{"id":8715,"date":"2013-11-15T11:32:40","date_gmt":"2013-11-15T19:32:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=8715"},"modified":"2013-11-15T11:32:40","modified_gmt":"2013-11-15T19:32:40","slug":"reading-writing-and-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=8715","title":{"rendered":"Reading, Writing, and Language"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-4974\" alt=\"userpic=fountain-pen\" src=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/userpicfountain-pen.jpg\" width=\"70\" height=\"63\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"5\" \/>Intense focus on a current project at work, combined with a migraine-heavy week (possibly the subject of a future post), has led to fewer posts than usual. But fret not. Today&#8217;s lunchtime post brings together a number of articles on reading, writing, and language that caught my eye:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>How Do You Say&#8230;<\/strong> Different pronunciations. Immortalized in the song &#8220;You say Tom-ay-toe, I say Tom-ah-toe&#8221;, they are everywhere. Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/mentalfloss.com\/article\/53661\/car-mel-or-car-mel-3-reasons-syllabically-ambiguous-words\">an interesting Mental Floss article on the reasons behind three of them, including car-a-mel vs. car-mel<\/a>. Alas, they don&#8217;t touch on my favorite: How do you say &#8220;finger&#8221; vs. how you say &#8220;singer&#8221;? Do you pronounce the hard &#8220;g&#8221;, or the gerund (&#8220;\u014b&#8221;).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Where Words are Used<\/strong>. Here&#8217;s an interesting use for maps: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/news\/datablog\/interactive\/2013\/nov\/14\/pain-in-the-ananas-etymology-maps\">etymology maps, looking at where different words for the same thing are used<\/a>. They illustrate some interesting divides.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Penmanship or Typography.<\/strong> Here&#8217;s an interesting question posed by the LA Times: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/nation\/shareitnow\/la-sh-cursive-handwriting-should-it-still-be-taught-in-school-20131115,0,2757075.story#axzz2kk84jofk\">Should we still teach penmanship and cursive writing<\/a>? There are arguments for both sides, including the ability to read old handwritten documents. Then again, one could just view cursive as a different font, for there is still a one-to-one correspondence to letters (unlike, for example, <a href=\"http:\/\/gregg.angelfishy.net\/\">Gregg Shorthand<\/a>).<\/li>\n<li><strong>What Did You Write?<\/strong> Finally, here&#8217;s a place where reading cursive comes in useful: <a href=\"http:\/\/mentalfloss.com\/article\/53599\/how-do-postal-workers-decipher-really-sloppy-handwriting\">Deciphering addresses on letters<\/a>. Machines have gotten better and better at the job, but humans are still required in the loop.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Intense focus on a current project at work, combined with a migraine-heavy week (possibly the subject of a future post), has led to fewer posts than usual. But fret not. Today&#8217;s lunchtime post brings together a number of articles on reading, writing, and language that caught my eye: How Do You Say&#8230; Different pronunciations. Immortalized <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=8715\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[289,122],"class_list":["post-8715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-chum","tag-typography","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8715"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8716,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8715\/revisions\/8716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}