Buffyspeak

Omg, Spike is turned FIFTY last week. Where has my childhood gone? 

I love the Oxford dictionary blog for a lot of reasons and here's another one: an article summing up the jargon of Sunnydale. It touches on Whedon & Buffy writers nouning adjectives, puns and wordplay, and the Valley-meets-Sorkin low- and high-register mashup dialogue.

The OED even credits the Buffy movie & series for popularizing the use of much with a 'preceding adjective, infinitive verb, or noun phrase, forming an elliptical comment or question'. 

Linkfest [4]

A collection of language-related things that caught my attention in the last month or so (IRL'd!):

• The Triumph of English: John Adams, predicted in 1780 that “English will be the most respectable language in the world and the most universally read and spoken in the next century, if not before the end of this one.”

• The Supreme Court ruled on the difference between a translator and an interpreter. (The full decision.)

• Linguistics + cultural anthropology + web design = Websites from High-Context Cultures and Low-Context Cultures. A very cool read!

• Why QA sucks (specifically in game dev, but applies to all QA): Many QA professionals talk about "getting out" and moving to the production or design path. Don't you want good QA folks to keep doing QA? Shouldn't they enjoy and want to stay in their jobs? Isn't there something wrong with this picture?  Via Jayme (@aunicorninspace)

• Lovely tiny sculpture of a city made using letterpress type. 

• The Noun Project (@NounProject) consistently makes me happy. “sharing, celebrating and enhancing the world’s visual language” -- Here's my favorite tag so far: MAGIC.

• Incredible Don’t Fear Web Typography video is totally worth your time.

• “It’s about a person who is a robot, a very colorful robot. He’s pretty fancy for a robot.” (A Clockwork Orange) – A six-year-old guesses what classic novels are about based on their covers.

• What the Phonics?
 An interactive installation set that helps people learn street name pronunciations in Copenhagen.

• The Mind is a Metaphor
 is a vast collection of metaphors of the mind. Baffingly robust.

May you be enabled, by reading them frequently, to transfuse into your own breast that holy flame which inspired the writer! (1773)— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Finally, I found this shirt. Somebody please buy it for me.