Menstimulasi Sastra Sejak Janin?

Ada percobaan menstimulasi otak sejak janin, bernama the Edith Experiment (Percobaan Edith). Tahun 1952, Aaron Stern, wartawan New York Times memutuskan memberi lingkungan belajar semendukung mungkin kepada Edith, anak perempuannya. Dia ingin menstimulasi dan menantang sepenuhnya otak Edith yang masih muda. Bahkan ketika Edith masih berupa janin berusia lima bulan di rahim, Aaron telah memiankan musik klasik dan membaca buku untuk anak perempuannya (sebuah kajian menegaskan bahwa bayi mulai belajar bahasa sejak di rahim). Segera setelah Edith lahir, Aaron mulai bicara ke Edith yang masih bayi dengan kalimat orang dewasa yang lengkap. Setiap hari, Aaron juga menunjukkan kepada si jabang bayi, berbagai kartu flash yang memuat gambar, angka, dan kata. Hasilnya? Di usia satu tahun, Edith telah mampu bicara dalam kalimat lengkap. Di usia 5 tahun, dia telah selesai membaca seluruh volume Ensiklopedia Britannika. Di usia 6 tahun, Edith mampu membaca enam buku dalam sehari dan harian New York Times. Di usia 12 tahun, dia masuk universitas dan di usia 15, dia mengajar Matematika di Michigan State University.

Mungkinkan mentsimulasi sastra sejak janin?

Editor Pakistan Raih Pena Emas

Hyderabad, Kompas - Pemimpin Redaksi Friday Times dan Daily Times Pakistan Najaam Sethi meraih penghargaan Pena Emas 2009. Anugerah bagi wartawan yang memperjuangkan kemerdekaan pers itu diberikan Presiden Forum Editor Dunia Xavier Vidal-Folch dalam pembukaan Kongres Asosiasi Surat Kabar Dunia di Hyderabad, India, Selasa (1/12). Budiman Tanuredjo dan Abun Sanda

Penghargaan diberikan di depan Presiden India Pratibha Devi Singh Patil yang sekaligus membuka kongres tersebut.

Pada tahun 2008, anugerah Pena Emas diberikan kepada wartawan dari China, Li Changqing, yang juga dipenjarakan oleh Pemerintah China

Bagi Najaam, penghargaan Pena Emas 2009 sebagai simbol diteruskannya perjuangan untuk meningkatkan demokrasi dan kebebasan pers.

”Berbeda dengan perjuangan pers masa silam yaitu untuk melawan kemiskinan, kini pers dihadapkan pada penegakan kemerdekaan pers untuk menghindari campur tangan pemerintah dan menghindari cara ekstrem untuk menekan media,” kata Najaam, yang beberapa kali mendapat ancaman pembunuhan dari kelompok Taliban, yang menudingnya sebagai agenda Barat, serta ancaman dari pasukan keamanan Pakistan.

Najaam mengaku sangat sulit memperjuangkan kemerdekaan pers di Pakistan yang ancamannya dari aktor negara ataupun aktor nonnegara, tapi dari sisi lain secara bisnis harus menguntungkan.

Bagi Xavier, apa pun kesulitan di lapangan, pers dunia tak boleh berkompromi dengan penguasa dalam hal keadilan dan kebebasan. ”Solidaritas dunia diperlukan untuk menjaga kemerdekaan pers,” tambah Presiden Forum Editor Dunia tersebut.

88 wartawan tewas

Sepanjang tahun 2009, sedikitnya tercatat 88 wartawan tewas dan ratusan pekerja media ditahan. Sebagian penahanan mereka dilakukan tanpa melalui proses pengadilan yang benar.

Demikian pernyataan pers Asosiasi Surat Kabar Dunia (WAN) dan Forum Editor Dunia (WEF) dalam pertemuan mereka di Hyderabad, India, Senin malam. Kedua organisasi itu juga mengecam aksi pembunuhan keji terhadap 30 pekerja media di Filipina selatan, 23 November lalu.

Menurut catatan WAN, lebih dari 750 wartawan terbunuh di seluruh dunia dalam satu dekade terakhir ini. Pertemuan pengurus WAN dan WEF dilangsungkan sebelum acara pembukaan Kongres Asosiasi Surat Kabar Dunia.

WAN dalam laporan tahunannya juga mencatat bahwa kemerdekaan pers tetap dipandang sebagai sebuah ancaman di sejumlah negara. Di negara-negara Timur Tengah dan Afrika Utara, wartawan yang memperjuangkan kemerdekaan pers masih dijadikan target oleh pemerintah yang berkuasa.

Di Afrika sering didapati pemerintah menuntut secara hukum wartawan yang mempersoalkan korupsi di tubuh pemerintah dengan tuduhan pencemaran nama baik.

Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends

Do you believe that Ring Around the Rosie refers to the Black Death? Or that Eskimos have 50 (or 500) words for "snow"? Or that "Posh" is an acronym for "Port Out, Starboard Home"? If so, you badly need this book. In Word Myths, David Wilton debunks some of the most spectacularly wrong word histories in common usage, giving us the real stories behind many linguistic urban legends.
Readers will discover the true history behind such popular words and expressions such as "rule of thumb," "the whole nine yards," "hot dog," "raining cats and dogs," "chew the fat," "AWOL," "under the weather," "in like Flynn," "Dixie," "son of a gun," "tinker's damn," and many more. We learn that SOS was not originally an acronym for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls," but was chosen because the morse code signal (3 dots, 3 dashes, 3 dots) was easy to send and recognize. Also, "let the cat out of the bag" does not refer to the whip (the "cat") used to punish sailors aboard ship. The term "upset" (to defeat unexpectedly) does not date from the horse race when the heavily favored Man O' War was beaten by a nag named Upset (Upset was the only horse ever to defeat Man O' War, but the word predates the race by half a century). And Thomas Crapper did not invent the flush toilet, nor do the words "crap" or "crapper" derive from his name.
As Wilton quashes these word myths, he offers us the best of both worlds: not only do we learn the many wrong stories behind these words, we also learn why and how they were created--and what the real story is. "Think 'hot dog' was coined by a New York baseball vendor, or that a certain vulgarity originated as an acronym? Then you need to read this book, which shows that some of the best etymological stories are just tall tales." --Chicago Tribune (10 Best Books About Language, 2004)
"Most everything you know about word and phrase origins is likely to be wrong, and David Wilton proves it with a light touch and a wealth of fascinating case histories. Absolutely everyone with an interest in language will love this book." --J.E. Lighter, Editor, Historical Dictionary of American Slang

Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English

*Starred Review* The king is dead. Long live the king! Since 1937 the standard dictionary of English slang has been Eric Partridge's The Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. In edition after edition, Partridge enumerated slang words, provided quotations both to illustrate use and to date origins, cited other authorities, and applied usage labels. These included slang and cant, colloquialisms, solecisms, catchphrases, nicknames, and vulgarisms. The last, Partridge explained, are "words and phrases that, in no way slangy, are avoided in polite society." English has changed; society has changed; the time has come for a new Partridge.

Partridge recorded the slang of the UK as well as that of some Commonwealth countries. Conspicuously absent was the rich slang of the U.S., slang exported worldwide by GIs during World War II and broadcast globally through communications media that have, to use a current catchphrase, made the world flat. As the world changed, as English with an American accent became the lingua franca of the latter half of the twentieth century, Partridge (1894-1979) was less connected to the popular culture that breeds slang. As the culture changed--some would argue that it coarsened--the notion of vulgarisms has become anachronistic. Indeed, the U.S. vice president has been recorded publicly hurling one of the most vulgar yet most common slang words at a senator. In the flattened world, colloquialisms and slang terms have often become indistinguishable. Thus, the New Partridge.

In their backgrounds, the editors embody the spirit and informality of slang. Dalzell, a California labor lawyer who entered the bar not through the conventional path of a law degree but by "reading the law," has read widely in other areas and has become a nationally recognized expert on slang in English, especially in American English. Victor, a British actor and playwright, expresses his enthusiasm for slang's popularity, earthiness, and expressiveness in his rather peculiar endorsement for the New Partridge, saying, "If you never read a more exciting, more sexy, more rude, more filthy, more disgusting book in your life, it would have been one of the best books you ever read."

Both deeply connected through life experience with post-World War II culture, the editors have created a truly new Partridge. It encompasses the entire English-speaking world and focuses on slang and unconventional English used or created since 1945. Its catholicity includes "pidgin, Creolised English and borrowed foreign terms used by English-speakers in primarily English-language conversation." Gone are Partridge's labels separating the polite sheep from the vulgar goats. Dalzell and Victor celebrate the English language's fecundity by "embrac[ing] the language of the beats, hipsters, Teddy Boys, mods and rockers, hippies, pimps, druggoes, whores, punks, skinheads, ravers, surfers, Valley Girls, dudes, pill-popping truck drivers, hackers, rappers and more."

As in the original Partridge, entries list the term, identify its part of speech, explain its meaning, identify the country of origin, and cite sources or provide quotations showing how the term is used. The New Partridge draws on numerous specialized dictionaries, including Rick Ayers' Berkeley High Slang Dictionary (2004); Gregory Clark's Words of the Vietnam War (1990); Ralph de Sola's Crime Dictionary (1982); John A. Holm's Dictionary of Bahamian English (1982); and Ruth Todasco's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Dirty Words (1973). Other sources range widely: popular fiction, newspaper stories, Lennon and McCartney song lyrics, scholarly journal articles, magazines, transcripts of debate in Northern Ireland's parliament, and more--even Rush Limbaugh's radio program (source of the term feminazi) and Howard Stern's Miss America (1995). Despite including six double-columned pages for fuck and its many related coinages, none of these entries cite Jesse Sheidlower's The F Word (1999), surely one of the very few, if not the only, dictionary devoted to a single slang word of singular popularity.

Dalzell and Victor note that Partridge's "etymologies at times strayed from the plausible to the fanciful," but their etymologies are at times absent. They clearly define terms such as bimbo, daddy mac, lug (as a noun meaning ear), and potsy. However, they leave a reader wondering where these terms came from and how each relates to the thing or condition it represents.

Like the old, the New Partridge is very much a product of English as it appears in print. Nearly all sources cited are ink-on-paper publications. It does include "several of the more prominent examples of Internet and text messaging shorthand that have become known outside the small circle of initial users" (e.g., GTG, LOL). Occasional or casual blog readers cannot, however, turn to the New Partridge to learn meanings of the blogosphere's slang terms.

Slang opens a window on society. This dictionary abounds with terms related to the human body, bodily functions, sexual acts, antagonism toward others, crime, drinking, drug abuse, gambling, and people on the margins of mainstream society or in a minority status. These topics, especially expressed using this dictionary's vocabulary, may not be the stuff of conversation in "polite society." They are, however, the stuff of human life in every culture and all social strata. The New Partridge does a service in recording these words and explaining them. Slang also demonstrates how vibrant, flexible, and accommodating the English language is and how creative and imaginative its millions of speakers are. This dictionary informs, but it also entertains.

The old Partridge is not really dead; it remains the best record of British slang antedating 1945, just as Robert L. Chapman's Dictionary of American Slang (1998), based on Harold Wentworth and Stuart Berg Flexner's 1960 dictionary, remains important for older American slang. Now, however, the preferred source for information about English slang of the past 60 years is the New Partridge. James Rettig

Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

What Made the Crocodile Cry?: 101 Questions about the English Language.

What Made the Crocodile Cry?: 101 Questions about the English Language.

It’s a rule that anyone who writes about language must produce at least one book of short articles about quizzical and anomalous facts about language—the bathroom reader. I don’t know why, but every writer about language has to do it. This time around, the writer in question is Susie Dent and the book is What Made the Crocodile Cry?: 101 Questions about the English Language.

Dent’s entry into the genre, as those familiar with her annual Language Reports would expect, is a solid one. She poses and then answers questions about language, etymology, grammar, dialect, and so on. In addition to the title question about the phrase crocodile tears, she asks: Why are spare ribs spare? What is the longest word in English? Why do we call hooligans yobs? And so on. The answers are a few paragraphs long and well researched. A few of the topics, like the aforementioned yobs, address British English, but the book is not so parochial that Americans and English speakers from elsewhere in the world will be put off.

My only complaint about the book is how she treats that most notorious of four-letter words. In the answer to the question, is bloody still a swear word? Dent writes, “the fact that we encounter f***, for example, with such frequency seems to have shaken little of the power it has held for over 500 years.” And in the question about the Oxford comma, she notes the lyrics to the song Oxford Comma by the group Vampire Weekend, “who gives a f*** about the Oxford comma?” If you are going to write commentary about swear words, you need to be able to write those words without bowdlerization. If you can’t write fuck, don’t bring the word up.

If you like this sort of book, and judging by the way that publishers keep churning them out evidently many people do, this is a good choice. It’s eclectic, entertaining, and informative.