Word Nerds and Linguistic Fancies

I've been listening to word nerds, a podcast that I found on itunes. I like their discussions, though at times, I feel that the conversations could be as fluid as NPR's Car Talk's Tappet brothers's conversations. Below are some links to things that they highlighted in December and November. I haven't listened for a couple of months.

If you do not have time to listen to a whole podcast, but you can take a minute or two to read a blog on language and linguistics, I highly recommend Language Log. The posts are fun and interesting. They had one speculating how fluent President Obama was in Indonesian, which he learned as a child. They also had a post charting "That's Greek to me" phrasing in different languages, where some languages pointed to Greek, Chinese, Arabic, and even Heavenly Script as being the more unintelligible language.

In the end, check language log out. It's fun.

The other links suggested by the word nerds, but...language log is better.

Word Nerds: http://thewordnerds.org/
Nature Magazine Article: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v449/n7163/full/nature06176.html
Dead Words: http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/11/zounds-nixonian-skedaddle-and-other-dead-words/

My Notebook

At church, they make a point of encouraging us to keep a journal. I'm grateful for different journals and accounts from people in the past. I have benefited from the written accounts of prophets, scientists, artists, family members and others. If someone becomes popular enough, their main works become famous. Once they cannot produce major works, then their scraps, notes, and remains become imbued with power. Journals tend to humanize people.
My first semester at BYU, I discovered Anthropology and decided to make it my own. I met with Dr. Hartley-Moore. She explained what the degree involved. I was excited to have found something that combined my love of language, religion, literature, people, and travel. I was so excited about the prospect of doing anthropological field research that I decided I would start carrying around a notebook to write things I noticed on campus. It was fun taking notes that year, it was fun taking notes in Greece during my mission (with the blue calendar charts). Since the mission, I have used a notebook inconsistently. The year I did at BYU, I wrote poetry and made some fun drawings. This year, I started during the first day of my Master's program. It has been useful in helping me remember names, write notes about the guest lecturers, and think about different topics throughout the day.
The notebook is also a statement in style. My mother-in-law, Mary Beth gave me my current notebook. I really like it. It is thick gridded notebook, no larger than a standard bible, without the index or footnotes. Nice.
The one thing about the notebook is that it really doesn't count as a true journal. Sometimes, it can be as journal-like as a bookie's ledger. The information is really more for me than anyone else.
I'm not very good about doing these posts. I'll start them but not be able to finish them when I first start. If I do not finish at first try, they become disjointed and unfocused. The same thing happened with the last posts. The only one that I finished the first time was the ee cummings post. That has been my favorite.