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George Bernard Shaw, Irish advocate of a phonetic English alphabet (see EDUCATION), decided to give Eire his early manuscripts. Dublin had asked for them, and "as an Irishman I regarded that request in the nature of a command." It was no Christmas present, said he, for "I don't have anything to do with Christmas. I'm a civilized human being...
...result is a phonetic "alphabet" showing the timing, the pitch, the overtones, even the delicate emphasis of each spoken sound. The streaks and blotches near the top of the strip represent the high-pitched elements; those near the bottom, the low-pitched. A trained eye can easily read this "visible speech...
What Western romanticists called an "unspoiled refuge from civilization," inhabited by indolent drinkers of reindeer's milk, was swiftly taken in hand by the first Bolshevik missionaries in 1921. The Tuvinians had no written language. The Bolsheviks gave them one based on the Russian alphabet, then introduced a proper selection of newspapers, magazines and books. The Tuvinians had lived mostly in bark tepees and felt yurts (tents); they followed their herds from pasture to pasture. The Bolsheviks collectivized the pastures, transformed the nomads into livestock farmers, built motor roads, distributed sewing machines, phonographs and radios, promoted cities like...
...Chilean wanted to know where and for how much he could get a Russian portable typewriter sent to his sister-in-law in Santiago. We got one for him through the All-Language Typewriter Company, which superimposed the Russian alphabet on a German portable...
...most riotous seen in the world since the break-up of Latin." Some of the results are rooted in the New Deal and the Depression -e.g., forgotten man, economic royalist, horse-and-buggy days, boondoggling-as are the more ephemeral third-termite and That Man, and the alphabet soup of government bureaus (NRA, TVA). But the bulk of heavy coinage has come from a slew of irresponsible, word-happy inventors, including such Menckenian heroes as Variety's late Jack Conway (who coined baloney, S.A., high-hat, pushover, payoff, bellylaugh, palooka and scram) and the inventor of slanguage itself, Walter...