Lexicographers and Twitter

Oxford University Press lexicographers have been looking at the language of Twitter:

OUP lexicographers have been monitoring more than 1.5 million random tweets since January 2009 and have noticed any number of interesting facts about the impact of Twitter on language usage. For example the 500 words most frequently used words on Twitter are significantly different from the top 500 words in general English text. At the very top, there are many of the usual suspects: "the", "to", "as", "and", "in" . . . though "I" is right up at number 2, whereas for general text it is only at number 10. No doubt this reflects on the intrinsically solipsistic nature of Twitter. The most common word is "the," which is the same in general English.

The average number of words in a Twitter sentence: 10.69.

The average number of words in a sentence "in general usage": 22.09.

Read more:

RT this: OUP Dictionary Team monitors Twitterer's tweets (OUPblog)

[RT: "ReTweet, in the social networking and micro-blogging service Twitter, to re-post something posted by another user, usually preceeded with "RT" and "@username" to give credit to original poster."]

A related post
Geoffrey Nunberg on Twitter

Geoffrey Nunberg on Twitter

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg comments on Twitter:

The English sentence has done very well for itself over the last thousand years or so, and it's not about to autodestruct because kids have suddenly started to text message each other rather than passing notes under their desk. In fact, what we're taught in school — the gospel according to Strunk and White — is to be concise. What imposes more constraints of conciseness than Twitter? So in that sense, Twitter could be the greatest thing that's happened to English since print.

Interview: Geoffrey Nunberg (Mother Jones)

My 140-character reduction:

Kids texting rather than note-passing won't ruin the sentence. Strunk & White = concision = Twitter! Greatest thing for English since print?

Boy chewing gum

He looks like a happy kid. He has gum. Gum is fun. And it's Friday. And there's no homework. And it's June. Pretty soon school'll be over. Yep, pretty soon.

[Young boy chewing bubble gum. Photograph by Bob Landry, 1946. From the Life photo archive.]

Proust's five-franc piece

A story from Marcel Proust, as recounted by his housekeeper Céleste Albaret. Marcel is off with his brother Robert to visit a relative, Mme. Nathan:

"Mother dressed us up all neat and clean, and before we went, said, 'Here's a five-franc piece each. When you get there and Marie, the maid, opens the door, make sure you first of all wish her a Happy New Year, and then give her the five-franc pieces.' On the way there, in place de la Madeleine, I saw a shoeblack swinging his arms and stamping his feet to keep warm. I went up to him, asked him to shine my shoes, though they were already as bright as new pennies, and gave him my five francs. When I got home, Mother said, 'I hope you were good and didn't forget to give Marie the five francs?' I told her about the shoeblack. 'What did you do that for?' she cried in despair. So I explained: 'I saw him waiting in the cold for a customer, so I let him shine my shoes.' And she kissed me."

Céleste Albaret, Monsieur Proust, translated by Barbara Bray (New York: New York Review Books, 2003), 138.

Related reading
All Proust posts (Pinboard)

Koko Taylor (1928-2009)

Blues singer Koko Taylor has died at the age of eighty.

I was fortunate to hear her in the early 1980s at Jonathan Swift's in Cambridge, MA. She was, as one of her album titles declares, a force of nature.

Here are two versions of her signature song, Willie Dixon's "Wang Dang Doodle." Yes, "All night long."

Ducks amuck

“'In the duck world, San Francisco is almost impossible.'”

Strange sentence. It's from an article on the use of kazoo-like instruments to promote amphibious-vehicle tours in San Francisco:

A Quacking Kazoo Sets Off a Squabble (New York Times)

I'd be remiss if I didn't include a link to the 1953 Merrie Melodies cartoon that gave me my title:

Duck Amuck (YouTube)

I should add that this cartoon is a major influence on John Ashbery's poem "Daffy Duck in Hollywood" (Houseboat Days, 1977).

What's that? I shouldn't?

More on Proust's coffee

Corcellet coffee, that is:

It being an acknowledged fact that French coffee is decidedly superior to that made in England, and as the roasting of the berry is of great importance to the flavour of the preparation, it will be useful and interesting to know how they manage these things in France. In Paris, there are two houses justly celebrated for the flavour of their coffee — La Maison Corcellet and La Maison Royer de Chartres; and to obtain this flavour, before roasting they add to every 3 Ibs. of coffee a piece of butter the size of a nut, and a dessertspoonful of powdered sugar; it is then roasted in the usual manner. The addition of the butter and sugar develops the flavour and aroma of the berry; but it must be borne in mind that the quality of the butter must be of the very best description.

Isabella Beeton, The Book of Household Management; Comprising Information for The Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper And Under House-Maids, Lady's-Maid, Maid-of-All-Work, Laundry-Maid, Nurse and Nursemaid, Monthly, Wet And Sick Nurses, Etc. Etc. Also, Sanitary, Medical, & Legal Memoranda; with a History of the Origin, Properties, and Uses of All Things Connected with Home Life and Comfort. (London: S.O. Beeton, 1861), 876.

Butter-roasted — who knew? (Not me.)

Vietnamese coffee, it seems, is still butter-roasted — the French colonial influence. Reader, if you can recount a close encounter with butter-roasted coffee, please share.

Given recent posts on Orange Crate Art, I should note that Isabella Beeton, "Mrs. Beeton," was, it seems, a plagiarist.

Related posts
Proust's coffee
All Proust posts (Pinboard)

Donkey Kong

Steve Wiebe is after a world-record score in Donkey Kong, live, now, online.

The wonderful documentary film The King of Kong chronicles the rivalry between Wiebe and Donkey Kong arch-nemesis Billy Mitchell.

Steve Wiebe plays Donkey Kong (via kottke.org)

[Update: He missed.]

Related post
Movie recommendation: The King of Kong

What plagiarism looks like

[Image from What Plagiarism Looks Like.]

Some enterprising readers (faculty? student-journalists?) have gone through the dissertations of Carl Boening and William Meehan, highlighting every passage in Meehan's that can be found, word for word, in Boening's. Neither the University of Alabama (which granted Boening and Meehan their doctorates) nor Jacksonville State University, where Meehan is president, has chosen to take up the obvious questions about plagiarism that Meehan's dissertation presents. As another recent story suggests, plagiarism seems to be governed by a sliding scale, with consequences lessening as the wrongdoer's status rises.

With Meehan's dissertation, things are even worse than the highlighting would suggest: what's yellow is what's word for word. There are further instances of plagiarism in Meehan's work that involve less than word-for-word correspondence.

You can find both dissertations and an index, syncing them page by page, at What Plagiarism Looks Like. That site is the source of the image above.

[The documents are also now at Scribd: Boening dissertation, Meehan dissertation, index.]

[December 5, 2009. A new development: Court stops plagiarism claim against JSU president.]

Related posts
Boening, Meehan, plagiarism
Plagiarism in the academy

Proust's coffee

Marcel Proust's housekeeper Céleste Albaret recounts preparing the boss's coffee:

It was a ritual. First, only Corcellet coffee could be used, and it had to be bought at a shop in rue de Lévis in the seventeenth arrondissement where it was roasted, to make sure it was fresh and had lost none of its aroma. The filter, too, had to be Corcellet. Even the little tray was from Corcellet.

Céleste Albaret, Monsieur Proust, translated by Barbara Bray (New York: New York Review Books, 2003), 22.

The Corcellet family opened une épicerie fine, a fine-foods store, a delicatessen, in Paris in 1787. As late as 1983, there was a Corcellet (Paul) roasting coffee at his Parisian store. Céline de Pierredon-Corcellet, Paul's daughter, now runs SOPROVAL (Société Provençale d'Alimentation de Luxe) in Provence, producing mustards, oils, spices, and vinegars. No coffee alas.

A trip to Google Book Search suggests that Proust was hardly unusual in his devotion to Corcellet coffee:

From Galignani's New Paris Guide, for 1852: Compiled from the Best Authorities, Revised and Verified by Personal Inspection, and Arranged on an Entirely New Plan (Paris: A. and W. Galignani, 1852), 594.

*

June 2: Now there's more on Proust's coffee.

Related reading
Paul Corcollet (1910–1993) (The Independent)
SOPROVAL (company history)
Proust's letters to Céleste Albaret at auction (with coffee stains)
All Proust posts (via Pinboard)