November 24th, 2008, 4 Comments »
I write this entry mostly because I wanted to include the title “Greenlanders Go To the Polls”. How often do you get to say that? In any case, the 39,000-strong population of Greenland is voting in a referendum on greater independence from Denmark:
If the “yes” side wins, the local Greenland government has the chance to take control of new areas such as natural resource management, justice and police affairs and to a certain extent foreign affairs.
There are potentially lucrative revenues from the natural resources under Greenland’s seabed, which according to international experts is home to large oil deposits. Greenlandic would also be recognised as the island’s official language.
In case you were wondering (and I sure was), Greenlandic is a close cousin of the Inuit languages.
4 Comments »
April 7th, 2008, 26 Comments »
I’m sitting here listening to Leonard Cohen’s “Closing Time” (check out the nice black and white video full of beautiful people). The chorus goes:
All the women tear their blouses off
and the men they dance on the polka-dots
and it’s partner found and it’s partner lost
and it’s hell to pay when the fiddler stops
It’s closing time
Just yesterday, I used the word ‘blouse’ and felt awkward about it. In recent years, the word seems to have disappeared from our popular language. Female friends have kind of smirked at me when I’ve used in it conversation.
The word seems to now belong only to my mother and my grandmother’s generations. What words do we now use to describe women’s shirts? Besides the word ’shirt’, that is. ‘Top’, I guess. What else?
On a related note, I feel like I’m the only Canadian under 40 who uses the word ‘trousers’. I learned to eschew ‘pants’ while living in Ireland, and have never really gone back. There’s similar scoffing when I say ‘trousers’. Undeserved, I think.
26 Comments »
September 26th, 2007, 2 Comments »
James, intrigued by the aforementioned term and the phrase ‘the anesthetic of the familiar’, sent me a link to a short description of a talk by Steven Pinker. I was particularly intrigued by the word ‘dysphemism’, which apparently refers to the opposite of a euphemism. From Wikipedia:
In language, both dysphemism and cacophemism refer to the usage of an intentionally harsh word or expression instead of a polite one; they are rough opposites of euphemism…Examples of dysphemism include “dead tree edition” for the paper version of an online magazine, or the American military personnel’s use of “shit on a shingle” for their common breakfast of creamed chipped beef on toast.
Now, to use it in conversation three times. That shouldn’t be too hard, should it?
2 Comments »
