free reign
i have a new favorite website: the "eggcorn" database.
recently at work i've been amusing myself by emailing a friend of mine - a fellow linguistics nerd - every time i come across a particularly outrageous misuse of english in a court decision or other important document. "free reign", "wreck havoc", "basic tenants of democracy" - that kind of thing.
so finally he got sick of my whining and alerted me to the fact that there is a WHOLE WEBSITE devoted to collecting and, even better, analyzing examples of this kind of error.
reading the analysis of the origins of these non-standard substitutions has reminded me that i shouldn't feel so smug when i come across such "mistakes". after all, every good linguist knows that today's errors are tomorrow's standard english.
i am in nerd heaven.
okay, back to watching america's next top model.
recently at work i've been amusing myself by emailing a friend of mine - a fellow linguistics nerd - every time i come across a particularly outrageous misuse of english in a court decision or other important document. "free reign", "wreck havoc", "basic tenants of democracy" - that kind of thing.
so finally he got sick of my whining and alerted me to the fact that there is a WHOLE WEBSITE devoted to collecting and, even better, analyzing examples of this kind of error.
reading the analysis of the origins of these non-standard substitutions has reminded me that i shouldn't feel so smug when i come across such "mistakes". after all, every good linguist knows that today's errors are tomorrow's standard english.
i am in nerd heaven.
okay, back to watching america's next top model.
posted by ilona @ 4:44 PM
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