storytelling

Today LanguageHat pointed the many readers who visit that weblog to my posts about language anachronisms in historical fiction; as a result, a slew of people have stopped by with interesting things to say. As I'm not sure you'll find those comments, hidden away as they are, I'm making a point of pulling them into the light. But first LanguageHat's take on the anachronism quandry (I'm going to keep on eye on this post, as it seems that it might be the start of an interesting discussion):

Personally, I would be willing to write off readers who couldn't handle "the eighteenth century terms for natives of Africa"; if their sensibilities are that tender, they shouldn't be reading about the past (and shouldn't go visit most of the world). But I recognize that that's an extremist position, and as a straight white male American I'm doubtless less susceptible to the power of disparaging language than most.

Prentiss Riddle points to Bill Poser's excellent post about the anachronistic use of Latin in Gibson's The Passion at Language Log. Language Log is a group blog that some ten linguists (a couple of whom I knew in my former life as an academic) post to, on topics that interest them. I don't read that blog often enough, I find, because I just noticed Geoffrey Pullum's post about The DaVinci Code and Brown's prose style. Something I mentioned in my review, but Pullum does a much better job of really taking Brown apart. She said gleefully. Also on the topic of language in film, Ray at The Apothecary's Drawer points out that by the time of Shakespeare in Love, people were speaking early modern English (this in response to a discussion on that post).

In a different matter, Aaron has pointed to some resources for people who read this blog and have trouble adjusting the font size:

Hi, I'm new to this blog -- thanks to LanguageHat -- but wanted to suggest a couple of links that I find helpful when trying to read smaller fonts:

1) Internet Explorer's Text Size change doesn't always work for Movable Type blogs so maybe give Mozilla Firefox a try. Firefox gives you the ability to increase font sizes by simply pressing "CTRL" plus "+".

2) Thanks to the WSJ's Walter Mossberg I just learned of Web Eyes. There's a free trial and then it's only $20 -- his review is free and over here. It's a toolbar you can add to Internet Explorer and it gives you the ability to read most pages like a book, and it means no more scrolling. (However, I use Firefox for websites that take forever to connect to advertisements off-site.)

Posted by at 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Over at the OED, I find that the phrase "a piece of cake" to mean something easily done is in fact very recent (but not quite so recent as I guessed):

Colloq. phr. a piece of cake: something easy or pleasant.
    1936 O. NASH Primrose Path 172 Her picture's in the papers now, And life's a piece of cake.
1942 T. RATTIGAN Flare Path 1, Special. Very hush-hush. Not exactly a piece of cake, I believe.
1943 P. BRENNAN et al. Spitfires over Malta i. 31 The mass raids promised to be a piece of cake, and we anticipated taking heavy toll of the raiders.
1960 T. MCLEAN Kings of Rugby 205 They took the field against Canterbury as if the match were ‘a piece of cake’.

Of course it was Ogden Nash, my earliest literary crush, who first used the phrase in writing long before I was born. Time, I think, for a short tribute in the form of one of my favorite poems of his, called So Does Everybody Else, but Not So Much:

O all ye exorcizers come and exorcize now, and ye clergymen draw nigh and clerge,
For I wish to be purged of an urge.
It is an irksome urge, compounded of nettles and glue,
And it is turning all my friends back into acquaintances, and all my acquaintances into people who look the other way when I heave into view.
It is an indication that my mental buttery is butterless and my mental larder lardless,
And it consists not of "Stop me if you've heard this one," but of "I know you've heard this one because I told it to you myself, but I'm going to tell it to you again regardless,"
Yes I fear I am living beyond my mental means.
When I realize that it is not only anecdotes that I reiterate but what is far worse, summaries of radio programs and descriptions of caroons in newspapers and magazines.
I want to resist but I cannot resist recounting the bright sayins of celebrities that everybody already is familiar with every word of; I want to refrain but cannot refrain from telling the same audience on two successive evenings the same little snatches of domestic gossip about people I used to know that they have never heard of.
When I remember some titlating episode of my childhood I figure that if it's worth narrating once it's worth narrating twice, in spite of lackluster eyes and dropping jaws,
And indeed I have now worked my way backward from titllating episodes in my own childhood to titillating episodes in the childhood of my parents or even my parents-in-laws,
And what really turns my corpuscles to ice,
I carry around clippings and read them to people twice.
And I know what I am doing while I am doing it and I don't want to do it but I can't help doing it and I am just another Ancient Mariner,
And the prospects for my future social life couldn't possibly be barrener.
Did I tell you that the prospects for my future social life couldn't be barrener?

Posted by at 10:18 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)