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Supermodel Naomi Campbell has done some charity work for medicare, literacy, and business education in Romania and even is interested in charity work in Turkey, visiting Emine Erdogan, the wife of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, while she was in town to view a Formula One race.
Perhaps she missed reading the poems of philosopher and poet Lucian Blaga, which I am sure give a much broader scope to the range of Romanian thinking and literature. He was into minus-knowledge and antimonies (polarities) in a big way (view)
Madeleine Ball is a scientist who documents some of her observations and finds in her MadPrime blog.
She wrote in 2007 about Martha Groom's students who were required to add or edit articles at Wikipedia rather than write term papers. Despite the fact that some of the articles were either deleted or incorporated into other entries, "the fact that Groom has identified features that get students more involved—a broad audience and sense of ownership of their work—might help other professors find ways of getting their own students more motivated."
A worthy thought indeed! What community or social value is there in academic papers that are written often in a level of English that is incomprehensible and beyond the vocabulary of the average Joe or Joan? Apart from the groups doing such research, the motivations, future benefits, and full impact of that research goes unnoticed, unquestioned, under the tarpaulin of linguistic leverage and scholarly smugness.
In no ways should publicly-funded academic institutions no longer keep themselves in such isolation!.
Madeleine continues on the topic is her second bloggit on trading off their own well-worded wikipedia articles or article upgrades in place of more traditional coursework assignment. I quote from the beginning of her bloggit, and let you have the delight of visiting her blog for the rest of the bloggit.
"The other day I was recalling a required course at Caltech, a science communication writing class that is meant to help students learn how to communicate technical ideas. I remember writing for this class (although I can't remember what I wrote about!) and in retrospect I'm saddened to think about how many hours I spent in college writing papers that nobody ever read again. There is a large pool of wasted efforts going into writing papers for college coursework.We are talking greater visibility, interlocubility (?), and overall general trend and projection awareness, and social response-ability on the part of the academic community.
It occurred to me that it would be wonderful if this sort of course actually had students choose Wikipedia pages that need attention and completely rewrite them. Writing a scientific/technical wikipedia topic addresses many of the same writing skills that science/engineering students need to learn: the article needs to be accessible as possible while remaining technically accurate, it needs to cover a lot of different pieces of information while maintaining coherence as a whole, and it needs to be well referenced (and, by implication (one hopes), well researched).
the rest
She also defended the use of the passive voice in her bloggit here, which links to Geoff Pullman's bloggit here.
Interesting note by György Dragomán on the registration of typewriters in Romania.
A Canadian at Translator's Café re-uses a typewriter here.
TEST YOUR ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION
Once you've learned to correctly pronounce every word in the following poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. If you find it tough going, do not despair: you are not alone.
| Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it's written.) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak: Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes, and reviles; Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far; One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind. Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation's OK When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Ivy, privy, famous; clamour And enamour rhyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and roll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age. Query does not rhyme with very, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. Though the differences seem little, We say actual but victual. Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific. Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. We say hallowed, but allowed, People, leopard, towed, but vowed. Mark the differences, moreover, Between mover, cover, clover; Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Chalice, but police and lice; Camel, constable, unstable, Principle, disciple, label. Petal, panel, and canal, Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor. Tour, but our and succour, four. Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Sea, idea, Korea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. Doctrine, turpentine, marine. Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion and battalion. Sally with ally, yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. Heron, granary, canary. Crevice and device and aerie. Face, but preface, not efface. Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Large, but target, gin, give, verging, Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear, but earn and wear and tear Do not rhyme with here but ere. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work. Pronunciation -- think of Psyche! Is a paling stout and spikey? Won't it make you lose your wits, Writing groats and saying grits? It's a dark abyss or tunnel: Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, Islington and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict. Finally, which rhymes with enough -- Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give up!!! |
As anyone can see, traditional English spelling is haywire. For far too long now, too few people have tried to reform that spelling system.
This topic will be continued in a few more bloggits over the next few weeks.
Shimmy on over here again when time permits.
Michael Adam's new book, The Poetry of Slang, explores the world, the scope, of slang.
Literally, this bloggit is no endorsement for the extended use of slang, but perhaps is insightful (not inciteful).
Perhaps it shows the use of figurative or imaginative language, and the reality of most of us using a limited vocabulary for most of our communication needs.
Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, one of the slimmest reference books on tips for writers, turned 50 recently.
I admit I bought the book back in my teens (in the 60s), and tried to remember while writing to use action verbs in the active voice, avoiding passive verbs which are considered by the authors to kind of reverse things and slow things down, and to rarely if never drag a sentence out the way I've done with this one. Rankle me!
Anyway, perhaps the book was the best on the scene (at the time), and it has proven its worth over the years, selling in the millions.
Two illustrated editions are out. Check out the editions at JacketFlap http://tr.im/elemstyle2.
Have a look at a review http://tr.im/elemstyle50 by Geoffrey K. Pullum, head of linguistics and English language at the University of Edinburgh as he gives the book the close-up look.
It may not be the handy dandy condensation of most important aspects of writing that one should know about and put into process.
It has served its term. It is time for a new writing reference book.
Stay with us until early August 2009 when we unveil the revised and greatly expanded edition of The Two Hands Approach to the English Language!
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