Pedantry rules!

People who actually care about grammar and language usage are frequently derided for being pedants, and indeed well-informed pedants are in shamefully short supply these days. But as this new column in The Times informs us, what some may see as pedantry others see as the use of standard English. Split infinitives are a matter of aesthetics more than grammar, as Oliver Kamm rightly points out, and the changing nature of the language is one of the delights of English, etc. Fine. But when people misuse the language and lose clarity, how is that a good thing? Of course it isn’t. “Disinterested” means impartial; “uninterested” means, well, not caring. And when did “a lot” of something become “alot”? I’ve seen this so many times, in essays and in the media, and perhaps it’s just carelessness, but it isn’t a word, ok? I’m not being unreasonable; the language belongs to everyone who speaks it, and is the most powerful tool we have, so why can’t people use it properly? I’d expect people in other professions – engineers, accountants, lawyers etc, to hold out for correct usage of the rules of their profession, so why is it not so acceptable to be a little bit stricter about language usage?

Gendered language

Recently I came across the Gender Analyzer website, which analyses the language of any blog whose URL you put into it, and tells you whether it’s written by a man or a woman. My blog  is apparently 57% likely to be written by a man (interesting, particularly because yesterday it was 67% likely to be written by a man…) but is “quite gender neutral”. I suppose I don’t really think about how gendered my language is, although I consider other effects of language; it’s not the way I tend to think about it, but I’d be interested to know more about it. The website just says:

“ We created Genderanalyzer out of curiosity and fun. It uses Artificial Intelligence to determine if a homepage is written by a man or woman. Behind the scene, a text classifier hosted over at uClassify.com has been trained on 11000 blogs written by men and women. In our lab it seems to works pretty well, we want to see how it performs on the web!”

Presumably the result of the blogs which the text classifier uses is that it looks for certain clusters of words or frequency of recurring words. I don’t know enough about this but am going to find out more!

Have a go yourself at http://genderanalyzer.com/

Muliebrity and other pertinent words

Some oppugnant people at Collins Dictionaries have decided to remove some little-known words from the dictionary – presumably to make more room for text speak, celebrity names and other passing fads. Now, I know that some of these words aren’t exactly in common parlance – but why not? I can think of many uses for muliebrity – the condition of being a woman (in fact, that’s going into my PhD thesis), and fubsy, griseous and olid are words that nicely describe how I feel about some people. I’m all for the development of the language – English has amazing flexibility and its ability to encompass other languages and change with the times is one of many things that makes English literature such a joy, but if we lose words, they’ll be consigned to footnotes, as obscure as some of Chaucer’s words, and that’s a pity. Perhaps I should start a campaign to revive Chaucerian English. Failing that – have a look at these words and see if you can use them! You can read more about this here.
Abstergent Cleansing or scouring
Agrestic Rural; rustic; unpolished; uncouth
Apodeictic Unquestionably true by virtue of demonstration
Caducity Perishableness; senility
Caliginosity Dimness; darkness
Compossible Possible in coexistence with something else
Embrangle To confuse or entangle
Exuviate To shed (a skin or similar outer covering)
Fatidical Prophetic
Fubsy Short and stout; squat
Griseous Streaked or mixed with grey; somewhat grey
Malison A curse
Mansuetude Gentleness or mildness
Muliebrity The condition of being a woman
Niddering Cowardly
Nitid Bright; glistening
Olid Foul-smelling
Oppugnant Combative, antagonistic or contrary
Periapt A charm or amulet
Recrement Waste matter; refuse; dross
Roborant Tending to fortify or increase strength
Skirr A whirring or grating sound, as of the wings of birds in flight
Vaticinate To foretell; prophesy
Vilipend To treat or regard with contempt