So, what do you think of Google Plus (G+ to the cool kids)? More to the point, what are you doing about “+1,” G+’s version of Facebook’s “Like” button? Google devotes a page to explaining the spelling conventions of +1 (summary: use an apostrophe). Motivated Grammar delves more deeply into the history of apostrophe’d verb forms: “Apostrophe-d used to be a more general suffix, up until around the middle of the 19th century.” And The Next Web offers the Google+ guide for punctuation pedants. (Hat tip: Ben Zimmer.)
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Speaking of conjugated modern media, why is texted the past tense of text? As David Crystal reveals, the answer isn’t as simple as you may think.
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Here’s a lovely thing from the University of Nottingham’s School of Modern Languages and Cultures: Words of the World, a series of short videos in which language experts tell the stories of words adopted into English, from aficionado to zeitgeist. Click on a word in the crossword-like grid to learn its story. (Via Language Hat.)
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But wait, there’s more! The History of English in 10 Minutes is a lively canter from Anglo-Saxon through Global English. Here’s the first chapter, and here’s a page with links to all 10 videos. (Via Mr. Verb.)
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And speaking of the history of English, whatever happened to the passival tense? Jane Austen used it in 1807 when she wrote in a letter: “The garden is putting in order.” But by the end of the 19th century that construction had been replaced by the progressive passive we use today (“The garden is being put in order”). Not without a lot of sturm und drang, though. I learned about it from Mike Vuolo, until recently the producer of NPR’s On the Media; he’s developing a podcast called Lexicon Alley to explore the byways of language and devotes an installment to the passival—much more fascinating than you’d guess. And here’s an older Language Log post about 19th-century outrage over the newfangled progressive passive. It was ever thus: language always changes, and people always hate change.
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Back in the world of commerce, the Olive Garden restaurant chain tried to introduce new dishes with Italian-sounding names—soffatelli and pastachetti—that turned out not to be Italian at all, just “rooted in Italian inspiration,” according to a spokeswoman. The fake names (falsetti?) flopped. Linguist Arnold Zwicky twirls a fork around the issue, and for good measure investigates pepperoni (another American invention) and diavolini.
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Cloth diaper brands: real or fake? Take the quiz at The Hairpin. (Footnote: For several years I wrote copy for a diaper-cover company called Biobottoms. I see the brand still exists, although under new ownership. Good product. And yes, we got endless grief over the Biobottoms name, for which I was not responsible.)
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And from A Hundred Monkeys, a brief essay on why names matter more than you think. Here’s one reason:
Imagine the silver panorama of an Apple storefront bearing, not that infamous pome, but a name like “Quantum Technical Solutions.” No mystery, no style, no cult following. No story to draw people in.
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