It’s the return of the Six Nations! And you know what that means! Liveblogs! As always, WYWG will be commentating mainly on the BBC’s coverage of the Welsh campaign, with occasional interjections on hairstyles and the actual rugby from friend-of-WYWG, Tom, whose comments will be [indicated via the dual mechanisms of italics and square brackets, thus.] Let’s go!
The show starts with a shot of John Inverdale cycling a woman’s bike1 across a bridge. I’m not gonna lie—it’s pretty hilarious. Sam Warburton pops back to Rhiwbina for a quick interview at his boyhood rugby club. He seems like a very nice young man. Terrible taste in music, though. Wikipedia describes Rhiwbina as “a prosperous suburb of Cardiff.” [Hence the double-barrelled surname eh?]
Whilst running down the Irish team, Keith Wood mentions a “smell of revenge in the air.” What does revenge smell like? [Like Keith Wood’s scalp?]
Sonja McLaughlan, talking to Warren Gatland: “If you could bottle what Wales had at the Rugby World Cup I guess you’d be a very wealthy man.” Aaah I’ve missed the BBC’s coverage. Great stuff.
So I was a little sad the other day when I caught the train into Olde London Towne and discovered that the old shed that wore my favourite bit of graffiti1 had been demolished.
This loss inspired me to do a quick google to see if anyone had been as affected by this mysterious piece of graffiti as I had, not really expecting to find any results.
But not only did the results turn out to be numerous2, they also contained a wonderful bit of investigative journalism by In the Aquarium, wherein the Dave in question had been interviewed as to the origin of the slogan.
I love the internet.
Previously visible on the left as you travelled from London Bridge to Waterloo East. ↩
The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that the long-running Marmite advertising campaign Love it or hate it is the best marketing concept EVER.
It’s been so successful that these days, whenever something polarising is discussed, people will describe it as being “like marmite”.
And the reason this is so bloody brilliant is that, actually, if I think about it, although a lot of people do hate Marmite, almost everyone that doesn’t hate it is indifferent about it. They have a jar knocking about somewhere, for sure1, and maybe every now and again they’ll fancy putting some on a slice of toast.
I guess that doesn’t yield such a catchy slogan, though:
Marmite: Hate it, or kinda like it every now and again I guess?
Actually I think we can tighten that up a little:
Marmite: I can take it or leave it.
Marmite lasts literally forever. My parents recently polished off a jar they bought just after they got married. ↩
Brent Simmons recently published a critique of the words used in the tab labels of Twitter’s new iPhone app. It’s a fine piece, but one part of it doesn’t ring true.
In a section titled “What we know about people and words”, Simmons writes, “English speakers respond best to non-Latinate words.” He then goes on to criticise Twitter’s use of the words connect and discover for being Latin in origin, as well as for sounding like they were selected by “a murder of marketing executives perched around a big table.”
But he is wrong that connect and discover are bad words per se1. And it’s certainly not true that the words “mean almost nothing.” When describing the action of attaching a cable to a socket, connect would be a perfectly good word. And when discussing Bjarni Herjólfsson, I’m pretty sure you’re going to want to use the word “discover”. The problem is the context. In the Twitter app, the words aren’t good choices because they don’t describe what they’re labelling. Simmons does understand this, and—previously mentioned quotes notwithstanding—he does a great job of explaining it in his article. But then he throws in the stuff about Latin words somehow inherently turning off readers, and my head starts to hurt.
So where does Simmon’s stated dislike for Latin words come from? I asked him directly, but he didn’t respond, and I couldn’t find a source for the rule. My best guess is that he is misremembering George Orwell’s famous essay, Politics and the English Language. But Orwell doesn’t actually claim that all Latin words are bad. Instead, he protests against people who deliberately use long Latin words in an attempt to sound more impressive:
“Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous, and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers.”
Indeed, later on in the essay Orwell writes: “Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one”. No, Orwell merely wanted people to use clear, straightforward language.2 I don’t think, for example, Orwell would have had any problem with the use of the word car3.
In fact, I don’t believe Simmons would have any problem with that, either. I was tempted to go through his entire article marking all the words that had a Latin origin, but it would have taken aaages and would have been belabouring the point. Instead, let’s just look at his suggestions for better words for Twitter’s UI. He himself notes that his preference for the name of the Me tab, Profile, is Latin, but he doesn’t mention that his suggestion of Mentions instead of Connectis also Latin in origin. And although Tweets and Timeline are both fairly new words, linecomes from Latin, too. So if two-and-a-bit of the four words Simmons prefers for the interface are Latin in origin, can he really believe that Latin words should generally be avoided?4
As I said, it’s a good piece5, but strike out all the parts about Latin and it would be even better.
Whether or not Orwell’s advice is something one should attempt to follow is a whole other kettle full of delicious, wriggling, fishies. Orwell was certainly a superb writer, but his status as an analyst of language is somewhat less clear. Take, for example, his stance on the passive voice. In the very same essay that Orwell writes: “Never use the passive where you can use the active,” over 20% of the verb forms that he uses are passive in construction. That’s considerably higher than the highest rate (13%) found in various periodicals in three statistical studies. See also this further analysis of Orwell’s essay, from the good people of Language Log. ↩
Not enough evidence for you? Okay, try this. Simmons writes: “When asking your significant other to pick up some milk on the way home, you don’t ask, ‘Will you attend the purveyors and retrieve a dairy beverage?’ You ask, ‘Will you stop at the store and pick up some milk?’”. But stop, store, and milkall come from Latin. Correction: reagank points out in the comments below that milk didn’t actually come into English via Latin, although it is related to a Latin word. However, as it turns out that neitherpurveyornordairycome from Latin, I think the point stands.↩
Special bonus footnote. Sean Sperte has written an interesting rebuttal to the rest of Simmons’s post, which is worth a read. ↩
The group stages are over! And Wales made it through! Splendid. And as long as Wales are still in the tournament, WYWG will keep watching the matches and then, several days later, posting commentary about them, [ably assisted by friend-of-WYWG, Tom.]
Today’s commentary team: Simon Ward, Michael Owen, and Alan Quinlan. Ref: Craig Joubert. [I feel sick to the pit of my stomach. I’ve been lucky enough to see Wales win two grand slams in the last six years, but this is I think the biggest Wales match of my life.]
Wales start the match by forcing a turnover. They kick an up-and-under, which Jamie Roberts wins from the Irish back line. Wales march up the pitch and Shane Williams scores in the corner! Priestland makes the difficult kick. That is a good start. If they can just keep scoring at that rate, Wales will win 186 - 0!
This is the fourth instalment in WYWG’s series of liveblogs of the Welsh campaign at the 2011 Rugby World Cup. WYWG is aware of the irony involved in calling something posted over a week after the match a “live” blog. As always, these words are written by WYWG, [and these words are written by WYWG-collaborator, Tom.]
The strangely muffled ITV announcer is talking as though this game is a mere formality. If I hadn’t already inadvertently seen the result that would worry me immensely.
Fiji’s national anthem is a pretty good tune! Not as good as Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, of course. The Fijian war dance—the Cibi—isn’t very long.
Your friend and mine, Wayne Barnes, is reffing. Commentating are Simon Ward and Michael Owen. [Unless, that is, you have taken matters into your own hands and are listening to Talksport (John Taylor and Brian Moore) on the laptop via headphones, whilst watching on the (muted) telly. In the dark, at 6am, in your dressing gown. Like a boss. But also watch the ITV highlights later on to catch a flavour of the commentary for these here blogging purposes, of course.]
Wales start the game by giving away a penalty. Fiji win a lineout, but then make a bad handling error in the backs, and then throw the ball back to the Welsh. They win another lineout, but again a handling error gives Wales the ball. Wales’s attack comes to nothing, though.
Wales win a lineout and Warburton streaks [not naked] down the pitch, but he loses the ball forwards in the tackle.
