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DailyDirt: More Than Words, Is All I Have To Say…

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The meaning of words change all the time, and they may be changing faster than ever before. It’s hard for traditional dictionaries to really keep up with new words, but linguists are trying to record and categorize all the sounds they’re observing. It ain’t easy, but it’s interesting to keep track of all the ways our language changes as people around the world are increasingly connected. Here are just a few examples.

• Teenagers communicate in weird ways sometimes, making sounds that aren’t words (but still have meaning). There’s a difference between “duhhh” and “duhhyy” — and you should be insulted by the latter. [url]
• Many terms of endearment are almost universal, like “baby” — understandable in several different languages, but some cute names are not. Japanese women are commonly referred to as “an egg with eyes” as a compliment, but that doesn’t quite translate well in English…. [url]
• According to some linguists, young women are the leaders of language fads that spread into everyday conversations. For example, Webster’s New World College Dictionary (Fourth Edition) includes the use of “like” as a way to add emphasis — as in “It’s, like, hot.” [url]
• Verbal profanities are stored in a different part of your brain than where most of your language skills reside, and cursing has been part of our language for centuries (if not longer). Some of the worst obscenities in Latin focus on body parts and sex, so it seems like the subject matter of curse words hasn’t changed that much in a while. [url]

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Filed Under: communication, cursing, dictionary, language, latin, linguistics, profanities, teenagers, terms, tone, verbal, words

South Carolina Considers Law That Would Criminalize Profanity In Public Forums

from the well,-fuck dept

Slashdot points us to an immensely troubling law being proposed by a state Senator in South Carolina that would make it a felony to use profanity in a public forum, whether written or spoken (so assume the internet is included). Punishment could include fines up to $5000 or prison sentences up to 5 years in length. One would hope that others in the South Carolina legislature would never let this get anywhere, but these days you never know. Of course, such a law is ridiculously unconstitutional, and if it somehow did get passed would certainly get tossed out by the courts. But just the fact that an elected representative thinks that such a law is reasonable is pretty scary. Someone want to send him a copy of the Constitution?

Filed Under: felony, free speech, profanities, south carolina