this is just fun

I used Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language as a reference for my research paper or my science fair project (or maybe both) in eighth grade and have been meaning to actually read the thing ever since. I finished Exodus; Leviticus; Bud, Not Buddy; Caddie Woodlawn; and All Creatures Great and Small. Numbers intimidated me and I didn't really want to read Everlasting Man. So I started The Language Instinct.

Here are some fun things I found:




George Bernard Shaw complained that fish could just as sensibly be spelled ghoti (gh as in tough, o as in women, ti as in nation).

Chomsky: colorless green ideas sleep furiously

About the Kivunjo language: "The Kivunjo construction fits entirely inside the verb, which has seven prefixes and suffixes, two moods, and fourteen tenses; the verb agrees with its subject, its object, and its benefactive nouns, each of which come in sixteen genders."

Cherokee pronouns can distinguish between "you and I," "another person and I," "several other people and I," "you, one or more other persons, and I" -- and in English, it's "us" or "we."

"He walks" = "as solitary masculinity, leggedness proceeds."

Newspaper headlines:

• Child's Stool Great for Use in Garden
• Stud Tires Out
• Stiff Opposition Expected to Casketless Funeral Plan
• Drunk Gets Nine Months in Violin Case
• Iraqi Head Seeks Arms
• Queen Mary Having Bottom Scraped
• Columnist Gets Urologist in Trouble with His Peers

First guy: I didn't sleep with my wife before we married, did you?
Second guy: I don't know. What was her maiden name?

These apparently also appeared in newspapers:

• Yoko Ono will talk about her husband John Lennon who was killed in an interview with Barbara Walters.
• Two cars were reported stolen by the Groveton police yesterday.
• The license fee for altered dogs with a certificate will be $3 and for pets owned by senior citizens who have not been altered the fee will be $1.50.
• Tonight's program discusses stress, exercise, nutrition, and sex with Celtic forward Scott Wedman, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, and Dick Cavett.
• We will sell gasoline to anyone in a glass container.
• For sale: mixing bowl set designed to please a cook with round bottom for efficient beating.

One witness told the commissioners that she had seen sexual intercourse taking place between two parked cars in front of her house.

The comedian Dick Gregory tells of walking up to a lunch counter in Mississippi during the days of racial segregation. The waitress said to him, "We don't serve colored people." "That's fine," he replied, "I don't eat colored people. I'd like a piece of chicken."

How old Cary Grant?
Old Cary Grant fine.

More newspaper headlines:

• New Housing for Elderly Not Yet Dead
• New Missouri U. Chancellor Expects Little Sex
• 12 on Their Way to Cruise Among Dead in Plane Crash
• N.J. Judge to Rule on Nude Beach
• Chou Remains Cremated
• Chinese Apeman Dated
• Hershey Bars Protest
• Reagen Wins on Budget, But More Lies Ahead
• Deer Kill 130,000
• Complaints About NBA Referees Growing Ugly
• Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim
• Man Eating Piranha Mistakenly Sold as Pet Fish
• Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant

Achtung! Alles Lookenspeepers!
Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das rubbernecken sightseeren keepen das cottenpickenen hans in das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten.

In Boston there is an old joke about a woman who landed at Logan Airport and asked the taxi driver, "Can you take me someplace where I can get scrod?" He replied, "Gee, that's the first time I've heahrd it in the pluperfect subjunctive!"




That's all I've got for now--I haven't finished the book yet. If you want more, go read it yourself.