Stop using “leverage” instead of “use”. Stop it, stop it, stop it!
Archive for the ‘language’ Category
Sometimes, I come across a case where I want to use the same word twice in a row. It seems a bit awkward, but rephrasing the sentence to get around it would be even more awkward. For example, this question: “Do you think they’ll get their bid in in time for the deadline?”
Sean (5-year-old son) just called me to tell me about his new Lego construction. He seems to have learned the wrong lesson from me…delivering his message and then, almost in mid-sentence, saying, “so bye.” Guess we need to level up our smalltalk skills…and I ain’t talkin’ about the programming language.
A few things about the English language
What’s up with the -let suffix? It’s rarely used, but computer people might be latching on to it. For example, in applet, servlet, and the aforementioned cmdlet. Seems to be borrowed from the French -ette.
And then there’s the issue of not speaking the way things are spelled. (Or is it the same thing?) What happened to the British R? Apparently, that can’t be answered without lots of nightmarish linguistic terms.
So why is English such an insane language? If you try to spell things logically (the way they sound), you’re a bad speller. I mean, we wouldn’t want anything to be logically spelled. Currently, good spelling only comes through lots of experience. There’s apparently a small movement to fix the language. Unfortunately, it sounds like the problems in sorting this out are huge. English is a mishmash of Latin, Greek, French, Germanic, and other terms. If you pick one of those styles, you have to run the whole language through the grinder to make it consistent with that style.
Looks like Vanessa has a new feature on her blog: Professor Sean Presents: The Word of the Day
Notate is a word. “I notated it per your request. Per that’s how I roll.”
Did you ever notice that some stuttering is intentional? You might even do it yourself to emphasize a point, allow the listener time to think, or repeat a syllable because someone just coughed and you may not have been heardat least those are my theories. I think I catch myself doing it occasionally. It could just be learned from hearing others though.
There are all those common abbreviations you see on the internet because the full phrases would be too long to type out all the time. LOL, BRB, AFK, ROFLDOG, etc. The likeliness that someone will use one of these abbreviations is inversely proportional to the likeliness that the recipient will understand it. Then you have to explain it, which takes longer than it would have to just type the phrase in the first place. I’ve come up with my own. GMSP. Give Me Some Pie. You are free to use it. Why do I get the feeling you’re not going to?
Serifs are the little hooks and barbs on some fonts. I always figured it was a silly idea. Adding decorative stuff to letters would make them harder to read, you’d think. Wikipedia claims that this is true on computer monitors, but they claim that those extra thingies somehow help readability in printed media. I don’t get it. This guy looked at the issue of serif vs. sans serif and decided it doesn’t make much difference. I think I’d side with the sans serifarians. Trust me. I know nothing about typography. While on the subject, typography seems to have a lot of unnecessarily complicated terms. If we changed “serif” to “fonts with hangy things” and “sans serif” to “clean fonts”, it’d put an end to the problem right there. If you’re interested in learning more about fonts, you’re a very dull person.
In Lilo and Stitch, the Hawaiian dude says, “auwe!” (He’s voiced by Jason Lee, who played Bruce Lee in a movienot to be confused with Brandon Lee who was Bruce Lee’s son.) Anyway, I liked the word so I looked it up. It means something like, “oh no!” or “what?!!”
