Author Archives: John McGrath

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Erin McKean: Redefining the dictionary

LT Tim just sent me a TED talk by Erin McKean, lexicographer to the stars. That’s her on stage, beneath a portrait of Einstein, standing next to what appears to be a giant wooden dodecahedron*. And it looks like there’s some kind of psychedelic light show happening on stage right.

TED’s self-conscious “we’re smart” staging aside, the talk is great, and what she describes toward the end sounds a lot like Wordie, or what I hope Wordie will become. She makes the point that there are lots of good word collecting sites**, but they don’t do enough to show the context of words, to provide sources, citations, and provenance. The comments and citations, the links, jokes, and usage notes on Wordie are my Favorite part of the site, and finding good citations and quotes to add to Wordie has made reading a lot more fun for me, something I hadn’t thought possible. God forbid Wordie ever become too serious an endeavor, but it would be cool if, over time, our collective scavenging helped Wordie evolve into a useful language tool.

* UPDATE: see comments for what it really is
** I disagree. There’s only one 🙂

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NYT: More on Dying Languages

The Times ran another interesting piece on dying languages this weekend, this one full of examples from various near-dead languages. My favorite illustrated how the same construct can be used for different purposes in different languages. For example, in Rotokas, a language used in Papua New Guinea, doubling a word is used to indicate repetition:

tapa = to hit
tapatapa = to hit repeatedly

kopi = a dot
kopikopi = spotted

kavau = to bear a child
kavakavau = to bear many children

But in Eleme, a Nigerian language, a similar doubling pattern is used for negation:

moro = he saw you
momoro = he did not see you

rekaju = we are coming
rekakaju = we are not coming

You’ll also learn a variety of useful words for describing castrated reindeer. Worth a read.

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Preserving Endangered Languages

Yesterday The New York Times had a good piece on endangered languages, which describes a joint effort between the National Geographic Society and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages to record languages on the verge of extinction. My favorite factoid: a group of Andean natives called the Kallawaya, who speak Spanish and Quechua in daily life, have a secret language that’s mostly used to describe medicinal plants.

Wordie is doing its small part to preserve language. Long after Wrigley has thrown in the towel on strappleberry, this important word will remain forever enshrined here.

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Listphile

My pal Steve just launched Listphile.com, a site for making collaborative lists of all kinds. It’s beautiful, super easy to use, and worth checking out. It just launched, but already has an enjoyable assortment of user-contributed lists spanning the gamut from lighthearted fun (The Dude Abides, Yoda Quotes with Video) to more serious collective information gathering (Open Surf Atlas). Stop by and vote for Wordie on my list of Language-related sites.

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Email notifications

You can now be notified by email, if you choose, when someone comments on your profile or one of your word lists. If you go to your profile and click on the ‘edit contact options’ link, you can turn this feature on or off.

This is the default behavior for new wordies, but if you joined before this Saturday you’ll have to go in and turn notifications on, if you want ’em–it seemed kind of spamish to turn them on retroactively.

Suggestions for ways to improve this, for other kinds of notifications, or other ways to make it easier to follow Wordie are appreciated.

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From the NY Times Morgue

This photo of the back of a photo was posted yesterday on Paper Cuts, the New York Times book blog. I love the juxtaposition of so many kinds of text–handwritten notes in pen and pencil, stamps in different colored inks, pasted on bits of newsprint.

Digital objects can develop their own patina (like the digressions on digressions in the conversations on a good Wordie word), but some kinds of beauty require this sort of physical manipulation over time.

The Twombly link in the second comment on the original post is worth following, too.