“…women tend to learn language from their peers; men learn it from their mothers.”
—Carolyn Wells, “The Adaptation of Language Evolution.” LongReads.com. November 25, 2019.
Tag: language
Words We Don’t Have
“Language and culture are inextricably linked. The words that exist (or that we make) form our language, and hence, are definitive of our culture. This place explores words that are unique to dialects or non-English languages, with an aim to examine what these words might illuminate about their cultures (and ours).”
—WordsWeDontHave.com
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) on StarDict on Ubuntu/Debian
So, after reading “You’re probably using the wrong dictionary,” I thought I would give installing Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) on a Debian-flavor of Linux a try and write it up the process and some observations of its use.
Installation on a Debian-flavor of Linux is straight-forward:
$ sudo apt-get install stardict
$ cd Downloads
$ wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/jsomers/dictionary.zip
$ unzip dictionary.zip
$ cd dictionary
$ tar -xvjf stardict-dictd-web1913-2.4.2.tar.bz2
$ cd stardict-dictd-web1913-2.4.2/
$ sudo mv *.* /usr/share/stardict/dic/
$ stardict
This launches the main application. There is also a mini-window that can be moved to where you like and then you can use it with other applications by highlighting text. Here’s a screenshot of this article:
When you highlight a word, it will automatically be searched for and displayed in the mini-window.
Entries include pronunciation, etymological origin, related words, definition and an example of usage, often from literature. I can imagine this being a very useful tool. It might be worth checking if my writing from this date changes in an appreciable way and whether it is an improvement or not.
Better Thought Technology
“Technological innovation, in the conventional sense, won’t help us slow the publishing process back down. Slowing down requires better thought technology. It requires a willingness to draft for the sake of drafting. It requires throwing away most of what we think because most of our thoughts don’t deserve to be read by others. Most of our thoughts are distractions—emotional sleights of the mind that trick us into thinking we care about something that we really don’t—or that we understand something that we really don’t.”
—Eddie Smith, “From boiling lead and black art: An essay on the history of mathematical typography.” Practically Efficient. October 13, 2017.
Pretty good overview of the history of mathematical typography.
Crimes Against English: Adulting
Every new generation contends with the no longer relevant advice of the previous generation. After World War II, a booming economy made lifetime jobs with pensions the norm. But, by the time Generation X was born, corporate downsizing, off-shoring and the creation of the 401(k) in 1978, made many of the beliefs of the Boomer generation irrelevant to the contempory workplace. Still, Generation X were called “slackers” both because the environment was different and seeing the materialism of their parents did not bring them happiness, they brought in different values.
I think a similar dynamic is in play with the term: “adulting”, which implies the “[husband/w]ife; children; house; everything. The full catastrophe.” Notions of needing to work 9-to-5, car payments, home ownership and so forth are as out of step with the modern work environment as believing in lifetime employment and pensions. Yet, this standard, which is just as bad as the materialist and consumer values of the Boomer generation, is how younger people — albeit in a seemingly joking manner — are encouraged to think of themselves, a social gaslighting designed to birth an imposter syndrome in the young. So, the use of the term is a bit of a crime against the language — being an adult has nothing to do with mortgages, but it’s really an example of the bad ideas mass culture propagates that harm everyone that comes into contact with them.
cafebedouin.org 