One thing I forgot to mention: When I was let go from IndyMac a year ago — and in each subsequent round of layoffs shrinking the workforce from 10,000 to 7,200 — it was called a “right-sizing.” God, I hate that word. I noticed they finally dispensed with the bullshit last week . . . when they cut another 3,800 people from the remaining 7,200, just before failing completely, the word “right-sizing” was not used . . . Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Language
Spanning the Globe
Because EppsNet is sweeping the globe like nuclear fallout, I sometimes get comments like this one, where it’s hard to tell what’s spam and what isn’t. Often it comes down to this — if the person is a native English speaker, I think they must be putting me on. One clue is to check the IP address. For example, the above comment was posted from Mauritius, an small island nation off the coast of Madagascar. While English is the official language and French predominates in media and business, the most widely spoken language is Mauritian Creole, considered the lingua franca, or native tongue, of the country. Verdict: Valid comment. Read more →
Del.icio.us Wordle
A wordle made from my del.icio.us tags. Click it to enlarge . . . Read more →
More Words and Phrases I’m Sick Unto Death Of
Serial Entrepreneur — I hope there’s a special place in hell for people who refer to themselves as “serial entrepreneurs.” What the heck is the difference between an entrepreneur and a serial entrepreneur? I suppose Bill Gates is an entrepreneur and e.e. cummings’ Uncle Sol was a serial entrepreneur — farmer, chicken farmer, skunk farmer, worm farmer. Length — For some reason, people who talk about basketball now describe players as having “great length.” Nobody says, “He’s very tall.” They say, “He’s got great length.” News flash: People don’t have length. They have height. They even have width. But they don’t have length — except at birth and shortly thereafter, when we measure them lying down because they can’t stand up yet. Describing a basketball player as having “great length” is as uninformative as saying, “He’s a tall black guy with long arms.” Read more →
Trash by Any Other Name
Sometimes it’s hard to tell if boxes, etc., sitting around the office are supposed to go out with the trash. In Southern California, you’ll often see BASURA written on these things because the probability that a Spanish-speaking person will be taking out the trash is high. We couldn’t seem to get this box removed by writing BASURA on it, so one of our tech support people came up with this sign . . . Read more →
Word of the Day
“Timelinewise” — as in “Where are we at, timelinewise?” Read more →
Fortune Cookies
Last weekend, we had dinner at a Chinese place with some of my in-laws. As usual, my son and I were left at one end of the table to entertain ourselves while the rest of the group chatted with each other in Thai. Near the end of the meal, the boy started reading through the fortune cookies and ad libbing the messages: “‘If you’re reading this, you’re most likely Asian, which means your mom will yell at you a lot.’ ‘This fortune cookie is stale. You’re not going to like it.’ ‘You will fulminate in 10 seconds.’” “Fulminate?!” I said. “It was one of my vocabulary words.” Read more →
Redundancies
When the government says ‘Islamic militants,’ it sends a message to the public that Islam and militancy are synonymous. — Sohail Mohammed, a lawyer who represented scores of detainees after the 9/11 attacks. No, that’s not correct. What law school did you go to? If Islam and militancy were synonymous, then you could just say “Islamic” or “militants” and “Islamic militants” would be redundant, like “past history” or “unexpected surprise.” So actually, when the government says “Islamic militants,” it sends a message that Islam and militancy are not synonymous, although you can’t help noticing that most terrorists are in fact Islamic . . . Read more →
Asians and Idiots
My son’s junior high school is having a co-ed pickleball tournament at lunch. The results are posted on the school web site. The funny thing is that if a team name contains any sort of cultural reference, the P.E. teacher in charge of the tournament either can’t or won’t put the name on the web site without a deliberate misspelling. For example, 3 White Guys and a Hindu becomes 3 Wite Gus and a Hidu, because identifying someone as white, male or Hindu is unacceptable. Curiously enough, the team name 3 Blondes and a Brunette comes through unscathed. Why are people allowed to self-identify as blondes, but not as white guys or Hindus? It seems like the same thing to me. The weirdest one to me is 4 Asians and an Idiot, which comes out as 4 Ans and an Idiot. I ask my son, “Who’s the idiot?” “Some white… Read more →
Ambidextrous
My wife, a non-native English speaker, asks, “What does ‘ambidextrous’ mean?” My son says, “It means you’re just as comfortable with one side as the other.” “So it means gay,” she says. Read more →
What Does Merriam Webster Know?
My son picks up a pair of my pants that I’ve tossed on the bed, puts them on, and pulls out the front of the waistband. Because he weighs 60 pounds less than I do, there’s a lot of extra room there. “I lost 60 pounds by eating at Subway,” he announces. Then in a gangsta voice he adds, “You fat. You ain’t got the abdo-min-als like I got.” “The word is pronounced ab-dom-inals,” I say. “That’s in the real dictionary,” he says, still with the gangsta voice. “But what does Merriam Webster know? He a playa hater.” Read more →
No Solicitators
My wife sells insurance products to businesses, which sometimes requires in-person “cold calls.” She stopped in to a business today and asked the woman at the desk if she might speak with the manager. “Didn’t you see the sign?” the woman asked. “No. What did it say?” “‘No Solicitators.’” Did I mention that at least one of the people in this conversation is not a native English speaker? “I’m not a solicitator,” my wife said. “I’m here to help your business.” Happy ending: She did get an appointment to speak with the manager, but she was still unhappy about one thing. “Oh my god, I can’t believe she called me a solicitator . . .” Read more →
What is Life?
My wife, a non-native English speaker, is explaining her philosophy to me . . . “Life is a journal,” she says. “It is?” “You take a trip,” she says. Read more →
Talking Calumny
“I pity the fool who talks calumny about me,” my son informs me. I question his pronunciation of the word “calumny.” “I pronounced it right,” he says, “but I’m down wid it either way. I’m apathetic about it.” OK . . . call me Kreskin, but I’m predicting that a new list of vocabulary words just came out at school. Read more →
I Know Lots of Different Languages
My son is looking over my résumé, including the part where it says I’ve worked with lots of different languages. “You don’t know a lot of languages,” he says. Read more →
Word of the Day
Dopeler effect n : The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly. Read more →
Into the Digital Abyss
The Globe and Mail reports that a “small but determined group of computer geeks [is] trying to translate open-source software into African languages, in an effort to reach the continent most isolated by the digital divide.” Read more →
Tediocrity
tediocrity (Te`di*oc”ri*ty) n. pl. tediocrities The state or quality of doing tedious things that are of mediocre value. Ability to do, achieve, or perform in a tedious, mediocre manner. — Jon Kern Read more →
Verbification
Reading an excerpt from the tray liner at KFC: We plate your food while it’s still hot, and serve it at the peak of flavor perfection. “Tell me something I don’t know,” my son says. Read more →
Phraseology
“Pride goeth before a fall,” my son says, as he stuffs a slice of pizza into his mouth. “Really?” I ask. “What does that mean?” Read more →