Excited semi-whisperers accused of undermining literacy

As AJMG reported in a review of the DVD of The Singing Ringing Tree, some of us remember a muted voice mumbling away in the original UK broadcast of that creepy fairy tale series, separate from the English narration and the original German dialogue. Well, we didn’t necessarily recognise the dialogue as German at the time, but the intonation of that mumbler was something that could never be forgotten, and with hindsight (hindhearing?), it sounded like some Slavic language. We recently came to suspect that the episodes show in the UK were prints prepared for the Polish market, since reading in The Xenophobe’s Guide to the Poles about a peculiar practice of Polish television broadcasters: rather than prepare subtitles, or dub foreign dialogue, they employ an actor to read translated lines on top of the dialogue, in, as the Guide says, “an excited semi-whisper”. The effect was in this case really quite sinister.

Now the Polish Blog reports on a move to replace this peculiar practice with subtitling for foreign programmes, and laments the popular opposition to this innovation. There is of course the point that people are used to the Mumblers and may resist change on the basis that they like what they grew up with. However, the Blog goes on to note the prevalence of Poles who “are functionally illiterate” and suggests that subtitling may play a role in encouraging literacy. If that is the case, perhaps we should encourage subtitling of programmes in English, for the training of our own illiterates. Dubbing all programmes into Polish – or better still, a language that is not widely spoken in the UK – could only help.

Electro Flash

This is two months old now, so it’s perhaps due for some sort of ironic revival?

Silence

Silence.

Towards a world language

From Amazon UK’s increasingly alien site (“Shop all departments”? What does that mean?):-

Milet Flashwords English – Polish (Game)

“I bought these flashcards hoping that they would be useful in teaching our children Arabic”.

Schaum’s Outline of Chinese Vocabulary

“look in the hospital section and point to the characters for dizzy and your one step closer to being helped… i’m certain it will work just as well during A-level becuase there is so much to learn! Buy this and the grammer book and you will see a difference!”.

Chinese-English Visual Bilingual Dictionary

“Frequently Bought Together – Customers buy this book with Polish-English Visual Bilingual Dictionary (Bilingual Visual Dictionary)”

Get by in Polish Travel Pack

“Get By in Polish is the ideal travel companion – a quick and easy introduction to Japanese”…

Apple introduces “funnest iPod”

Apple has issued a press release.

“iPod touch is the funnest iPod we’ve ever created,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO.

The use of the word “funnest” could be seen as another sign that Apple is sliding into slapdash language use, but perhaps “funnest” is acceptable in American English, or perhaps Apple has chosen its words very carefully. Let us check with some American authorities…

Dictionary.com reports “No results found for funnest“.

Merriam-Webster generously allows “Inflected Form(s): sometimes fun·ner; sometimes fun·nest” – but should we trust a dictionary that doesn’t even indicate that these “inflected form(s)” are meant to be (in grammatical terms) superlatives? That’s what they are called, M-W.

Wiktionary.org (yes, the definition of “authority” is being stretched now to support a position; well spotted – but at least the writer in this case knows what a superlative is) opines that “funnest” is “humorous, intentionally incorrect, nonstandard”.

Urban Dictionary considers the word to be urban enough to warrant a listing.

World Wide Words explores the transition of the word “fun” from noun to adjective and concludes that “what we’re seeing here is language evolution in action” but that “funnest” is a word that “should still be avoided when speaking or writing standard or formal English”.

Of course, iPods are not formal! They are fun! In fact they are funnest! That, presumably, is Apple’s take on this. But MacDonald’s take on the verb “love” was that “I’m loving it” was acceptable English, and that ugly construction is now ubiquitous.

The iPod Touch is demonstrated in this video, and you are unlikely to be disappointed by its features. How will Apple improve on this model in years to come? Perhaps they will have to make it even more funnest…

Five more facts about the Large Hadron Collider

5 Facts about CERN’s Large Hadron Collider

Ah, skip that actually. It’s just pornography for statisticians. And you’ve read the rest: blah blah hadron Higgs boson God particle blah…

OK, here are the facts that count.

1) Nobody gives a flying one what you think. Get that straight for a start.

2) Insurance policies consider the probability of loss and the severity of the loss should a disaster occur. Particle physicists working for CERN say that the probability of a disaster is extremely low. Of course, the whole planet will get swallowed up by a black hole if things do go wrong, but there would be no-one around to make a claim, so “hey”.

(3) Taking experiments off-world costs more than building things in Switzerland. It’s that expensive. As you should know by now, the fundamental particle in the Universe is the Dollar (the value of which can go up or down in a strangely charming way).

(4) Careers are at stake here.

(5) Barring that very unlikely yet catastrophic accident, come Thursday everyone will be repeatedly reminded that there was no need to have worried. In future, you will be expected to trust the scientists and the interests they serve, without airing your silly concerns. See point 1.

Google promises some decent verdammt software

Deciding not to wait for a suitable quantum computer, Google explains the thinking behind its new browser, Chrome.

One feature – the ability to move tabs between windows – is already implemented in the Omnigroup’s browser for “Mac fans”, Omniweb. But Omniweb doesn’t have one feature of Chrome, the omnibox. Confused? Well never mind. What counts is that Chrome is an open-source attempt to produce not just a fast, “rock-solid” browser, but to improve all actively developed browsers. It’s in Google’s interest, and those of Web users, for browsing software to be better. And companies that haven’t been sufficiently imaginative or perfectionist can treat this as a simultaneous hand-out and kick up the rear.

Pretending that cuil.com is updating lynx to be a “Chrome killer” would be cheap so let’s not do that.

Ken Campbell

It’s sad to see that Ken Campbell has died, at the age of 66. As this obituary states, “he will be known for his commercial cameos on TV, such as In Sickness And In Health or Fawlty Towers, but the legacy of his live work will be the true measure of the man.”

Beyond these effective appearances there were Ken Campbell’s televised explorations into the nature of consciousness, which were rather laboured – whereas in live performance, he was probably the only person able to hold a general audience with an explanation of qualia, in the same set as a tale of translating Ken Dodd jokes for performance in the New Hebrides.

In fact – that’s almost certain.