I may be the last to notice that Anonymous Lawyer has an Anonymous Law Firm LLP website, what with the book coming out.
The firm has a large number of lawyers, all with photo and profile, and six offices in the USA plus one in Baghdad.
The site is a bit sillier than the blog, probably because it feels the need to mimic a real law site in so many ways.
A 13-year-old New Jersey girl making her fifth straight appearance at the Scripps National Spelling Bee rattled off “ursprache” to claim the title of America’s best speller on prime-time television Thursday night.
Katherine Close ‘recognized the word as soon as she heard it’:
“I’m just in shock,” Katharine said. Asked what she’ll remember most, she said: “Probably just hearing ‘ursprache,’ which is a parent language.”
I wonder how they pronounced it. The runner-up was probably named to be a speller:
Runner-up was Finola Mei Hwa Hackett, a 14-year-old Canadian, a confident speller during two days of competition who stumbled on “weltschmerz,” which means sadness over the evils of the world.
I believe spelling bees are creeping into Britain. Here is a Guardian (sic) spelling quiz.
(Via Wordlab – thanks to Abnu)
I used to think the German term Fußpilz (Pilze are mushrooms and toadstools or moulds) had nothing to do with athletes, but the local pharmacist’s window suggests otherwise:
And on the same topic, I think Ikea ordered these quite some months ago – well, that explains the Turkish flag, but not the Union Flag:
This site apparently demands Firefox / Angeblich nur mit Firefox zu besuchen:
bq. 10 Jahre lang hat sich der Translators’ Companion als Informationsquelle zur literarischen Übersetzung in Europa bewährt. Für die Internet-Version wurde er komplett aktualisiert und ergänzt.
bq. Wer Literatur übersetzt oder übersetzen lässt, findet im Translators’ Companion umfassende Informationen. Die Datenbank enthält detaillierte Angaben über nationale und internationale Interessenverbände, über die europäischen Übersetzerzentren sowie einige andere Häuser, in denen Übersetzende in Ruhe an einem Projekt arbeiten können, über Aus- und Weiterbildungsangebote für LiteraturübersetzerInnen und schließlich über die verschiedenen Förderungsformen für literarische Übersetzungen und ÜbersetzerInnen in Europa bzw. darüber hinaus.
bq. Over the past ten years the Translators’ Companion has proven itself as a source of information on literary translation in Europe. It has been completely updated and supplemented for the Internet version.
bq. Anyone who translates literature, or has it translated, will find comprehensive information in the Translators’ Companion. The database comprises details on national and international associations, European translators’ centres, including several other institutions where translators can work in peace on a project, as well as training and further education offered for literary translators, and the various forms of support available for literary translators in Europe and beyond.
(Via is a blog – at least one translator’s weblog where there’s always something going on (in German))
Is it possible to explain to judges that dictionaries are not definitive proof of usage?
Geoffrey Nunberg has written on this topic before, giving examples of how the U.S. Supreme Court uses dictionaries (dictionaries have been used by the Court more since 1990 than in the previous 200 years).
bq. In one 1993 case, the Supreme Court ruled that a man who traded a rifle for some cocaine could be sentenced under a statute that provided for an increased penalty for someone who uses a firearm to obtain narcotics. Writing for the majority, Justice O’Connor justified the decision by citing one dictionary’s definition of use as “to employ.” To his credit, Justice Scalia dissented, following a rule of interpretation that you could paraphrase as “give me a break, please.” In ordinary usage, he said, using a firearm means using it as a weapon, not as a medium of barter.
At Düsseldorf, Nunberg gave more examples to show in what ways English dictionaries fall short of the mark (to say nothing of bilingual dictionaries).
A Merriam-Webster definition of assassinate fails to indicate that it is applied to a prestigious person being killed by a less prestigious one.
Was the word redskin derogatory in 1965? Dictionaries didn’t mark it as such before 1980.
In 1954, did ‘pay for every broadcast’ include TV, or just radio?
(In these cases, it was shown that corpora can give good evidence of usage).
And a Florida court, relying on a dictionary, found that ‘subject to’ was a passive verb. (Has someone got that reference? It may well be online).
Ah – languagehat has it.