Review: Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries

Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow. This turned out to be much better than I thought it would be. An insider's look into what lexicographers working on making dictionaries go through. 

Some of my notes: 

People are actively advised not to be social at work. For phone calls you can only use 2 payphones that hardly ever get used. 

Cheatsheet they use for Transitive verbs: "I'mma _____ his ass". If you can insert the verb in the blank, it is transitive. 

Apparently lexicographers *hate* dealing with so-called grammar nazis. To them that isn't what grammar is. In fact, most of the well-established rules these grammar-nazis want everyone to follow are extremely faulty. 

An example: Its (possessive) vs. It's (contraction). This seems simple enough, since we know "it's" is short for "it is" or "it has". 

Except we also know " -'s" is short for possessives (as in "the dog's bowl") so why isn't it natural for "it's" to be possessive? 

In fact, we have no problem accepting that "the dog's barking" and "the dog's bowl" are both correct, both using "--'s". Why are we so bothered when it comes to "it's"? 

Btw, this is a recent phenomenon (like many grammar rules we have now). Chaucer and Shakespeare just used "it". The addition of the 's' came later, but not as we use it. In fact, at first people complained about its incorrect usage, but the other way around. They said "it's" being short for "it is" didn't make sense because we already had "T'is" 

"On fleek" first appeared in June 2014, in a 6 second video by Peaches Monroe (where she called her eyebrows on fleek). In November, 5 months later, nearly 10% of all Google searches were for "On fleek". When asked, she said she just invented it. 

Many English words come from French, but some, like "Lingerie", have a pronunciation in English that has almost nothing to do with the French pronunciation of the same spelling. (we think French words should end in "ay", like Café, so we end "Lingerie" with the same sound, and pronounce the first syllable like the "En" from a french-isized "Envelope". 

https://amzn.to/3KymqDO

View all my reviews

Review: The Great Passage

The Great Passage by Shion Miura
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a delightful book. I admit, I had this on my wishlist, but couldn't remember why, and, had I looked into the subject matter I may have skipped this. The idea of an entire novel centered around creating a dictionary seems a tad boring, quite frankly. 

But it turns out this was really nice. Each chapter is from the point of view of someone different, and every person seems to be a bit quirky in their own way, and it all fits in together nicely at the end. 

In terms of the translation, obviously a choice had to be made. Many references are made to Japanese terms, the definitions and the etymology, as well as expressions that, for one reason or another, are odd and need explaining. The translator could have decided to find equivalents in English (or as close to an equivalent as possible), or to stick with the Japanese terms and add explanations for the reader. I think the choice to stick with the original Japanese worked quite well. My Japanese isn't good enough to know any of the words, but I enjoyed the explanations and nuances. 

View all my reviews