Separated by a Common Language

Instal(l)ment 2 of me showing off the books people have sent me for (BrE informal) nuffink.  (For the introduction to Book Week, click here.)

Free book 3: 
Women talk more than men...and other myths about language explained

First today it's Cambridge University Press's Women talk more than men...and other myths about language explained (2016) by Abby Kaplan, whom they list as "assistant professor (lecturer) in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Utah". I checked her website to see which was her real title, and it's the same there too, and other people have it at Utah as well (but not all assistant profs do). Is this Utah's way of marking a teaching-only positions? Or are individuals there trying to translate their titles into British? (Why?) {E/i}nquiring minds want to know.

Order UK Order US

Ok, that was a tangent about titles, but before I go on to say nice things about this book, I'm going to (BrE) have a go at its title, particularly the "myths about language explained". I don't need the myth just explained, I need it investigated or debunked. And the book actually does all those things, so I do wish the title said so.

Getting past my obsession with titles, this is a very nice textbook. It might also be a good read for people interested in language generally, but the textbook tone and structure might make it less of a beach book than some. Each chapter introduces the 'myth', looks at details and facts, and most provide one or more case studies. There are lots of tables and graphs and an appendix on statistics. The aim is that "the book will encourage you to think of linguistics as an empirical science, one that requires systematic and technical study" (p. 3). Since it doesn't really give the tools to engage in that kind of study oneself, it would best suit a "linguistics for non-majors" elective or a pre-major introductory module.  It might also work well in the UK for something like the English Language A-level (or maybe Psychology? I don't know enough about their curriculum to say). Though, I must say, it will probably work better in the US than in the UK. The stuff on English dialect is about US dialects, including (the grammaticality of) African-American Vernacular English and attitudes toward(s) a variety of US southern accents. (There is a case study related to British Sign Language, though.) It's all good stuff, but not necessarily stuff that UK students have a feel for (says the voice of experience). But though the English in it is mostly American, many other languages are explored in the case studies.

The book covers myths like "a dialect is a collection of mistakes" and "adults can't learn a new language" and "texting makes you illiterate". One it doesn't cover (that other myths books--like this one--do) is anything much about the history of the language and particularly the myths about the relationships between British and American Englishes (and other national Englishes). Which brings us to the next (orig. AmE) freebie...

Free book 4:
Origins of the specious: myths and misconceptions of the English language

Hardcover

Paperback

A nice thing about having a popular blog is that people send you free stuff. In my case, stuff means 'books'. Some have been sent with no warning (and gratefully received), some come with a query "would you like to receive this and maybe write about it?" and I say "yes, I'd be happy to receive it". (Notice the careful lack of promises on my part.)  I now have a stack of such books that I've been intending to say something about here--some of which I've not had time to read yet, some of which I may never read cover-to-cover.

I had been thinking: I'll just do a really big book post about all of them and get that off my plate. But that's a big job, and so it got put off. My new solution is: I'm going to write about one or two books each day for a week. And I'm not going to say too much about them, because I have a book to write myself. If you know these books, please do add your thoughts on them in the comments!

Where possible, I'll link to US and UK places to buy them (see the captions under the cover photos). Click through and you might figure out that I have opinions about where (not) to buy books. If you are lucky enough to live near an actual independent (more BrE) bookshop/(AmE) bookstore, the bestest thing to do is to order your books there, so that there will continue to be an actual independent bookshop near you.

On with the show! Let's start with the two that are closest (more BrE) to/(more AmE) at hand (because I am preternaturally* lazy).

Free book 1: Word Drops

Paul Anthony Jones tweets (and Facebooks and blogs) as @HaggardHawks ("so-called, I should point out, as haggard was originally a falconer's term describing a wild hawk", p. viii--I'm not sure that explanation explained it completely for me). And if you follow him, you'll know he loves odd facts about words--and odd words. His book, Word drops: a sprinkling of linguistic curiosities, consists of some of his collection. 

UK edition (hard cover): Buy here

The much prettier US edition (trade paper): Buy here

This is a perfect book to leave around the house in a place where you might have a few minutes now and then. Some might suggest a certain small room, but we're all too genteel for that, I'm sure. Put it in the kitchen to read while waiting for the kettle to boil. Or by the phone for reading while you're on hold.

What I really like about it (besides all the fun facts) is the stream-of-consciousness organi{s/z}ation, illustrated in this poorly photographed random page where the definition of ombralgia leads to the etymology of nostalgia, which leads to a word for intense longing for something missing from Portuguese, which leads to the Portuguese etymology of dodo, which leads to a Hawaiian bird, which leads to a fact about Hawaiian phonetics.



Pub quiz masters need this book. And people who want to learn things while waiting for the next available customer service representative. It's a lot of fun--and so are his social media outlets.

Free book 2: But can I start a sentence with "but"?

Hardcover; Order from US

This one was sent to me in thanks for doing an interview for the Chicago Manual of Style's Q&A online newsletter. The subtitle sums it up: "advice from the Chicago Style Q&A".  For those who don't know, The Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS) is one of the most important style guides in American publishing. It's where I turned when writing my PhD (AmE) dissertation/(BrE) thesis and needed to know whether to alphabeti{s/z}e Ferdinand de Saussure under D or S. (The answer is D, but van names don't go under V. It's a cruel and complicated world.)

The book is a set of questions and answers from editors and authors to the Chicago Manual staff, organi{s/z}ed vaguely by theme. Since the questions relate to whatever some person needed on some particular editing job (e.g. "How does one cite a food label?"), it is not going to serve as anyone's go-to style guide itself. But it may be a nice book for the small room of an editor in your life. Make that an American editor in your life--since, for instance, the punctuation recommendations are particularly American.

The answers are written with good sense and good humo(u)r and references to the appropriate section of CMoS. For instance, I've learned that it's only acceptable to combine the punctuation marks ?! in formal writing "only in the event that the author was being physically assaulted while writing" (p. 106).


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Well, that first instal(l)ment took longer than expected. Tomorrow, probably one book.



* Checked this word before using it, and I loved the quotation by Douglas Allchin at the preternatural Wikipedia page: "suspended between the mundane and the miraculous". Yes, that's exactly where my laziness is.

Happy 10th blogiversary to me! (The internet tells me it's spel{led/t} with one 'g'.)

BEFORE (ISH)

I hope that it also counts as 10 happy years of Separated by a Common Language for you!

It has been and continues to be an fantastic ride.  The highlights for me have been:

• the readers and commenters. Really, it's been amazing to me how wonderful people can be on the web. You hear bad things all the time about social media, but (AmE) knock/(BrE) touch wood my experiences with it have generally been fabulous. I wrote last year with some emotion about how touched and hono(u)red I am by the generosity of spirit in the comments section. I am.
• coming to reali{s/z}e how little I knew at the start of the blog (and how little I probably know now). At that point, I'd been teaching linguistics for 15 years, lived in the UK for over six years and before that I'd lived in South Africa for four. I thought I knew a lot about English. Man, I'd just started to get acquainted with the language. And while I now feel like I'm bursting with knowledge about English, the great thing about knowledge is that you can always fit in more.
• the heaps of opportunities that the blog has opened up for me. The media stuff, the camaraderie with other 'public linguists', the new research lines and collaborations, the funding, the book-in-progress. Oh my goodness. If I weren't superstitious about making public statements about how fantastic my life presently is, I'd be making one. 

I won't try to pick my favo(u)rite blog posts from the past 10 years, since such decisions can be painful. But my favo(u)rite ones to write and reflect upon are the ones about really fine semantic differences (usually involving food) and ones about the ins and outs of interaction (try the politeness tag for some of those).

AFTER

The most visited (though the figures are only from 2010-2016, when I started using Google Analytics) are:

bed sizes 22 Jul 2012, 38 comments 72016 do you have/have you/have you got 21 May 2011, 56 comments 54703 filet, fillet and the pronunciation of other Frenc... 29 Aug 2009, 105 comments 26371 hash/pound/number sign 19 Jul 2010, 76 comments 23001 saying 'please' in restaurants 18 Aug 2012, 208 comments 21975 whoa and woah 20 Apr 2009, 47 comments 21539 the big list of vegetables 14 Aug 2008, 90 comments 19196 math(s) 17 Mar 2007, 54 comments 16401 accent attitudes 11 Jun 2011, 61 comments 9705 Nominate WotYs & Untranslatables Month II 18 Nov 2012, 95 comments

Do any of you have a favo(u)rite post that you think should have made the list? (I suspect the bed sizes one is so popular because companies selling linen(s) are always trying to spam it.)

Thank you, readers, for keeping me going and also for nominating me again for bab.la Top Language Lover awards. Should you want to vote for me (or anyone else for that matter!), here are the relevant links:

Warning: like Lynneukah, this blogiversary may last days.