Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Introduction

My older brother, a blogger of several years, encouraged me to share some of my observations and comments on the history and evolution of English, and languages in general, in a blog. I took the title from my favorite quote on language by E. B. White (author of Charlotte's Web), which I found on A.Word.A.Day (wordsmith.org) several years ago. The photo for the header was taken at the dugout in my pasture south of Wilkie Saskatchewan last Sunday. It was exactly what I had in mind for the title bar and was the impetus to get this thing actually started.

I have no formal education in linguistics, just a love of history and of words, and a library of books on these subjects which I've collected over the years. I'll provide an annotated list in a near future post.

6 comments:

  1. Awesome, Stan. The header looks good, as does the background picture of old books. I need to figure out how to do that.

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  2. Yay!! You know how excited I would be about a blog like this!

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  3. I'm encouraged both by the topic you've selected for your blog, and by your initial posts, to place you on my blogroll.

    As a rule, I avoid linking to new blogs because it's hard to get a feel for how committed someone is to blogging until they've been at it a while, but good topics, and great starts at them, are sound reasons to break a rule, don't you think?

    I wish you the best of luck and the large audience that your subject and your approach to it deserve.

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  4. Thanks Paul for your encouraging comment. I am honored that you broke your own rule to add English Cowpath to your list! I hope it lives up to your expectations.

    The Euphemism post was a rather heavy topic to start off with but I wanted to give Cowpath a reputation for serious thought. The lighter posts that followed provide contrast and variety.

    Writing this blog is forcing me to go back and take another look at the books in my language library, and besides I learn best by teaching. There's no shortage of ideas so I shouldn't run out of topics any time soon. I'm working on a post on the science of etymology vs folk etymology.

    My objective is to educate while entertaining, with a dash of humor/humour thrown in for added spice.

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  5. I like your objectives. They seem realistic.

    Please don't get discouraged if you lack an audience for awhile. That usually takes time.

    My own blog has a good audience for its kind. Currently, about 400 hits/day. Even though the size of my audience is not large, I had to work for it. So you might at some point need to take a modestly active role in promoting your blog.

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