Old English Characters in Windows

Thursday, 27 January 2011

Old English uses a number of letters and punctuation marks, like the thorn þ and the eth ð, that do not exist in modern English. Typing these can be a challenge. This MS Word document has information on how to get your Windows computer to produce these characters, OELetters.doc (721 Kb). (I don’t know the Mac, but if someone sends me info on how to do this on the Mac, I’ll add it to the document.)

If you’re typing for the web, like on this site’s discussion forum, it’s probably best to limit yourself to the most commonly supported characters. The more esoteric characters will probably not be seen on other people’s systems.

If you’re a hardcore user of Old English, you’ll probably want to download the Junicode font and even this keyboard map.

[Updated the linked MS Word document, Jan 2011 — dw]

Popular Linguistics

17 January 2011

A new, monthly online magazine has been launched. Here is what editor D. S. Bigham has to say about his new venture, Popular Linguistics:

Over the last few years, I’ve been thinking a lot about the public perception of linguistics and language research. I’ve often been frustrated at the abuse and misunderstanding of basic linguistic concepts in the popular media (for example, this summer’s debacle over President Obama’s speech-style reported on “The Global Language Monitor"), or even at the lack of widespread response from linguists on public policy issues, such as the Arizona immigration law or, reaching back, the Ebonics school funding debates. Why isn’t the public better educated about linguistics? I fear that it’s because we, as linguists, haven’t done the best job of getting the word out. We haven’t yet provided the public with a single non-specialist standard for linguistics-based reporting.

Oh, there are exceptions, certainly. Blogs like Language Log and Language Hat, Ben Zimmer’s ”On Language” column for the New York Times, and occasional pieces here and there in this magazine or that newspaper. But a single trusted source, a regular, dedicated place where people can go and read about all aspects of our research, with articles written by true experts of the field… that’s what linguistics has been lacking.

I agree it is badly needed. While one can find sound discussion and information on linguistic topics on the web, there is no single source for popularly oriented linguistic info that spans the discipline.

[Hat tip: Language Hat]