The Canadian English Dictionary will be the first new general Canadian dictionary of English in two decades. It is being developed by a not-for-profit consortium including Editors Canada, the UBC Canadian English Lab, and the Strathy Language Unit at Queen’s University.
Did you know... Cruciverbalist is the official term for a crossword puzzle writer or creator. Or an enthusiast, but mainly people who create crossword puzzles.
Canadians don't have their own language. But we do have our own way of speaking, our own Canadianisms. (As if that were a word).
I was peeling carrots and I asked my nephew to get me a kettle to put them into. He said it was a pot. I didn't really care what he wanted to call it. Just get it so I can make dinner. I was visiting at his house, his Mother's house. But he went on about it, correcting me.
In fact, I still don't know which is perfectly correct and I don't very much care. I will still, likely, say pot or kettle and mean the same thing. The word is trivial, the meaning was pretty clear.
But he was hung up on the nuance of pot versus kettle. He was not helping me peel carrots, potatoes or get dinner cooking. Which mattered more? I think he would have figured out the lack of importance in the nuance if he had no dinner.
But, a lot of people seem to get hung up on trivial things, like nuances these days.
I do think the word matters and getting it correct matters, but it depends on the circumstances. There are times when communication needs to be clear, when communication is very important and there are times when you just want something to boil the carrots in.
From SuiteU. Saved before it disappears. More pages of links were included back to the course writer's topic on Suite101 but all of those links were 404 so I have not tried to include them.
Linguistics & Semantics
By Antonella Sartor
Introduction
Have you never asked yourself what is the real meaning of 'language'? (linguistics) Why the words change? (the semantic change) Why one word is pronounced in this way? (phonetic/phonology) What differentiate the languages of world, for example, English from Italian or English from French etc? (phonological rules) Which rules are necessary for word formation or sentence formation? (morphology and syntax) What rules govern people's behaviour? (pragmatics and speech acts) How can we analyse a poem, a critical essay, a piece of narrative passage?(textual analysis) Which rhetorical figures are the most important? (metaphor, metonymy, connotation, denotation, simile etc) …more