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Bright Passages
Before the fault-finding resumes, here’s another small sampling of sparkling prose from recent editions. After Deadline http://ift.tt/1fk9TkK
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New issue of the Linguistics and Education Bulletin
New issue of the Linguistics and Education Bulletin via Tumblr http://ift.tt/QnGpK4
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Mind your slanguage, and don’t be an erk. YOLO
Slang should be celebrated, not condemned. It enriches our language from bloomers to booty, from cool to ceebs, and from doing a Lohan to LOLZ The borderline-cult film Mean Girls contains an amusing insight into young people’s eagerness to leave their linguistic trademark on the world. Schoolgirl Gretchen Wieners describes any pleasant situation as "fetch" […]
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Johnson: OK computer
JOHNSON’s first foreign-language class was typical: a gaggle of 14-year olds, hormones raging, are gathered in a classroom when Señora White strolls in. ¡Hola y bienvenidos a la clase de español! Puberty is a terrible time to begin a language. One’s own parents are embarrassing enough. But to repeat nonsense words with strange gurgling and burbling sounds […]
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Lose the language and you lose Shakespeare
His plays don’t become ‘accessible’ by translating them into ‘yoofspeak’. There’s nothing left to access Down with the Bard The news that Shakespeare is being translated into yoofspeak ("Dere was somefing minging in de state of Denmark," et cetera), while revolting, of course, struck me as not exactly news. Hasn’t this been done before? Or […]

