Have any of you noticed the way punctuation is creatively used in our interwebs these days?

I feel like everywhere I look someone is adorning their tweet with :: or their blog header with ~~

I’ve also seen brands that integrate a cheeky // into all their headers and copywriting (sometimes where traditionally a dash might have been used).

To me, this trend is different to the emoticon craze (which is very much mainstream now) because the emoticon communicates a meaning or feeling, whereas these punctuation marks appear purely decorative.

Have you seen any other examples? Comment below and throw ‘em at us.

** :: Yours in spangly punctuation, Georgia :: **

PS. Lauren suggested a name for this trend: funk-tuation. Puntastic, no?

Things we wish English had is going to be wound-back to an irregular Friday feature a while as I knuckle down and smash out some serious chapter writing for my thesis. Lucid prose might also become an irregular feature from me - but Georgia will still be around and fortunately there is always an abundant supply of linguistics-based web-comic goodness.

So that’s the bad news. The good news is that we’ve implemented an email subscription list for those of you who want Superlinguo goodness delivered straight to your inbox. Just pop your email address into the box below our Twitter feed just to the right of this post!

Thanks to Zoe (who Tweets and Blogs at the excellently named Nepali Jiwan) for the suggestion!

I had the good fortune of having my visit to London coincide with the Globe to Globe festival, which was part of the Shakespeare Festival, itself a part of the bigger London 2012 Festival, which is all tied in with the Olympics and Royal Jubilee (it’s a rather crazy time to be visiting London!).

The Globe to Globe festival is showcasing every single one of Shakespeare’s plays in different languages from around the world, even the plays you never hear of like Coriolanus (in Japanese) and King John (in Armenian).

I also have the good fortune of having a friend who was organised enough to suggest we go see something. Of all the amazing languages the plays have been translated into (including Lithuanian, Mexican Spanish, Gujarati and British Sign Language) we ended up deciding to see Othello, translated into ‘Hip Hop.’

I’m not much of a Hip Hop connoisseur, nor am I very well educated in Shakespeare. I have to say there was an uncomfortable thirty seconds for me at the start where I was unsure if the premise was going to hold. I’ve seen enough cheesy Shakespearean ‘updates’ to know they can go horribly wrong, or can just feel like someone chose a play and chose from a random list of ‘adaptive’ techniques (Romeo & Juliet gender inversion! Macbeth set in the future! etc.). These guys clearly know their stuff and once we were extolled to throw our hands in the air I was sold. The plot isn’t changed, but the context is updated from the Venetian military to a modern day hip hop recording label (called ‘First Folio Records’ *chuckle*).

The Q Brothers (actual brothers) wrote the script and make up half the quartet of actors. There’s lots of character changing and cross-dressing which is all part of the fun. There’s still some classic Shakespearean English that pokes through, but the text is extensively rewritten, while staying true to the themes of race, power, jealously and love (also major themes in the world of hip hop). In an interview GQ (one of the two Q Brothers) explains that it’s a gradual process over several rewrites.

The audience reviews I eavesdropped on in the shuffle outside were all positive, and mostly along the lines of ‘more kids would like Shakespeare if it was done like this.’ It’s certainly an argument I have no qualms with - after all, I saw Ten Things I Hate About You before I saw The Taming of the Shrew. Although it’s debatable whether hip hop is a ‘language’ it’s clearly a style of its own, and one that has a lot in common with Shakespeare’s penchant for novel rhymes and playful banter.

But for me it wasn’t the updating of the language itself that was most important to the accessibility of the play; a good bunch of actors and some selective editing can make most of his work sufficiently accessible. For me what made it really zing was the updating of the allusions and pop references. Nothing kills a joke like having to look it up in a footnote - but references to Dungeons and Dragons, Andre Agassi, and the Beastie Boys all made sense for the audience and allowed them to connect with the story.

I had a great time; I laughed, I hollered, I got teary and yes, I threw my hands in the air. It’s probably the only play I’ve seen where the performers returned to the stage to high-five the audience. If the Q Brothers are ever in your hood go check them out!

[This post also appeared on Fully (sic)]

Across the Tasman last week the NZ Herald reported on a recent research paper looking at the use of non-English street signs in Auckland. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a copy of the paper, ‘The Cosmopolitics of Linguistic Landscapes,’ from Massey University’s Robin Peace and Ian Goodwin, but it doesn’t matter because as far as I can tell it looks like NZ Herald reporters Lincoln Tan and Hayden Donnell didn’t actually get around to reading it either.

The article starts out acknowledging the research has been done and then Dr. Peace is indirectly quoted as saying ‘Some New Zealanders responded with “annoyance” or “repugnance” when faced with a space that did not make immediate, translatable sense.’ This is then a springboard for an online poll of their readers (not a representative sample of Kiwis), where 39% of the participants said signs should be in English only. As though this wasn’t already a problematic enough way to represent that ‘New Zealanders’ attitudes towards non-English signs they also conducted interviews with ten people ‘in the street.’ It’s from these very impressionistic ‘polls’ that we get the scare-line that Kiwis are apparently ‘uncomfortable’ living in a multilingual society. Then we have a quote from the Auckland Mayor and Auckland Chinese Community Centre chairman, giving proviso-filler endorsement to the signs to give the impression of balanced journalism and round out the piece.

It makes me wonder why we bother even doing rigorous peer-reviewed research at all if the media just pull a quote from a phone interview or media release and then twist it to suit there own agenda (in this case fear-mongering). Choosing to conduct an online poll instead of actually discussing the results of thoughtfully designed and executed research is like choosing to watch your mates race each other around the block over getting premium tickets to the 100m sprint final in London; sure, they’re both running races, but you know that one is going to be a much greater display of aptitude and planning than the other.

Not only is this article a poor performance in objective reporting, but it’s also another sign of the dangerous re-enforcement of the ‘monolingual mindset’ that is a bit passe as far as the team here at Fully (Sic) are concerned. Dr. Peaces quote hints that in the research there is a variety of opinion, not just some misplaced and undefined fear. The article gives the impression that shop owners have something to hide by appealing to non-English-only demographics, instead of helping people to understand that it’s actually a common phenomenon in cosmopolitan cities the world over, and usually a sign (pardon the pun) of a linguistically and culturally vibrant society. Being monolingual isn’t actually a problem (the usual disclaimer: I spent most of my life only being able to speak English), the problem is that people are taught to fear other languages, instead of accepting and celebrating the benefits that diversity offer.

While it would be easy to brush this off as just poor journalism in another country, this article has similar themes to the kind of English-only rhetoric that pops up in Australia too. Hopefully we’ll eventually get to see someone write something that actually reflects Peace and Goodwin’s research, and I’ll happily wager that the pictures a lot more interesting than the NZ Herald portrays.

[This post also appeared on Fully (Sic)]

I’ve had a fun month of wandering throughout Europe - a lovely mix of catching up with family and friends, library adventures, meeting up with some amazing linguists and a bit of sightseeing on the side. I have a suitcase full of Euro-goodies to take home, but I think that ideally I’d like to souvenir a couple of words from some of the countries that I’ve visited. Of course, you can capture all of these ideas in English, but there’s something really nifty about wrapping it all up in a single little word.

Fusy n. Polish It’s a word that captures both the grounds left in a coffee pot and tea leaves left in a tea pot. It doesn’t have the same negative extension that ‘dregs’ carries. Given that we’re a pluri-beverage household we’re always dealing with fusy when it comes to washing up time.

Fika n. or v. Swedish This is the kind of word that always gets wheeled out in ‘why doesn’t English have a word for X’ articles - and for good reason, because it really is a lovely concept. Fika is the combination of a non-alcoholic beverage (usually coffee) and some kind of cake (usually outrageously sweet) and taking time to chat with friends/family/colleagues. It’s not entirely dissimilar to how the word ‘coffee’ is used as a verb in my lab, but I really like the emphasis on the social aspect (and the cake). Needless to say I made the most of every fika opportunity while in Stockholm.

Syrah n. French/English Ok, this one always existed in English. I always thought it was some obscure little grape variety. Turns out that it’s the French name for what Australians and New Zealanders more often call shiraz. In what can only really be a classic case of sound symbolism, if you’d asked me to describe these grapes before I knew this crucial fact I’d have said that shiraz is bolder and more peppery. This trip I’ve learned a new (for an Aussie) wine word, and made sufficiently sure to drink enough syrah to ascertain that it is just as peppery as a shiraz.

Today I’d like to share a great project that aims to reflect the linguistic diversity of our modern world. Language Landscape aims to offer a taste of what languages are spoken where, and what they sound like. With a simple interface it’s possible to wander a map looking at recordings that people have uploaded from all over the place. So it might be no surprise that there’s German in German, but there’s also Mekeo (from PNG) in The United States, Swedish in Australia and I got to find out about Tundra Nenets language, spoken in Northern Russia.

The site is still currently in beta-mode, but it will hopefully grow as more people get on board. The reason that I like this project is that it really reflects where languages are spoken. So often we get caught up on the fact that Irish is spoken in Ireland, Polish is from Poland and Dinka is a language of South Sudan. But the other week in London I heard more Polish than I’ve heard in a long time, there’s a solid enclave of Irish speakers in New York, and Melbourne has a sizable population of Dinka speakers. Although a language may have its origins in one place, the world is a wonderful landscape of migration.

You can participate too! No matter what language you (or your friend, grandfather or mother-in-law) speak, and where you live, you can help build a dynamic picture of the linguistic diversity in your neighbourhood. There are even some great tips for making recordings if you’re a novice.