Thursday roundup: MasterChef, NUJ, old words

A Thursday roundup rather than the usual Friday one.

It's the final of cookery gameshow MasterChef tonight here in the UK, and anyone who's a fan of both the programme and language use might briefly enjoy the 'MasterChef: the best lyrics' gizmo on guardian.co.uk. Thanks for that one, Sarah.

Why would the chair of the National Union of Journalists' professional training committee write that "bloggers rejoice in low standards"? I'm still not sure, but you can track the discussion leading up to this comment on my colleague Adam Tinworth's blog, One Man and His Blog, or read the guardian.co.uk account. As an NUJ member and a fan of new and social media, I've been engrossed by the whole affair.

Lastly, another of my colleagues drew my attention to a BBC News article on the 'oldest English words'. All the talk of Indo-European languages made me flash back to my university days. Thanks, Ro!

3 comments:

garicgymro said...

A few language bloggers have been fuming somewhat about the "oldest English words" stuff:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1186
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1191
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1197
http://gotmedieval.blogspot.com/2009/02/further-thoughts-on-time-traveling.html
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1199

There's a very interesting paper at the bottom of it all, but the recent popular articles about it are undoubtedly misleading.

JD (The Engine Room) said...

And then there is The Daily Mash take on it...

Unbelieveable Stuff said...

A few language bloggers