Language Headlines (minicast) - 3 Nov. 2008

Last year British slang lexicographer Jonathon Green struck a deal with the publisher Chambers Harrap to create an exhaustive dictionary of English slang. Now, says the London Telegraph, the first fruit of that relationship has appeared in the form of the Chambers Slang Dictionary.

The main sources of slang, Green says, have remained the same: sex and sexual organs, drinking, and terms of abuse. But ,there are always innovations.

The Telegraph offers some of them: boilerhouse, modern British rhyming slang for spouse. Jawsing, US teen slang for lying. And, muzzy, an Irish word for a naughty child.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/10/27/sv_slangmain.xml

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/10/27/sv_slang.xml

In the Paper Cuts blog of the New York Times, Jennifer Scheussler reviews 'On The Dot,' by Nicholas and Alexander Humez. It's an exhaustive look at the period or the dot, that little piece of punctuation that does so much. And I do mean exhaustive. The book is so digressive and sometimes so far afield of its subject matter that you might find yourself flipping to the front to make sure you're still reading the same book.

http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/27/dot-everything/

In the discussion forum on that page, I discovered the 'fini.' This is a new piece of punctuation created by Dave Rosenthal, an assistant managing editor at the Baltimore Sun. The fini is a square instead of a circle.

Dave says, 'A period is usually a fine way to end a sentence. But when there's a forcefulness attached to the words, I worry that the period will roll away. It is, after all, just a tiny black ball.'

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/books/blog/2008/07/the_endofdiscussion.html

Do you want to find out what Virginia Woolf and John Steinbeck sounded like? They're part of an audio collection from the British Library, called 'The Spoken Word: British Writers.' It was discussed and played on NPR's All Things Considered.

The audio is a rare find, as many recordings of the early days of radio were never saved. Recordings by George Orwell, for example, have yet to be found, even though he worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96030704

--

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write 24 hours a day: (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673, words@waywordradio.org, or visit our web site and discussion forums at http://waywordradio.org. Copyright 2008, Wayword LLC.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices