GrammarBlog

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It isn’t causing me to itch uncontrollably or anything like that; it’s just generally leaving my nut more done in than a pistachio that has been cracked open by a battering ram, rolled over by a tank, and then fallen underneath the backside of that fat lass from ‘Birds of a Feather’. Who keeps shuffling. And she’s sat on concrete.

When you go online to sign up for a new mobile - would you actually go in a shop called ‘Phones 4U’ rather than buy online? If so, step away from the blog - a number of handset credentials (I’m going to sell them that phrase) are listed.

For instance there might be ‘standby: 14.5 days’, ‘talk: 9.0 hours’ or ‘flash with Schneider-Kreuznach lens’, which I had previously thought to be a tactical instruction given to Luftwaffe pilots in 1942. What it doesn’t mention, though, is anything about predictive text.

Predictive text on most phones now runs along the T9 system. T9, the much less interesting older brother (or ‘the Paul Ross’, if you like) of K9 the dog is basically easy to use.

However, the ‘words’ the newest version predicts have left me quite incensed, incandescent even with enough rage to contemplate turning to the dark side of single-key entering.

For instance, when I wanted to enter the word ‘or’, the first option was for the ‘word’ ‘ms’. ‘MS?’ thought I. ‘Manuscript?’ ‘Marks and Spencer?’ ‘Microsoft?’

No, that little ‘ms’ was the shrieking bastard-child version of what, if I didn’t take affirmative action, would mutate quite hideously into ‘msg’. ‘MSG’, which apparently now, in this context, means ‘message’. I scrolled down, found ‘or’ and pressed ‘enter’.

Afterwards, I felt a bit like Superman must when he is flying out of a burning building, Lois in his arms and a further explosion going off as he climbs into the sky.

Then, when I tried to type ‘just’, the first option, gallingly, hatefully, was ‘l8r’. Don’t these people know who I am?

Connected to this, the dictionary that T9 runs from is basically inept. In fact, completely inept. It is a demonstration of advanced ineptitude. In every text message I write, I have to spell and store at least one new word.

In my quieter moments, I now enter words that I think I might use in the future. Last month, I keyed-in some swearwords, which can be dangerous; my 'Cunt Betty' still hasn’t spoken to me in a week.

What I want is a predictive text system built for people who don’t partake in the systematic rape of the language - a predictive text system for grammar myrmidons everywhere.

I want it to have the words ‘Ebbsfleet’, ‘turpitude’ and ‘mulct’.

I want it to know when I wish to use an apostrophe instead of making me navigate my cursor over a cabal of chunk-faced, sick-yellow and frankly creepy looking ‘smilies’ to make a selection.

In short, I want it to make my heart sing as only an invention like that really could; over to you Dr Emmett ‘Doc’ Brown - you’ve done nothing since you built that time machine, you lazy, white-haired crazy-piece with a dog.

Labels: Back to the Future, birds of a feather, k9, kaiser chiefs, luftwaffe, microsoft, mobile phone, paul ross, phones 4u, predictive text, profanity, Superman

img src="http://www.grammarblog.co.uk/z_images/banners/v2launch.gif" border="0" title="We've moved to www.grammarblog.co.uk" alt="We've moved to www.grammarblog.co.uk" /> Steven Pinker has given a great interview to Guardian Unlimited in which he talks about, among other things, language as a measure of human development and swearing syntaxes (again).

As interesting as the interview is, whenever I hear intellectual discussion about language I can't help but think of that old Fry and Laurie sketch. To listen to the whole interview click here (or download the target file and listen to it later).

Labels: guardian, language, profanity, Stephen Fry, Steven Pinker

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I was recently surprised to discover that GrammarBlog lost 38 subscribers following the publishing of 'Thanx' (which contains a naughty word meaning poo). I wouldn't have thought our readers are quite so sensitive.

We have previously decided that GrammarBlog should follow the Guardian style guide when it comes to swear words; however I censored the title of this post so those easily offended would be given a fighting chance of avoiding personal turmoil. In order to avoid an en masse unsubscription please heed the below warning.

If you are of a linguistically sensitive disposition, particularly with regards to expletives, please read no further. If you do read on please be aware that this post contains some pretty fucking strong language.

Right, now those prissy twats have fucked off, the rest of us can address the important business at hand. Stephen Pinker has written a great article for the The New Republic in which the Harvard psychology professor sorts through some of the paradoxes of profanity. In particular, Pinker looks at the futility and stupidity of the Clean Airways Act which caused a bit of a kerfuffle a few years back by trying to define the profanity of seven well known swear words in all possible contexts. Apart from the morality issue, Pinker points out that the sheer unorthodoxy of swearing grammar makes the contexts difficult to pin down, especially if the persons proposing the bill are linguistic morons.

[Regarding] the syntactic classification of curse words. Ose’s grammatically illiterate bill not only misspelled cocksucker, motherfucker, and asshole, and misidentified them as “phrases,” it didn’t even close the loophole that it had targeted. The Clean Airwaves Act assumed that fucking is a participial adjective. But this is not correct. With a true adjective like lazy, you can alternate between 'Drown the lazy cat' and 'Drown the cat which is lazy'. But 'Drown the fucking cat' is certainly not interchangeable with 'Drown the cat which is fucking'.

If the fucking in 'fucking brilliant' is to be assigned a traditional part of speech, it would be adverb, because it modifies an adjective and only adverbs can do that, as in truly bad, very nice, and really big. Yet “adverb” is the one grammatical category that Ose forgot to include in his list! As it happens, most expletives aren’t genuine adverbs, either. One study notes that, while you can say 'That’s too fucking bad', you can’t say 'That’s too very bad'. Also, as linguist Geoffrey Nunberg pointed out, while you can imagine the dialogue 'How brilliant was it? Very', you would never hear the dialogue 'How brilliant was it? Fucking'.

It's interesting to note that the catalyst for the Clean Airways Act was a man who, for me at least, creates an uncontrollable urge to use the worst expletives known to mankind. I'm referring of course to that most irrepressible of utter cunts: Bono.


Five minutes and forty-four seconds into this clip, Bono says the dreaded F-word live on NBC. The network was not charged with profanity due to a subsequent FCC ruling stating that their definition of indecent only covers "material that describes or depicts sexual or excretory organs or activities". NBC were let off the hook as Bono used the word merely as "an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation." Conservative America was appalled and an idiotic politician named Doug Ose tried to secure a few reactionary votes by attempting to pass a ridiculous bill. Is there a lesson to be learned here? Fucked if I know.

**UPDATE** It appears the New Republic has removed Pinker's article. Luckily, you can still read it here.

Labels: Bono, grammar, guardian, profanity, Steven Pinker, video