Grammar

A Twitter friend is coming to Washington DC for July and has blegged for local dives. While there are guides aplenty for things to do in DC, there's nothing that beats a local's recommendation. So, for what it's worth, here's my list of what people coming to DC aught to take advantage of (admittedly heavy on NW).But before I give you my recommendations, pleeeze deeer gawd!!!! Stand to the right, walk to the left on the frikkin escalators!!!Okay...Dive BarsThe Raven Grill: Tiny bar. You have to squeeze your way in. I watched one of the 2004 Bush v Kerry presidential debates here on a small black and white TV mounted in the corner. It was a partisan crowd, to say the least. (Mt. Pleasant, Columbia Heights green/yellow line).Wonderland Ballroom: Isolated location. I thought I was lost the first time I tried to find it. Weird to be next to a school. But it's pretty awesome. Upstairs dance floor. (Columbia Heights green/yellow line).Galaxy Hut: Honestly, I thought this place was a hipster dance club the first 100 times I walked by it and never gave it a second glance until someone told me it was for serious beer drinkers only. This book should not be judged by its cover. (Clarendon, orange line).Stan's Restaurant: Lived near this place for a year and never gave it a second glance because it's buried in a basement. Turns out, it's a surprisingly awesome and friendly establishment. They pour their drinks like everyone is Hunter Thompson. Gawd help you if you ain't.(Thomas Circle, McPherson Square orange/blue line).Not dives but worth the timeDC9: Small, but very fun live music venue. Most things DC run through DC9. (U Street, U street metro green/yellow line).Bistro d'OC : Small French restaurant. Excellent food. The cheesy, touristy neighborhood grew up around them, don't blame them. They were their first. (Metro Center, orange, blue, red lines).Black Cat: Like DC9,Most things DC run through Blck Cat (U Street, U street metro green/yellow line).Busboys and Poets: The godfather of DC's soul. If you visit DC and fail to make your pilgrimage to Buasboys and Poets, well, that's your choice, ain't it? (U Street, U street metro green/yellow line).Twins Jazz: How could you not love a jazz club opened by Ethiopian twins. C'mon, man, This is what defines local flare. (U Street, U street metro green/yellow line).ChurchKey : Beer lover's paradise. Temperature controlled down to the degree. A host of cask conditioned beers on tap. This is where beer poseurs go to die. Serious beer drinkers only, please. (Thomas Circle, McPherson Square orange/blue line).Woolly Mammoth Theater (Archives metro, green/yellow line).Warehouse Theater (Mt Vernon Square metro, green/yellow line).E Street Cinema: What? A clean, well kept indie cinema in an easily accessible area? Who woulda thought? (Metro Center, orange, blue, red lines).West End Cinema: More indie cred than E Street, but also small, cramped theaters, kinda boring location, and they play the movies from a frikkin DVD. Meh. (Foggy Bottom, orange/blue lines).Hike Rock Creek Park. Runs North-South along the district. There are some remarkably remote-seeming locations within this park, even though you're always dead center of DC. NYC's Central park ain't got that.Arena Stage (Waterfront Metro, green line).Capital Fringe Festival: I have always believed in the value of creativity for creativity's sake. We ain't ants. (various locations).Eat at a "gourmet" DC Food truck. Food is awesome. Mobile food is awesome. Why should tacos own the food truck market? Do you hear me, Austin? General RecommendationsWalkI'm a fan of seeing a city by the soles of your shoes and DC is a particularly walkable city. With smart phone maps and recommendation apps, DC becomes a good city to discover by foot. A comfortable pair of walking shoes are your best friend.Capital Bike ShareFor longer stays, DC's bike share program is great. They have daily, weekly, monthly and annual plans.The Touristy StuffThere's nothing wrong with t

Another Turkish word is entering the international lexicon: "duran adam", or "standing man".  Andy Carvin, "The 'Standing Man' of Turkey: Act of Quiet Protest Goes Viral", the two-way (NPR) 6/18/2013: As protests against the Turkish government enter their third week, activists are taking increasingly creative measures to maintain their momentum. Over the weekend, police removed their tent city and re-opened Istanbul's Taksim Square to traffic, while maintaining a strong presence in the area. This might have seemed like the end of it for many protesters, until a lone man decided to take a stand, literally, against the government. For more than six hours Monday night, Erdem Gunduz stood motionless in Taksim Square, passively ignoring any prodding or harassment from police and people passing by. His unusual form of protest has inspired activists in Turkey and around the world to assume the same pose. He's even become his own meme, as "standing man" (duran adam, in Turkish) supporters upload their own protest photos to Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. "'Duran Adam' auf dem Taksim-Platz: Der stehende Mann wird zur Protest-Ikone" "? ???????? ?????????? ??? ???????? ?????" (? ??????? ???? ???? ??? ?? ?????????????? ?? 'duran adam' ??? ? ????????? ?????? ?? 4 ?????????) "Turski Gandi: Pogledajte najprkosnijeg demonstranta na Trgu Taksim" (Duran-adam, ili standing man: Erden Gunduz, simbol Turskog prole?a) " ???? ????? `??? ??'" (??? ??? ??? ????? 18?(????) ?? ?? ?? ??? ??? ?? ?? '?? ??'(duran adam) ???? ????.) "Turquie: l'homme debout, nouvelle figure de la contestation" (Il est l'homme debout, "duran adam", nouveau symbole d'une contestation pacifique qui ne veut pas lâcher prise.) "Duran Adam: la protesta dell’uomo in piedi contro Erdogan" Twitter #duranadam …

“I’m just no good with numbers. That’s why I became a writer. Even with a number staring me in my baby blues, I can’t even copy it. I hate numbers.” That’s probably what the person who wrote this for Yahoo! Shine was thinking (or not thinking): Filed under: Uncategorized

a store for food and sorcery equipment? A gorcery store! At least that’s what I think this headline on Yahoo! Shine refers to: Filed under: Misspellings Tagged: bad spelling, editing, funny writing errors, funny writing mistakes, incorrect spelling, misspelling, proofreading, Shine, spelling, spelling error, spelling mistake, typo, typos, Yahoo!, Yahoo! Shine

The Yahoo! omg! editor asks the intriguing question: Brave? Perhaps the writer thought that in American English, all punctuation goes before a closing quotation mark. Not so! Only a period and comma go there; a question mark or exclamation mark go there only if it applies to the words in quotes. And it this case, it doesn’t. Filed under: Punctuation, Question Marks, Quotation Marks Tagged: editing, incorrect punctuation, omg!, proofreading, Punctuation, punctuation errors, punctuation mistakes, question mark, quotation mark, Yahoo!, Yahoo! omg!

A new brewer here in Wisconsin. Wait, you can say that on any random day and be right. Let's start over. I've seen stuff recently for the Milwaukee Brewing Company, but haven't tried their stuff yet ... had ordered something else last time I had a beer before realizing that they had it. In fact, I realized the establishment was serving this beer when I looked at the coaster, shown below. (MKE is the code for the Milwaukee airport, General Mitchell International.) I'm hoping this is a series for the "MKEDictionary".

Lately we've seen a number of hair-tearing Language Log posts (including a couple of mine) about bad linguistic pseudo-hemi-demi-quasi-science getting into major science journals and the popular press.  But sometimes the news media get it right, and here's one example: thanks to effective publicizing by the Linguistic Society of America, a new article by Carmel O'Shannessy, who has been observing the emergence of a new mixed language in Australia for many years, is being widely reported nationally and internationally, for instance here and here. Back in 2004 I gave a talk on `The birth of bilingual mixed languages' at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  A prominent linguist in the audience protested during the comment period that I had no actual evidence that such languages actually existed and were learnable, since my evidence came from historical situations.   (I still think my evidence was solid, but I'm pretty sure I didn't convince the doubter. )   Carmel's research (which wasn't yet published in 2004) would have been an effective response to that objection: she shows that young children have been participating in the creation of Light Warlpiri, and she shows conclusively that the language is being learned by younger children.

If this were baseball, batting .333 would be considered great. But this is Yahoo! Movies, and correctly spelling one name out of three is not great. Or even good: Filed under: Misspellings Tagged: bad spelling, editing, Henry Cavill, incorrect spelling, misspelled celebrities, misspelling, proofreading, Russell Crowe, spelling error, spelling mistake, typo, typos, Yahoo!, Yahoo! Movies

I wrote to Boris Dralyuk asking him about the Russian phrase пятый угол [pyaty ugol] 'fifth corner,' which Brodsky uses in a couple of poems in a way that was opaque to me (in "Кентавры" "спрятавшись в пятый угол" 'hidden in the fifth corner,' and in "Элегия" "заштриховывать пятый угол" 'to shade the fifth corner'); his explanation was so surprising and enlightening I thought I'd share it here, since other lovers of Russian will probably have as much difficulty finding references to it in books or online as I did:The "fifth corner" is a cruel children's game, in which bullies push a younger student around the four corners of a classroom until he "finds the fifth corner"; police took this up, and would offer a suspect the chance to escape the interrogation if he were to "find the fifth corner." In the broader metaphorical sense, it signifies the desperate, foolhardy attempt to escape one's fate ? a pipe dream.The things they don't tell you in Russian class! Incidentally, Boris was in the UK for the Translators? Coven in Oxford and various Poetry Week events in London; I wish I could have been there, and I look forward to Lizok's report.

REGARDLESS/IRREGARDLESS/IRRESPECTIVE Define the words “regardless”, irregardless” and “irrespective”. What part of speech is each word? Which is not an acceptable word and why? Create sentences using each word correctly and in a manner that shows the meanings of the words. TODAY’S WORD The word for today is “assignation”. What part of speech is “assignation”? Define “assignation” and use it in a sentence.