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Vulnerable Words and the CDC
Rumor has it that the Trump administration has handed the Centers for Disease Control a list of seven “dirty words” that it should scrub from official documents being prepared for next year’s budget....
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Who You Gonna Call?
How old am I? This old: I never heard the term ghosting before I read “Cat Person,” the New Yorker story that went viral in early December. (Let us pause a moment here, to appreciate the latter part...
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Of Women, Men, and Glasses of Wine
I have now settled into temporary digs in Paris, from which I’ll be sending Lingua Franca missives for the next five months. I have dusted off my French and plan to delight in a language that, I...
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Following Up on ‘Off Of’
Four years ago, in this blog, Anne Curzan challenged “based off of watchers” to notice the degree to which the phrase — regarded by many prescriptivists as purely ungrammatical — continues to rise. I...
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Naughty Words
George Carlin famously named 7 words you can never say on TV — broadcast TV, that is. As the latest linguistic outrage fades from view outside the Beltway, I thought it might be useful to review how...
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Trapping and Twigging
Having thought I would be at a local rendezvous when I was out of town, a French friend here in Paris texted: “Ah! J’ai pigé quand je suis arrivée.” Piger wasn’t in my French lexicon, so I checked it...
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Mistrusting ‘Mistress’
What are we calling each other these days? By that I mean how do unmarried heterosexual couples refer to each other in situations where using the other person’s name is insufficient, given the...
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The Last Time I Saw Paris
George Whitman with his daughter, Sylvia (named for Sylvia Beach) Long ago, in a world preceding the European Union, the euro, and the tsunami of American students who go to Paris every semester for...
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Our Parent Who Art in Heaven
IF THE ONION had existed when I was a kid being brought up in the Episcopal Church, this would have been one of its headlines: “U.S. Episcopal Diocese Votes to Stop Using Masculine Pronouns for God.”...
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Gertrude Stein: the Original Texter
In Paris this semester, my students are reading, among others, Gertrude Stein. Or, as Stein would put it, In Paris this semester my students are reading among others Gertrude Stein. Stein is famous,...
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The ‘Haves’ and ‘Haven’ts’ of the Past
Recently, reading Jennifer Egan’s ambitious historical novel, Manhattan Beach, I found myself irritated by what I thought was a series of forced attempts to sound old-fashioned. The book is set in the...
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In an Old House in Paris, Thinking of ‘Madeline’
Being ill in Paris is like being ill anywhere else — you spend a lot of time in bed, half-sleeping, half-thinking of all the work you’re not doing, waiting for your lazy immune system and the...
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The ‘And/Or’ in Stormy Daniels’s Nondisclosure Agreement
I’ve been trying to cut through the hoopla over the adult film actress Stormy Daniels’s case against Donald Trump (and note I’m avoiding the moniker porn star, ignorant as I am as to the degree of...
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How the French Are Celebrating Their Language
To the eternal annoyance of many American travelers, France is a country that cares enormously about its language. The national pride is evident — and controversial — in the very existence of the...
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Hey, Where’d the ‘Tinfoil Hat’ Come From?
After reading it perhaps a hundred times in reader comments and editorials, I finally looked up the phrase tinfoil hat, which had been puzzling me for years. To give you a sense of how far out of...
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How to Teach the Rhythm of Language: Stop Counting Syllables!
From long experience with teaching undergraduates, I infer that high-school English teachers are instructing their poetry students to count syllables. I don’t know when this started; perhaps with the...
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They Speak English Here, and Here, and Here
Tulips at Keukenhof Garden, The Netherlands Last week was spring break here in France, and we took the occasion to travel — to Normandy with friends, then off to Copenhagen and its Swedish counterpart,...
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What Are Your Exceptional Euphemisms This Spring?
Every culture has its euphemisms. In English we talk about correctional facilities and putting our pets to sleep. Here in Paris, I’m struck by two expressions that seem ubiquitous, especially in this...
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An American Student in Paris
This week’s blog post is, essentially, by my students here in Paris. They are preparing to return to the States after four months in France, where they arrived with widely varying levels of ability in...
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Who Cares Whether It’s One Space or Two?
For those who are tired of hearing about language in France, let it be known that I shall soon be Stateside and once again remarking on American foibles. For now, though, a recent Washington Post...
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