It’s hot, it’s Friday, and chances are you don’t feel like working. So take a few minutes and read our language blog roundup, in which we bring you the week’s highlights from our favorite language blogs and the latest in word news.

Ben Zimmer returned to The New York Times this week with a piece about the computational analysis of the jargon of novels and other fiction texts, as well as a roundup of the various linguistic analysis tools available.

Mr. Zimmer also wrote about the +1 paradigm while Mark Liberman at Language Log pointed out Google +’s singular their issue and Stan Carey discussed the problems with pronouns in general.  Meanwhile, a different PloS One offered an interesting academic paper, Swearing, Euphemisms, and Linguistic Relativity.

Perhaps some swearing was done during the still-continuing debate over “irritating” Americanisms.  Lynneguist posted part three of her reaction; Motivated Grammar was outraged over the outrage over “I’m good”; and even The New Yorker got in on the action with a British point of view.

Peeving against language peevers continued with David Crystal’s post on Marley and Me versus Marley and I.  John E. McIntyre had a word about restive, dictionaries, the Myths of the Golden Age and Ideal English, and the modern meaning of transpire versus its original Latin parts (trans-, across, plus –spire, breathe), while Robert Lane Greene at Johnson gave his two cents with a post about etymological fallacy, stating that a “word need not mean exactly what its Greek and Latin roots once literally meant.”

In the news, Language Log noticed Satan sandwich (want Lucifer fries with that?) and the oxymoron of the week, divided consensus, while Michael Rundell at Macmillan Dictionary blog questioned Ruport Murdoch’s apology (or fauxpology?).

Remember that row over speaking Welsh, or not speaking in Welsh, in a Welsh-speaking village pub?  Well, the pro-Welsh fight continues with “proposals to make Welsh and English the official languages of the Welsh assembly” and a new bill requiring that the assembly “publish a bilingual services scheme.”  In Alaska “Tlingit speakers and educators are fighting to keep” that indigenous language alive, while “along the Atlantic coastal plains of South Carolina and Georgia,” Gullah and other non-English native languages threaten to disappear.  In the UK, immigrants may lose access to English classes due to budget cuts, while in New York City, a multi-media artist has undertaken the experiment of teaching English at the laundromat.

Grammarphobia parsed out the difference between yeah, yea, and yay, and Stan Carey explained that, which, who, and whom.  Dialect Blog dialogued on the General American English accent, and when price and prize don’t rhyme.  Lynneguist blogged on a Ben Zimmer-suggested topic, nous, used in British-English to mean “common sense, practical intelligence,” and some American-English equivalents (gumption, horse sense, the sense God gave. . .).

Word Spy spied silent soccer, “a form of soccer in which spectators are not allowed to yell, cheer, or coach from the sidelines,” and juvenoia, “the baseless and exaggerated fear that the Internet and current social trends are having negative effects on children.”  Lexiophiles pondered the most recognized word in the world (ok?) while The Baby Name Wizard took a linguistic approach to the changing trends in girls’ names. The NYT Sunday Book Review served up 12 favorite snacks of famous authors while Publishers’ Weekly shared the 12 weirdest author deaths (look out for that eagle! I mean, that turtle! look out for that eagle and that turtle!).

Motivated Grammar unveiled SeeTweet, a way to geographically map Twitter search terms (try it, it’s fun!), and Mighty Red Pen alerted us about some wonderfully geeky T-shirts from Arrant Pedantry.

Finally, poet Charles Simic mused on the lost art of postcard writing:

unlike letters, cards require a verbal concision that can rise to high level of eloquence: brief and heart-breaking glimpses into someone’s existence, in addition to countless amusing and well-told anecdotes.

So if you’re on vacation, take a few minutes and send your friends a postcard.  Who knows, it may end up as a lost bookmark.

[And a brief plug for Wordnik-related language news — if you (or your favorite humanzee) missed our Words of the Week in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, you can catch up with them here.]

Is it Friday already? Why yes it is. This language blog roundup’s on us.

Last week we linked to a BBC piece about the high cost of spelling mistakes.  This week The New York Times’ Virginia Heffernan wrote about the price of typos and the difference between good and bad spellers: “Good spellers are often drawn to poetry and wordplay, while bad spellers, for whom language is a conduit and not an end in itself, can excel at representation and reportage.”

In News of the World news, a few words dominated, including flame-haired (though Johnson wished it didn’t), hackergate, foam pie, and tiger wife (not to be confused with tiger mother or trophy wife).

Meanwhile, there was much hubbub over another piece published last week on supposedly irritating Americanisms (or irritating supposed Americanisms?). Language Log had one or two things to say about it, as did Johnson, The Economist’s language blog; John McIntyre at the Baltimore Sun; and Lynneguist at Separated by a Common Language (though at first Lynneguist resisted and wrote about baby teeth versus milk teeth instead).

In more Britishisms versus Americanisms, Jan Freeman at The Boston Globe talked pants, while Vickie Hollett at the Macmillan Dictionary Blog explored the British and American differences in small talk, including Americans’ skill at saying goodbye. Stan Carey saw no sense in an academy of English and discussed an Irish stereotype.

Johnson took on phobias and the “gay” accent, and the Dialect Blog wrote about the cloth set, the Philadelphia accent, and childrens’ accents. Meanwhile, at UC Berkeley, freshmen are being recorded for an “Internet-based experiment to map and match accents from across the state and world.”

Fully (sic) unpeeled some banana terms while Arnold Zwicky served up some fake Italian foods.  Kai von Fintel at Language Log wondered why tasty means something that tastes good while smelly means something that smells bad, and New Scientist reported on studies that suggest people seem to instinctively “link certain sounds with particular sensory perceptions.”

Christopher Muther at the Boston Globe considered what may be the literally most misused word in the English language; Michael Rundell at Macmillan Dictionary Blog pondered it’s and its; and K International examined irregular verbs.  Motivated Grammar hashed out all of a sudden versus all of the sudden, and reviewed Write More Good, the new book by The Bureau Chiefs, the same folks behind the Fake AP Stylebook.

In other news, this week the Devil’s Dictionary turned 100.  The satirical lexicon incorporates “whimsy, existential pessimism, cheap puns, sex jokes, and just about every other trick in the comedian’s book.”  Nerve listed the “Ten Greatest Lists in the History of Western Civilization,” while Open Culture offered an impressionist’s impressions of Shakespeare.  In Alaska the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics got started, including a storytelling event, while the Washington Post challenged readers to come up with the best name for the current heat wave (we like the Big Schvitz).

Finally, while this past weekend’s carmageddon in Los Angeles may have been much ado about nothing, it did yield the portmanteau of a portmanteau of the week: plankmageddon (seeing is believing).

Until next week, take care. It’s been nice talking to you. Catch you later.