The exceptional Language Log — which Patrick, not unreasonably, likes to call the best blog ever — has a post chock-full of both thought and humor about whether it's nice for native English speakers to make fun of hilarious mistranslations into English, and why such mistakes happen even in formal contexts, when some sort of proofreading might reasonably be expected. In case you're a shallow fellow like me and don't care, it also has a selection of the best of such mistranslations. Knock yourself out.

The usually-over-my-head Language Log — an indispensable resource if you find linguistics fascinating but would prefer not to run into Khmer Rouge apologias — has a very amusing post discussing how the New York Times grew curiously coy about spelling out the term "wanksta," a marvelous word combining "wanker" and "gangsta" to denote a gangsta-rapper-poseur. The article also reveals a remarkably stupid policy that I had heard of but had assumed was satire at the expense of the Times:

Last November, the name of the punk band "Fucked Up" ended up rendered in a Times concert review as a string of eight asterisks, with some oblique talk about how the name wasn't fit to print in the Times, "unless an American president, or someone similar, says it by mistake."

This is a jumble of idiocy. First, If decorum prevents printing of a word unless it is sufficiently newsworthy, by what measure is a presidential didn't-know-the-mike-was-on at the pinnacle of newsworthiness? Why is that more newsworthy than, say, a pretentious rock star (a wankster-songwriter?) dropping the f-bomb during an awards show? Second, as for wankitude, Language Log suggests that the Times — after years of printing the word wanksta — might have finally clued in to the notion that it derives from the British "wanker," referring (taken literally) to one who masturbates. If true, that makes the Times even more slow on the uptake than our friends on the Right would have us believe. Besides, all the Brits I know use wanker far more widely than that, throwing it around to denote a person dwelling somewhere in the interpersonal Bermuda triangle between asshole, twerp, and moron. In other words, its popular usage is non-sexual. (In that manner it is similar to the word motherfucker, which by meretricious overuse has lost its original Oedipal shock, and now is really just "jerk" turned up past "asshole" by a couple of notches.) Does the Times refuse to print references to someone being called a schmuck?

The new edition of William Safire's Political Dictionary is out, and I'm thinking about picking it up. The Amazon interview with him makes it sound fascinating:

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Seeing Patrick's "Book o' th'Week: War and Peace" in catchy Cyrillic reminded me of something trivial I noticed yesterday while driving. I buttoned my way to NPR, and Garrison Keillor was intoning, in customary slow motion, his syndicated Writer's Almanac. The topic at hand was l'Amant, by Marguerite Duras, and Keillor pronounced her last name with a silent 's'.

This is incorrect, but what I found interesting was not the fact that Keillor got it wrong — everyone make mistakes, n'est-ce pas? (Hersheys!) — but the fact that he probably got it wrong by trying against the odds to get it right.

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I do not consider myself to be a spelling, grammar, or diction Nazi. Patrick would tell you that, at least insofar as spelling is concerned, I am more of a conscientious objector. I avoid correcting spelling and grammar in others, with the exception of (1) responses to letters in which opposing counsel has been rude, and (2) ridicule-based male bonding.

But there is one thing that figuratively tempts me to launch a blitzkrieg at a speaker’s conversational Maginot Line – the misuse of “literally.” That’s why I gain constant sick satisfaction with Literally, a Weblog, which documents figurative atrocities involving “literally,” as well as the occasional correct usage.

“Literally” is a big concept packed into a modest word. It’s a way of saying “look, I know that hyperbole is common and you might assume that what I am saying is overstated for effect, but it's not — this is what actually happened, not my rhetorical self-indulgence." It's a classic example of development of a term that makes language clearer and more accurate. That’s what infuriates me about the misuse of the word. When people say stupid shit like “I was literally starving to death,” it's like they're saying “screw you, language, screw you, precision. I'm Humpty Fucking Dumpty here." They’re the conversational equivalent of driving recklessly and drunk with a “baby on board” sticker on your bumper. I'd be a little more forgiving if I thought it was meant as irony, but it's clearly not — it's people deliberately ignoring the actual meaning of a word in favor of using it for slack-jaw emphasis.