"Did Koh Bork Gonzales?"

This is, interestingly, a grammatically-correct sentence. Diagram away!

Diagramming Obama's sentences

This is the most complex sentence I've seen diagrammed. I'm impressed with the guy who did the diagram! But I've got to wonder if Obama had this on his teleprompter...

Jeff Goldstein on language and politics

Jeff Goldstein posts a good essay at Hot Air about the use of language and authorial intent in the context of politics. It's about the Rush Limbaugh "controversy" (I cringe even writing the word--there shouldn't be any controversy at all), but it's widely applicable. Although he doesn't use the phrase, he is arguing against a component of post-modernism. The idea that the author's intent is irrelevant in interpreting a "text" is a hallmark of this movement against logic and reason. It's also self-refuting, of course: where did those post-modernists learn the idea that a text can mean whatever you want it to? Wasn't it written down somewhere, or otherwise communicated to them? He correctly identifies it as a plague of literary criticism today, but it's metastasized and spread into other areas of life, like political discussions.

Read the article--it's very useful.

Americans and multilingualism

In the wake of Obama's snide remarks about our language skills last week, National Review's Yuval Levin has some surprising numbers to show. Huh. I did not know that!

Dutch food and fun with computer translations

Ever since I went to Holland and got to have "slagroom" in my coffee, I've been trying to figure out how to make it myself. Slagroom is a kind of whipped cream, but it seemed a lot thicker than whipped cream here. I've tried taking heavy cream, adding various amounts of sugar (or powdered sugar), and beating it longer than you would for regular whipped cream. It seems to get close, but I'm not sure. In Holland, I was actually given a knife to cut it and put it in the cup.

Anyway, I've found a Dutch-language Wikipedia entry on slagroom, but not reading Dutch, I tried the "translate this page" option on Google. It worked out nicely, but with a few quirks I got a laugh out of. For one, you've got something like a mathematical degeneracy--multiple words being translated into the same one in English: Cream is one of several types of thin cream that of the whole milk is geschept. ...and the occasional untranslated word which sounds like Yiddish.

And here's my favorite: Traditionally eaten on whipped cream is also a lawyer. Well, the Dutch sure know something about tort reform! (The double-entendre was accidental, but I'm proud of it.)

Proof of Intelligent Design?

The existence of the Hebrew language.

I didn't take Greek, although I read just a little of the Greek textbook on my own, and it seemed a lot more complicated than Latin. Hebrew's vocabulary was a lot of work for me to memorize, but I did fairly well with it, and some of its quirks have still stayed with me, so maybe I did "get it."

I've read that among seminarians, who'd be expected to learn both Hebrew and Greek, you find that you're either a Greek person or a Hebrew person. Not an Old Testament/New Testament split, but the feel of the language. Greek has remarkably complicated verb structures, with all kinds of nuanced meanings and moods. It's a philosopher's language. Hebrew expresses things more directly, and instead of creating new compound words, it uses metaphors.

I don't know that I'm necessarily that way, myself, but I think I did get the feel of Hebrew.