‘Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours’

2011-11-21T15:41:11-05:00 ‘Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours’ What’s new with Joe Clark’s book about Canadian English spelling tag:en-ca.org,2011:T2011.linguafranca Joe Clark 2011-11-21T15:41:11-05:00 2011-11-21T15:41:11-05:00 tag:updates,2010:linguafrancaappearance Appearance on ABC Radio National’s <cite>Lingua Franca</cite> Last week, ABC Radio National’s linguistics program <cite>Lingua Franca</cite> interviewed me about Canadian English and <cite>Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours</cite>. <ul> <li> <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/linguafranca/stories/2011/3368756.htm" title="2011.11.19 episode">Episode page</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/2011-11-19-canadian-english/id135706998?i=106627796" title="iTunes Store: Lingua Franca">Download via iTunes</a> </li> </ul> Joe Clark 2010-05-18T14:30:00-05:00 2010-05-18T14:30:00-05:00 tag:updates,2010:copyeditcast Appearance on the Copyediting podcast Esteemed colleague Grant Barrett <a href="http://www.copyediting.com/wordpress/?p=462" title="Discussion about the style of Canadian English">interviewed me for the Copyediting podcast</a> on the numerous vagaries of Canadian spelling. (No, you do not have “a tonne” of work to do.) Joe Clark 2010-04-14T12:30:00-05:00 2010-04-14T12:30:00-05:00 tag:updates,2010:epubavailable Now you can buy an ePub version of <cite>Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours</cite> – and yes, it works on your iPad Yes, we’re joining the 21st century: <cite>Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours: How to Feel Good About Canadian English</cite> is now available as an ePub electronic book, readable on your computer, on an iPhone, and yes, on an iPad. (It won’t work on a Kindle.) You can <a href="http://en-CA.org/buy/" title="Buy ‘OOMN’">buy it now</a> (that is, buy it all over again) for $17.83. Joe Clark 2010-03-08T12:30:00-05:00 2010-03-08T12:30:00-05:00 tag:updates,2010:epubalert Old Wine in New Bottles Alert: ePub version of <cite>Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours</cite> coming In a week or so, <cite>Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours</cite> will be reissued in actual ePub format so you can read it on any E-book reader that isn’t a Kindle. (Yes, including the iPad, eventually.) You’ll have to buy it again, but it’ll be half price. Joe Clark 2009-03-23T14:10:00-05:00 2009-03-23T14:10:00-05:00 tag:updates,2009:v1.1a I changed my mind: Version 1.1 released Today I sent <abbr>V</abbr>1.1 of <cite>Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours</cite>. It was less trouble than I thought, and I needed a corrected version for deposit with Library and Archives Canada. All purchasers of <abbr>V</abbr>1.0 have received <abbr>V</abbr>1.1. There still won’t be a <abbr>V</abbr>2.o. Joe Clark 2009-03-12T16:10:00-05:00 2009-03-12T16:10:00-05:00 tag:updates,2009:pcox New podcast appearance about Canadian spelling I was interviewed several weeks ago by Patrick Cox for his enjoyable podcast on language, The World in Words. The interview is finally up: <ul> <li><a href="http://patrickcox.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/podcast-45-hillarys-russian-lesson-and-dont-mess-with-canadian-spelling/" title="Podcast 45">Blog entry</a></li> <li><a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?i=51480744&id=279833390" title="iTMS: The World in Words">At iTunes</a></li> </ul> Transcript coming up soonish. Joe Clark 2009-02-23T16:10:00-05:00 2009-02-23T16:10:00-05:00 tag:updates,2009:terminated Today, the <cite>Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours</cite> project concludes After working – off and on, it goes without saying – for a month and a half trying to incorporate corrections to Version 1.0 for publication as a Version 1.1, I give up. Why? There’s barely anything to correct, and I’m not getting paid for this. The <a href="http://en-ca.org/errata/" title="Errata">errata page</a> lists known errors in <cite>Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours</cite>. They’re minor. I can live with them, despite being a perfectionist. However, soon after releasing the book, I received a mail from a guy at Apple who claimed to be surprised at the results I got from the Macintosh built-in spellchecker. Now, to my knowledge no one from Apple ever actually bought a copy of the book at the princely sum of $17.83 Canadian, so I don’t know what he was talking about. Nonetheless, I had a friend attempt to replicate my results. Ten words differed, some of them iffy (<cite>nacer</cite> is always a misspelling of <cite>nacre</cite> everywhere, but in the replication it passed as a correct spelling). Ten words, out of 280 tokens surveyed across three dialects each, amount to nothing. Now, the whole spellchecking experiment should be redone from scratch on fresh new installs to avoid contamination from words people add to the lexicon themselves. But I have reasonable confidence my results would not fundamentally change. (I would add that Thierry Fontenelle and other nabobs from the Microsoft natural-language group also didn’t buy the book and also didn’t contact me.) So if the Apple complaint was the biggest single factual dispute in the book, and I gave it the benefit of the doubt and found no substance there, why am I bothering? Indeed, why am I? I am slowly learning, in this, my 20th year as a published writer and my 18th year online, that individual projects do not have to be tended for the rest of one’s life as though they were disabled children. Projects can be born, can flourish, then can fix themselves in amber. I have spent the better part of five years slaving away at unpaid projects, to my detriment. I need to cut that nonsense out. <cite>OOMN</cite> brought in money – but it’s not bringing in any more money and it never will. Hence, you should hold on to your copy of <cite>Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours</cite> Version 1.0, because it is the first and last of its kind. Joe Clark 2009-02-08T13:25:00-05:00 2009-02-08T13:25:00-05:00 tag:updates,2009:agendaed-transcr Transcript of appearance on <cite>The Agenda with Steve Paikin</cite> <div> <img src="http://en-ca.org/images/TVO-Agenda-me.jpg" alt="Me with Chyrons reading BEING CANADIAN and CANADIAN SPELLING"> </div> PAIKIN: And joining us now… Joe Clark, author of <cite>Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours</cite>. Good of you to join us at TVO. How are you? ME: I’m fine, thank you. — Well, I want to talk to you about spelling, Mr. Clark. You wrote a short E-book on the subject of Canadian spelling. — Mm-hmm. — What is Canadian English spelling? — Uh, it’s an amalgam of U.S. and U.K. forms. Just like our history itself, we have a combination of the British influence and the American influence on our spelling. — Are we 50/50? 60/40? What’s the ratio? — Uh, it comes close to 50/50, actually, <ins class="ed">[in the relevant categories where variation exists]</ins> if you break it down. — We speak what could be interpreted as American English; we write a mixture of British and American, I think. How different is British spelling from American spelling? — Uh, significantly, because you find it in a lot of suffixes like <cite>-ise</cite>. The British tend to write a word a word like <cite>organize</cite> as O-R-G-A-N-I-S-E. Americans write I-zee-E. But Canadians have adopted the American spelling – but of course we call a zee a zed. So organize in Canadian is spelled I-zed-E. In British, <cite>colour</cite> is spelled with a <cite>U</cite>; in Canadian, <cite>colour</cite> is spelled with a <cite>U</cite>. So right there we have an American trend, which is the <cite>-ize</cite> spelling, and a British trend, which is an <cite>-our</cite> spelling. — Do you know how these differences came about in the first place? <div> <img src="http://en-ca.org/images/TVO-Agenda-twoshot.jpg" alt="Steve Paikin and me on set"> </div> — Well, actually, yes, of course, there is the founding myth of Canada – that we come from two peoples, British and French. I think a lot of aboriginal people in Canada would have some issue with that. But in fact in the 1780s, tens of thousands of Americans came to Canada, the so-called Loyalists. They were loyal to the British crown. The War of Independence in the United States had just ended and their side lost, essentially. They wanted to go somewhere where they felt welcome. So about 50,000 of them came to New Brunswick, in fact, mostly, in the 1780s. And they were a large influence on our language. They brought their accent with them and they brought their spelling with them. <div><img src="http://en-ca.org/images/TVO-Agenda-Chyrons.jpg" class="alignright" alt="Slide with Canadian, American, and British spellings"></div> — Hmm. Let’s just do some visual reinforcement of that which you’ve just said. — Sure. — And, Michael, we’ll bring these up right now. Here’s a few words. You’ve touched on a couple of them already. As we look across: Canadian spelling, American spelling, and British spelling. There’s <cite>colour</cite> with the <cite>U</cite> as we are supposed to do it; without the <cite>U</cite> as the Americans do it; with the <cite>U</cite> as the Brits do it. How about the next one? <cite>Organize</cite>, as you mentioned, with the zed; with the zed in America— BOTH: Or zee. PAIKIN: And with the <cite>S</cite> at the end of the word as the British do it. And let’s do one more. <cite>Travelling</cite>: We’ve got two <cite>L</cite>s, the Americans have got one <cite>L</cite>, the Brits have two <cite>L</cite>s. And the title of your book – “marvellous”— — Yes. — You do with two <cite>L</cite>s. — With two <cite>L</cite>s. — And I must confess, when I saw the title of your book, I thought: That’s crazy. How could he misspell the title of his own book? — Well, yeah, it is crazy talk for about 50% of the people who write Canadian English. Because those double consonants in words like <cite>travelling</cite> and <cite>focussed</cite> and <cite>budgetted</cite> – there is no agreement on whether to use one consonant or two. And in all the sources I surveyed, no one had agreement. In other words, we all agreed to disagree on that. — Do you think it matters whether we, in our daily usage, do Canadian or American or British or an amalgam of all of the above? — Well, Canadian is the amalgam of the British and American spellings. — Well, I mean pick and choose, as it were. — Uh, well, no, because then you’re not being consistent. Canadian spelling is a historical fact. It’s been stable for generations. The reason why we would continue to spell Canadian is because we always have spelled that way. Because the correct way to spell is the way everyone else does. And we’ve always spelled this way. — But what happens when – and I think it’s probably in the process of happening – what happens when students start spelling <cite>colour</cite> without the <cite>U</cite> on a test and they’re all doing it, so if the idea is whatever’s the most popular is right, does that student get marked off for spelling <cite>colour</cite> without the <cite>U</cite>? — Uh, presently, yeah. Uh, in a hundred years, <cite>color</cite> without the <cite>U</cite> may be the dominant Canadian spelling. But I do take issue with your premise, because I did a lot of checking of Canadian blogs, for example, and Canadian spellings are rock-solid with Canadian blog writers, just as they are with, say, professional journalists and other so-called edited copy. — But you do believe in a living, breathing language that can, if it wants, to over time change the way it spells words? — It must. Spellings always do change. — OK. How about spellchecks? I think one of the reasons I think we here at TVO probably, when we are writing our scripts and so on, spell the American way is that our spellcheck is American. — True. — Is there a Canadian spellchecker? I haven’t found one, I don’t think. — Uh, some software programs do have Canadian settings for spelling. Microsoft Word for Windows can be instructed to start spelling Canadian. The problem with spellcheckers on the whole, including that one I just mentioned, is they are more – they’re too permissive. If a word is spelled correctly anywhere in the world, they’ll just let it go through. So you may spell <cite>colour</cite> with a <cite>U</cite>, and that will just pass right through, but you may spell <cite>organize</cite> with an <cite>S</cite>, and because the British spell <cite>organize</cite> with an <cite>S</cite> it is deemed correct by your spellchecker. So the problem with the computer spellchecker is excess laxity; they’re too permissive. That is actually the thing that might cause more change in Canadian spelling traditions than any other factor. If people keep using computers to write with for the next hundred years, as they surely will— — Mm-hmm. — That may cause Canadian spelling to change more than any other factor. — I don’t want to be a pedant about this, but I can’t spell <cite>behaviour</cite> with a <cite>U</cite> without it putting that red line underneath. Or <cite>endeavour</cite> with a <cite>U</cite> without getting that red line underneath. — Right. — And that bugs me. When I look at that, it bothers me. — It should, but it’s not your fault. It’s the fault of the user interface of the program. The program should be able to tell you’re in Canada and should automatically set you up to use Canadian spelling. It’s just that it doesn’t do that and it defaults to American. — I know you touch on Internet, but let’s do a little more on this. Has the Internet affected the way Canadians spell? — Not according to my research. Canadian spelling is rock-solid even in things like 140-character Twitter postings. People still spell Canadian there. — Hmm! Do you think Canadian spelling is at risk? — Uh, the largest single threat is Americanized or Anglicized spellcheckers, which are too difficult to alter the settings of, right? You don’t even know how to turn them into Canadian even if you wanted to. That would seem to be the biggest “threat.” I think the spoken English that you and I are using right now will remain rock-solid for centuries. Canadian spelling is going to change slowly, as all spelling has, right? I think that in a hundred and fifty years, there will be simple things, like the word <cite>through</cite> is just gonna be <cite>thru</cite>, and Scarborough really won’t have a <cite>-ugh</cite> on the end by, let’s say, the 2300s. — How about <cite>night</cite>? Will it ever be <cite>nite</cite>? — It quite possibly might. That might be an acceptable alternate spelling. We do have alternate spellings for some words in English. Canadian English is not “under threat.” It is – one of the surprising things to people is that Canadian English exists in the first place. It’s been pretty solid for generations and will continue to be solid – with some erosion on the corners, just the way all English dialects have. — So the notion of it being at risk is really not correct in the first place? — It’s a misnomer. I think people should not worry about Canadian English being at risk. They should remind themselves that it exists. It is a thing that Canadians are using already. It is a truth of the world. So they should revel in that. It gives us another way of being distinct from the Americans and the British, and we love those, right? — We should revel in that. — I think so. — And if you want to say revelling, how would you spell it? — Two <cite>L</cite>s. <ins class="ed">[Paikin laughs]</ins> That’s a personal choice. Out there in the viewing audience, if you mark it with one <cite>L</cite>, I won’t write you a letter telling you you’re wrong. — Now if you want us to continue to spell <cite>colour</cite> C-O-L-O-U-R and not spell <cite>through</cite> T-H-R-U, how should we go about preserving that? — Through usage. Through usage. Uh, as I mentioned before, the correct way to spell is the way everyone else spells. So if you want other people to spell <cite>colour</cite> with a <cite>U</cite>, you have to write it yourself. Because you become part of the usage. Correct and incorrect spellings are determined over a long period of time with a large number of usages. And with every blog post you send out, with every Twitter post you send out, with every memo you write at the office, you are contributing to correct spelling. So stick with it. — Hm. We know that there are other jurisdictions that have significant institutions in place. You think of the French, you know, language, in France— — In France, yes, and in Quebec. — And in Quebec, which make sure that the Anglicisms or the Americanisms that have crept into our culture don’t creep into their cultures. Would you like to see something like that in place for English Canada? — Uh, no, and only from a practical standpoint, not from, say, a standpoint of principle or ideology. I’m not opposed to the idea, but it just wouldn’t work. Because it’s been proposed for centuries. George Bernard Shaw was a proponent of standardized English spelling. Um, it can’t be done. English is too varied. Even within Canada it’s too varied – just the modelling one-<cite>L</cite>/two-<cite>L</cite> distinction, for example. You could try it, but it wouldn’t work. The case of French is a bit different because they’re worried about word choices. For “electronic mail” in French, do you say <cite>E-mail</cite> or do you say the wonderful Canadian word <cite lang="fr">courriel</cite>? So their question there is: Which word do you choose? Whereas what we’re discussing now is: Which spelling do you choose for a word you already agree on? That is somewhat different and you couldn’t try to legislate that even if you wanted to. — Now, normally what happens outside this studio in that green room is off the record. But I’m going to break that rule for this next question. — How antijournalistic. — It’s very antijournalistic, but we had a moment back there that was very instructive to this discussion. — OK. — Our makeup artist, Diane Rowe – she’s British. She’s lived here for I think 30 years now or something like that? How should she be spelling? — Uh, either British or Canadian. Since she grew up using the British system and still speaks in British accent— — She has a very thick British accent. Lovely. — She has every right to continue spelling British, just as Americans who live in Canada have every right to continue spelling American. But since there are really only three sets of spellings in the English language – which are British, American, and ours, right? – if you’re from another country that is English-speaking, like South Africa or India, you’re really using British spelling. If you were going to hew to anything, you would probably hew to British spelling. But since that isn’t actually your <ins class="ed">[country’s native or original]</ins> spelling, if you come from one of those other countries to Canada you have to convert. But if you’re British or American, you have what could be described as a pure or natural kind of spelling. You could stick with that if you wanted to. — Yeah, but she lives here now, and she has for a long time. And she’s a Canadian citizen. Shouldn’t she have to spell <cite>colo</cite> – like, all these words the way we spell them? — Ah, but it’s like asking her to change her spoken dialect. You learn those things as a child, right, and— — Oh, no, no, no. It’s – not at all. I’m not asking her to sound like me. I’m not asking her anything, frankly. But I’m saying it’s different. — She could— — You could argue it’s different from how you sound. — Indeed, and she could <cite>choose</cite> to use Canadian spelling, which would be actually a very minor accommodation for her; she’d have to start using a few more zeds, right? <ins class="ed">[Pakin chuckles]</ins> But I would see no requirement to do that. — OK. One last question. You know, there are a lot of things under the sun in this world to care about. And spelling is one of those things that fewer and fewer people, I think, care about. I know whenever I try to talk about this with my kids, they just think I’m so old-fashioned and ridiculous. Why do you care about this so much? — Well, spelling doesn’t matter in some contexts. You should see me typing an instant message. I’ll just let anything through as long as it’s remotely understandable. I have pretty good spelling but bad typing, and those things are often hard to distinguish. There are lots of cases where spelling, in fact, doesn’t matter: Your text message on your cellphone? Spelling does not really matter there. But, say, in business, or at school, spelling is still considered important by other people. So it’s sort of like the lesson from Miss Manners. Manners are there to make other people feel comfortable. It’s the same thing with spelling. Good spelling is there to make other people feel comfortable with what you’re writing. — Gotcha. I think spelling counts. — Uh... I do. — Even if you do spell <cite>marvellous</cite> with two <cite>L</cite>s. — Yes, I accept you disapprove of that, so I’ll put you in the one-<cite>L</cite> pile. — Not disapprove. I’m just – I’m dealing with it. — You’re in the one-<cite>L</cite> column. — Joe Clark, author of <cite>Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours</cite>, thanks for joining us on TVO tonight. — My pleasure. <h2 id="corrections">Corrections</h2> <ul> <li>I didn’t do any systematic data-harvesting and analysis of Twitter postings. I’m going on anecdotal observations here – but the impression I gave is that I rigorously studied Twitter postings. I didn’t.</li> <li>I doubt any spoken English dialect will “remain rock-solid for centuries,” no matter what I said to the contrary. But we won’t start sounding like South Africans or Scots.</li> </ul> Joe Clark 2009-02-02T17:25:00-05:00 2009-02-02T17:25:00-05:00 tag:updates,2009:agendaed-av Audio and video from <cite>The Agenda</cite> now available Audio and video are now posted from my <a href="http://en-ca.org/new/#T2009.01.29" title="Previous entry">appearance</a> on <cite>The Agenda with Steve Paikin</cite>: <ul> <li><a href="http://www.tvo.org/podcasts/theagenda/audio/TAWSP_Int_20090130_779424_0_0x0_40k.mp3" title="MP3: Episode of 2009.01.30" type="audio/mpeg">Download audio (MP3)</a> or <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?i=49627376&id=200802797" title="iTMS: ‘The Agenda with Steve Paikin’">load at iTunes</a></li> <li><a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?i=49623244&id=251692621" title="iTMS video: ‘The Agenda with Steve Paikin’">Load video at iTunes</a></li> </ul> Corrections, a transcript, and the Story of the Stockings coming up by this time next week. <h2><cite>OOMN</cite> drinking game</h2> Every time I utter the phrase “rock solid,” take a sip of soyaccino. Joe Clark 2009-01-29T14:25:00-05:00 2009-01-29T14:25:00-05:00 tag:updates,2009:agendaed Appearing on TV tomorrow night I’m scheduled to appear on TVOntario’s current-affairs show <cite>The Agenda with Steve Paikin</cite> tomorrow (2009.01.30). The usual airtime is 20:00, with various repeats later and overnight. The <a href="http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=779424&ts=2009-01-30%2020:00:35.0" title="Episode for 30 January 2009">episode page</a> does not list me, but that may later change. TVOntario is the Ontario educational broadcaster. <cite>The Agenda</cite> is a pretty good show, and I’ve been a fan of Steve Paikin’s for years. TVO is carried by ExpressVu and Star Choice and may be on your cable system even if you’re outside Ontario. You can watch via rabbit ears in most parts of the province. And! Every episode is available in video and audio podcasts (direct links to come). Joe Clark 2009-01-26T16:09:00-05:00 2009-01-26T16:09:00-05:00 tag:updates,2009:soxed He rocks out with his socks out <div><img src="http://en-ca.org/images/OOMN-Agenda-socks-450.jpg" alt="Me in stockinged feet posing with Steve Paikin by ‘The Agenda with Steve Paikin’ logotype" /></div>Now, whatever could it mean? UPDATE (2009.02.23): It means I thought they’d be using the other set and I showed up with winter boots. Steve lent me his own shoes! Joe Clark 2009-01-20T15:09:00-05:00 2009-02-23T16:10:10-05:00 tag:updates,2009:v2.0ixnayed There won’t be a Version 2.0 I applied for the Dictionary Society of North America’s <a href="http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dsna/urdangaward.htm" title="Urdang–DSNA">Laurence Urdang–DSNA Award</a>. I learned last night that somebody else got it. This seals the fate of <cite>Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours</cite>. Why was it ever an electronic book? Because it could be, because I could do all the work myself and keep all the money, and, importantly, because <cite>OOMN</cite> is too short to be a printed book. Should it be a P-book anyway? Possibly – but it would have to be expanded, and for that to happen I’d have to do all sorts of new research. I do not pad; I would need new data to report. I put in two years of off-and-on work to write <cite>OOMN</cite> in the first place. I don’t know how much extra work I would require for a <abbr>V</abbr>2.0, but it would surely involve serious database harvesting (e.g., of Canadian blogs and Twits) and yet another round of endless slogging through old books. I didn’t get the DSNA Award. I don’t have any other funding sources lined up or even remotely feasible. Nobody’s beating down my door to pay me an advance to convert my E-book to a P-book. Hence, after the corrected Version 1.1 comes out, which may be up to a month hence, I am going to have to stop working on <cite>Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours</cite>. I am tired of doing work I don’t get paid for. Because Katherine Barber and her staff have been shitcanned, this means no one in the country is following Canadian English spelling usage in real time. Another way Canada sucks; collect the whole set. <h3>And there won’t be a Version 1.1, either</h3> Because, as of 2009.02.23, <a href="http://en-ca.org/new/#T2009.02.23" title="See future entry">the <cite>OOMN</cite> project is terminated</a>. Joe Clark 2009-01-13T17:03:00-05:00 2009-01-13T17:03:00-05:00 tag:updates,2009:v1.1coming New version coming Working on Version 1.1 of <cite>Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours</cite>, which all current owners will receive. This is trickier than I thought. Radio segment coming up next week. Joe Clark 2008-12-18T22:03:00-05:00 2008-12-18T22:03:00-05:00 tag:updates,2008:handoff1 Handoff <ul><li>Carried out my first under-table handoff of a CD-ROM copy of the book to a paying reader.</li> <li>Version 1.1 coming in a few days, ostensibly.</li> </ul> Joe Clark 2008-11-20T09:25:00-05:00 2009-11-07T09:25:00-05:00 tag:buy,2008:thelink Listen to an interview on RCI’s ‘The Link’ On 2008.11.20, I <a href="http://rcinet.ca/rci/en/emissions/archives/archivesDetails_1952_20112008.shtml" title="‘The Link,’ November 20">appeared</a> on the Radio Canada International program <cite>The Link</cite>; my interview did not make the resulting podcast. But, I discovered a year later, you can listen to it via <a href="http://www.rcinet.ca/rci/console/index.asp?langue=EN&idEmission=1998&dateExtrait=11/20/2008" title="‘The Link’ audio">a Flash player</a> (at about the 23:30 mark). Joe Clark 2008-11-08T09:25:00-05:00 2008-11-08T09:25:00-05:00 tag:buy,2008:etoile1 Reports of our “oblivion” are somewhat exaggerated …in an <a href="http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/532174" title="Canadese: Spellchecked into oblivion?">article</a> in the <cite>Toronto Star</cite>. According to an academic from my alma mater, Canadians have a superiority complex over Americans and the Internet exposes all readers to denationalized English. If there were a rational proposal to replace Canadian English spellings with some other country’s, yes, we would feel superior to Americans and insist on British (even though we actually speak American English). But my empirical data show that, even with exposure to multiple English-language spelling traditions, even “Internet” spelling of Canadian English is indistinguishable from professionally-edited spellings or any other variety. I’m so accustomed to the pop linguistics of blogs that I had almost forgotten how easily Ph.D. linguists can miss the point. Joe Clark 2008-11-07T09:25:00-05:00 2008-11-07T09:25:00-05:00 tag:buy,2008:oeil1 Coverage on an <cite>Eye Weekly</cite> blog Ostensibly, <cite>OOMN</cite> will be covered in next week’s print issue. Joe Clark 2008-10-30T00:22:01-05:00 2008-11-01T13:25:01-05:00 tag:buy,2008:tubby1 My Toronto includes Leslieville, which includes Canadian spelling <a href="http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/archive/2008/10/29/my-toronto-joe-clark.aspx" title="My Toronto: Joe Clark">Mention in the Tubby.</a> Mostly about Leslieville, but still. <a href="http://blog.fawny.org/2008/10/30/redman/" title="Not the Hell’s">More about the photo shoot.</a> (We did it behind the Hell’s Angels!) Joe Clark 2008-10-27T17:22:01-05:00 2008-10-21T12:22:01-05:00 tag:buy,2008:photos1 Photos & press coverage A <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeclark/collections/72157608422633581/" title="OOMN at Flickr">blizzard of new photos of Canadian spelling in the wild</a>, and a blizzard of press interviews that will, one hopes, finally garner some coverage. Joe Clark 2008-10-21T12:22:02-05:00 2008-10-21T12:22:02-05:00 tag:buy,2008:torontoist1 Actual review of <cite>OOMN</cite> Book has been <a href="http://torontoist.com/2008/10/joe_clark_organizing_our_marvellous_neighbours.php" title="Joe Clark’s got a brand-new book">reviewed</a> “on the Torontoist.” Joe Clark 2008-10-12T14:59:00-05:00 2008-10-12T14:59:00-05:00 tag:buy,2008:data2errata3 Large chunk of data published Results from literary award-winners (<a href="http://en-ca.org/dataliterary-award-winners-081012.xls" title="XLS: Results from literary award-winners" type="application/ms-excel">Excel worksheet only</a>). Joe Clark 2008-10-11T14:59:00-05:00 2008-10-11T14:59:00-05:00 tag:buy,2008:data2errata2 New data, new errata Spellchecker test sentences and a couple o’ clunkers. Joe Clark 2008-10-06T17:02:00-05:00 2008-10-06T17:02:00-05:00 tag:buy,2008:data1 First <cite>OOMN</cite> data released I’m living up to my pledge to publish my source data …slowly. And I’m starting with something easy – <a rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://en-ca.org/data/spellchecker/">spellchecker test sentences</a>. Joe Clark 2008-10-04T14:44:00-05:00 2008-10-05T14:44:00-05:00 tag:buy,2008:busy1w Busy first week <ul> <li>I have an immediate goal of 100 sales and a later goal of 550. I’m at about 55 now – and you all have my thanks. I also ginned up a single-column iPhone version if anybody wants it.</li> <li>A few reviews and mentions: <a href="http://tripping.seeto.com/archives/596" title="Genuine Canadian English">Tripping</a>, <a href="http://adactio.com/journal/1515/" title="Reading Immaterial">Adactio</a> (it’s really just for Canadians, Jeremy – but I appreciate it), <a href="http://cephalogenic.blogspot.com/2008/09/scribble.html" title="Scribble">Cephalogenic</a>.</li> <li>An <a href="/errata/" title="Errata">errata page</a> is <del datetime="2008-10-05T14:44:00-05:00">going up shortly</del> <ins datetime="2008-10-05T14:44:00-05:00">now posted</ins>. There are more errors than I’d like, but then again, zero errors (the amount I’d like) are unattainable.</li> <li>Track people’s <a href="http://delicious.com/url/3eb4a75652a0ba4139a7ae1bf6e9d920;_ylt=%0DA0wNB9L2Od5IbygBhThjRh54;_ylv=3" title="Delicious bookmark">comments</a> via Delicious. Also: <a href="http://projects.metafilter.com/1732/" title="MeFi Projects listing">MeFi Projects</a>.</li> </ul> I have only barely begun to “market” the book via the mainstream media. In other words, you haven’t read about me in the paper or seen me on TV yet. Now, what the hell is Oxford University Press doing <a href="http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=be424ee5-f010-4cdf-a6a0-f91957483092" title="Canadian Oxford closing">shitcanning its entire dictionary division</a>? Who the hell is going to write these wonderfully profitable online dictionaries? Old farts in England? I don’t think so. Joe Clark 2008-09-25T15:09:00-05:00 2008-09-25T15:09:00-05:00 tag:buy,2008:onstale <cite>Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours: How to Feel Good About Canadian English</cite> finally released Finally. Buy this electronic book on Canadian English spelling for $17.83 (Canadian)