, ticket counters and airplanes will fly outta Ronald Reagan Airport." -- At a press conference, Oct. 2, 2001. Listen to it here. [SPREE: AUDIO with boisterous applause rather than laughter.]

Apparently, many timmies have been slaving away at Wikipedia to provide encyclopedic entries for terms such as Crapflooding, Slashdot trolling phenomena, and The Chewbacca Defense.

The Unix dorks are better at this than we are. Oh, the humanity!

Teach Yourself to Read Chaucer's Middle English

Much to my astonishment, "Middle English for Dummies" does not exist (because Google said so).

The Campaign Against 'Like'
 

As Ex-Valley Girls (and Boys) Move Up the Ladder, Pressure Grows to Sound Professional

Two decades after the song "Valley Girl" popularized it, a fresh effort is afoot to stamp out this linguistic quirk. The generation that grew up saying "like" is hitting adulthood -- and the work force. As a result, it is now in the lexicon of investment bankers, doctors and even teachers, where it can sound especially jarring.

A link to the song "Valley Girl" is here (each occurrence of "like" is highlighted in yellow).

The Campaign Against 'Like'
 

I have a hard time taking seriously a Philly professor named "Muffy." Wasn't she a character in "Trading Places"?

I would never have expected this:

I think interrupting another person mid-sentence should be punishable by death. My parents beat that habit out of me, and I shouldn't be placed at a disadvantage because of common courtesy.

The Middle English version is in the works, I'm sure.
 

It's all Greek to Harry Potter

A teacher has translated the first Harry Potter book into classical Greek. . . . it is the longest text to have been translated into the ancient language in 1,500 years. . . . The book will come out later this year, along with the Irish Gaelic version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

What's next? Harry Potter in Elvish?

Gag me with a spoon
 

Yeah, right. More like hitting middle age. "Valley Girl" was popular in, like, 1982. Folks who were in high school then are, like, between 36 and 40. Who, like, writes this stuff, anyway?

[Please read bold as uptalk.]

Gag me with a spoon
 

totally.

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Thanks to a semicolon, gays and lesbians keep marrying in San Francisco

Two judges delayed taking any action Tuesday to shut down San Francisco's same-sex wedding spree, citing court procedures as they temporarily rebuffed conservative groups enraged that the city's liberal politicians had already married almost 2,400 gay and lesbian couples.

The second judge told the plaintiffs that they would likely succeed on the merits eventually, but that for now, he couldn't accept their proposed court order because of a punctuation error.

It all came down to a semicolon, the judge said.

"I am not trying to be petty here, but it is a big deal ... That semicolon is a big deal," said San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Warren.

The Proposition 22 Legal Defense and Education Fund had asked the judge to issue an order commanding the city to "cease and desist issuing marriage licenses to and/or solemnizing marriages of same-sex couples; to show cause before this court."

"The way you've written this it has a semicolon where it should have the word 'or'," the judge told them. "I don't have the authority to issue it under these circumstances."
. . .
Lawyers for both sides then spent hours arguing about punctuation and court procedures during the hearing, which was still continuing late Tuesday afternoon.


Tsk. Tsk.

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I don't think I've ever appeared in front of a California superior court judge who felt em somehow lacked the authority to interlineate a typed proposed order with additional language or punctuation. Some of them even find it within themselves to do so without consulting the parties, and some even draft their own orders from scratch! Bizarre that.

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What's next, objecting to a [Proposed] Order because it would require striking through the bracketed material. Good god, he should be embarrased. Has he no balls?

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Judge Warren is the guy who threw out the 2nd degree murder conviction of Marjorie Knoller in the presa canario dog-mauling trial, which was probably the most politically unpopular ruling by a judge since, um, ever, so this isn't a likely explanation.

I know what you're thinking, but you probably could find more people in S.F. who utterly despise gay people than you could find people who didn't want Knoller to rot in prison for the rest of her life. It was the right call to make, IMHO, and I imagine his house was egged for it.

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Okay. So he realized how difficult it is to clean up dried eggs.

BTW, is there no procedure for consolidating two closely related cases, so that the two judges don't have to play, "After you, Alphonse" with this political hot potato?

Judge Slashes Lawyer's Rate for Typos, Careless Writing

I can see slashing his hours, but docking his hourly rate is below the belt.

Well, the auto-correct function in his spell-checker worked. Sort of.

If these 100 Most Commonly Mispronounced Words and Phrases are indeed commonly mispronounced as advertised, people are commonly pretty fuckin' stoopid.