Archive for the ‘words’ Category
Philosopheme
December 8th, 2009
philosopheme phi·los·o·pheme
n.
A philosophical proposition, doctrine, or principle of reasoning.
Lalochezia
November 23rd, 2009
lalochezia lal·o·che·zi·a (lāl’ō-kē’zē-ə)
n.
Emotional relief gained by using indecent or vulgar language.
Oxt Weekend
August 2nd, 2009
The new way to say, “Not this weekend but the weekend after.”
Oxt Weekend is an experiment in engineering language by removing the ambiguous phrase “next weekend” and replacing it with “oxt weekend.”
Sprachraum
April 9th, 2009
A Sprachraum is the area in which a certain language is spoken. So, for example, the German Sprachraum would include the countries of Germany, Austria, and most of Switzerland. I’m so glad there’s a word for this!
Mamihlapinatapai
July 14th, 2008
Mamihlapinatapai is a word from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego, listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the “most succinct word,” and is considered one of the hardest words to translate. It describes a look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start. This could perhaps be translated more succinctly as “eye-contact implying ‘after you…’”. A more literal approximation is “ending up mutually at a loss as to what to do about each other.”
English fails for not having a word like this.
Glottochronology
July 7th, 2008
Linguistics + Math + History = Glottochronology. YES.
Glottochronology refers to methods in historical linguistics used to estimate the time at which languages diverged, based on the assumption that the basic (core) vocabulary of a language changes at a constant average rate. This assumption, originally put forward by Morris Swadesh, is based on an analogy with the use of carbon dating for measuring the age of organic materials, in that a “lexical half-life” is estimated. The method estimates the length of time since two or more languages diverged from a common earlier proto-language, by counting the number of words that have been replaced in each language. This then yields an estimated date of origin for those languages.
For example, in an attempt to measure how long Easter Island had been isolated, glottochronologists measured the divergence between the Rapa Nui language (spoken on Easter Island) and the language of the neighboring island of Mangareva and used that difference to estimate the amount of time that must have passed since those two languages had diverged. Neat!