Hong’s Cave

The World According to Hong

Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends by David Wilton

December 20th, 2005 · No Comments · Books · Reviews

The book seemed to have started as a website. The book was surprisingly uninteresting to read (at least in trying to keep my attention). Maybe I was expecting more colorful back stories or it could have been Mr. Wilton’s writing style, but it wasn’t a “fun” reading for me. An interesting topic [...]

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Do You Speak American? by Robert MacNeil and William Cran

May 17th, 2005 · No Comments · Books · Reviews

I have not seen the PBS documentary, but this is its companion book on the American dialect and how they are changing.
Some of it was interesting, but I thought they lacked the depth and I felt that it was really made for the PBS documentary.

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Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in Controversial Times by Geoffrey Nunberg

December 9th, 2004 · No Comments · Books · Reviews

Another collection of interesting articles by Mr. Nunberg. I really enjoyed it. However, my brain can’t seem to hold on to much of the actual contents. :p
As with his other collections, it’s pretty convenient to carry around for reading in between other stuff.

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The Way We Talk Now by Geoffrey Nunberg

October 11th, 2004 · No Comments · Books · Reviews

Geoffrey Nunberg is a linguist often featured on NPR’s “Fresh Air”. I’ve always found his comments on the language usages and origins fascinating, so when I heard about his current collection, Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in Controversial Times, I’ve decided to get both.
This book is a collection of his commentaries on the [...]

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Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss

September 15th, 2004 · No Comments · Books · Reviews

I first heard about this book on NPR (as usual). Although I thought the joke was a bit weak, I liked the concept of the book. The book was not like a reference book on punctuation although it describes several usage rules for some punctuation marks; it was more like a collection of [...]

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The Language of Flirting

May 24th, 2002 · Comments Off · Books · Random Thoughts · Reviews

I was going to say something, but I don’t think it’s that interesting. :p I guess I will just note that it’s an order of magnitude more difficult for me to flirt in English than in Korean. Since I grew up on Korean, it’s definitely my emotional language, where English was learned and mostly used [...]

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Fooling Oneself

June 23rd, 2001 · No Comments · Misc

On a personal reflection…
I don’t have much accents in my English even though I spent the most of my first 24 years in Korea. This often puts people around me and myself in a bit awkward (?) place.
For example, at a wedding reception of one of my friends recently in Seattle, I was talking to [...]

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