Reader Éric Angelini points out that the regular continued fraction of 
- in numbers: 1, 10, 1, 10, 1, 10, …
- in English!: ONE, TEN, ONE, TEN, ONE, TEN, …
A simpler specimen: 9 9 9 9 … is NINE NINE NINE NINE …
(Thanks, Éric.)
Language
Pen and Ink
In 1980, after 30 years of drawing Beetle Bailey, comic artist Mort Walker published The Lexicon of Comicana, a lighthearted meditation on the many conventions that a reader of comic strips is expected to understand. He calls it a lexicon because he’s made up names for all of them:
- A grawlix (above) is a string of symbols representing profanity.
- Emanata are lines surrounding a character’s head to indicate surprise or shock.
- A lucaflect is the distorted image of a window in a shiny object.
- Blurgits are blurs of motion within a single panel, to denote frenzied action.
- Sphericasia are lines tracking motion: a throwatron is a line following a football, a sailatron follows a wandering paper airplane, and a dashed staggeratron follows an intoxicated person. If the motion is particularly fast, these might begin with a dust cloud, called a briffit.
- Plewds are flying droplets of sweat to indicate stress, hard work, or nerves.
- An indotherm is a series of wavy lines to indicate rising heat.
- Vites are fine vertical lines to indicate a shine on a floor. Strangely, a window or mirror bears dites, which are diagonal.
More: a light bulb represents an idea, Zs (or a saw cutting a log) represent snoring, distant birds are inverted Ws, patches denote poverty, all bones are the same shape, all new things have price tags, all injuries require bandages, all paint cans bear drippings. Who invented all these conventions, and how did we all learn to observe them?
Succinct
Linguist John Quijada designed the experimental language Ithkuil to permit “maximal communication in the most efficient manner”: Cognition processes far more information than natural languages typically express, and natural languages are full of vagueness and ambiguity; Ithkuil tries to express deep levels of cognition precisely while making the speaker’s intent clear.
The results can be striking. The 19-word English phrase “On the contrary, I think it may turn out that this rugged mountain range trails off at some point” can be expressed in two words in Ithkuil. And the passage above reads “As our vehicle leaves the ground and plunges over the edge of the cliff toward the valley floor, I ponder whether it is possible that one might allege I am guilty of an act of moral failure, having failed to maintain a proper course along the roadway.” And both of these expressions indicate the speaker’s full intent directly, where natural languages would tend to leave their full meaning to be inferred.
No one actually speaks Ithkuil — Quijada says he regards it as “an exercise in exploring how human languages could function, not how human languages do function.”
(John Quijada, A Grammar of the Ithkuil Language, 2011.)
North Talk
While we’re at it … in 1973 attorney Mark M. Orkin compiled Canajan, Eh?, a lexicon of Canadian English, which he says is distinguished by “a nimiety of neologisms, an impudicity of pronunciation, a crapulence of grammar, a prurience of syntax, and a necrosis of Mare Canisms”:
ardic: the far north, home of the Esk Moze
beinck: a building where Canajans keep their money
dodder: a female child
fishle: duly authorized
gradge: a building for storing or repairing automobiles
hiss tree: study of past events
Knighted States: the Mare Can nation
Pam Sundy: the Sunday before Easter
quorpus: fifteen minutes past the hour
sign tist: person well-versed in a branch of signs
slong: the principal Canajan salutation on parting
Tronna: the cabbidal of Untario
worsh: to cleanse oneself or one’s clothing
zmarra fack: introductory verbal aid
In his introduction, Orkin writes that “forners need exercise no caution in using this text since all terms discussed will be understandable by somebody somewhere in Canada.” He published a companion volume, French Canajan, hé?, in 1975.
Also: Australian, Baltimorese, Texan.
“The Correct Way to Speak Bristol”
In 1970 Dirk Robson offered Krek Waiter’s Peak Bristle, a pronouncing dictionary for visitors to England’s West Country:
Armchair: Question meaning “What do they cost?” As in: “Armchair yer eat napples, mister?”
Claps: Fall to pieces.
Door: Female child.
Hard tack: Cardiac failure.
Justice Swell: Expression of right and proper behaviour; as in: “No, we dingo way, we stay dome. Justice swell — trained all week.”
Rifle: Deserving.
Sill Sernt: Government employee.
Sunny’s Cool: Bible class for the young.
Yerp: The Continent.
Examples from the field:
News vendor: “Snow end twit! Miniature rout of yes-dees news, yore rupture rise into daze!”
Patron: “Sway lie fizz, knit?”
And:
Woman at bus stop: “Fortify mince we bin stand near! Chews 2B bad, butts pasta joke now.”
Her companion: “Feud Dunce eye sedden walk tome, weed bin thereby now.”
Robson put out a companion volume, Son of Bristle, the following year, “with a special section on the famous Bristle ‘L.'” I’ll see if I can find that.
09/09/2023 UPDATE: Here’s the Bristol L:
(Thanks, Rob.)
In a Word
arrident
adj. pleasant
agrised
adj. terrified
presentific
adj. causing something to be present in the mind
cacology
n. a bad choice of words
Shortly after physicist Anthony French joined the MIT faculty in 1962, he was asked to teach an introductory mechanics course to hundreds of freshmen.
“I wanted to be cautious about giving it a name,” he said. “So I called it, blandly, ‘Physics: A New Introductory Course.’
“I couldn’t imagine how I could have been so stupid. The students read that as ‘PANIC’ … it was known forever afterwards as the PANIC course.”
Spun Wool
The wordplay journal Word Ways has made a tradition of revising the familiar rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb” under various constraints. Some examples:
Alliteration: James Puder, WW February 1998
Astral Aries’ avatar, alabaster “Aly,”
Ann adopted; allies are Ann and Ann’s argali.
Ann, an able autodidact, academic angst avoids;
And arch Aly’s Argus-eyed act awes astonished anthropoids.
Pangram (uses all 26 letters): A. Ross Eckler, WW February 1989
Mary had a little lamb with fleece extremely white;
Instead of grazing, all alone, the lamb kept her in sight.
It followed her to school one day, which was against the rule;
The children thought it quite a joke to view a lamb in school.
Words formed of chemical element symbols: WW February 2008
ONe TiNY AgNUS SHe NoW OWNS (SNOW-WHITe IS HEr CoAt),
WHeN HEr LaDy IS NeArBY, AgNUS STaYS, I NoTe.
In ClAsS ONe MoRn SHe TaKEs HEr PLaCe; TeAcHEr CrIEs “SHoO! RUN!”
HeAr THoSe LaSSiEs ScReAm “HoW CuTe!” ThIS AgNUS — PURe FUN!”
Four-letter words: Dave Morice, WW November 2006
Mary kept some tiny lamb with wool hued just like snow,
Each spot that this girl, Mary, went, that lamb went also (slow).
Once lamb went past home room with girl. That bent some rule last year.
This made kids loud, glad, made them play: they eyed lamb very near.
Three-letter and shorter words: Jeff Grant, WW May 2004
Amy had an ewe so wee, it was an icy hue,
And any way our Amy led, the ewe it did go too.
It ran in to her den one day (an act not in the law).
Oh, the fun for boy and gal! The ewe so wee all saw.
Child Abuse
Nominative determinism is the theory that people gravitate toward occupations that reflect their names. In 1994 New Scientist noted that a new book, Pole Positions: The Polar Regions and the Future of the Planet, had been written by one Daniel Snowman, and that another, London Under London: A Subterranean Guide, received just two weeks later, had been written by Richard Trench. Psychologist Jen Hunt of the University of Manchester pointed out an article on incontinence in the British Journal of Urology whose authors were A.J. Splatt and D. Weedon.
If the theory is valid, then the naming of children is more momentous than we think. Harry Truman’s vice president, Alben William Barkley, above, was originally named Willie Alben Barkley, and contended that no one named Willie Alben could be elected superintendent of the county poorhouse. He changed his name to Alben William.
“In fact,” he wrote in his autobiography, “I think one of the graver shortcomings of my long career as a lawmaker was my failure to introduce a bill making it mandatory for parents to postpone the naming of their children until the youngsters are old enough to pick out a name for themselves.”
Romance Language
Samuel Pepys wrote his famous diary in shorthand, but he took a further precaution when writing about his amorous adventures — he adopted words based on Spanish, French, and Italian:
“I did come to sit avec [with] Betty Michell, and there had her main [hand], which elle [she] did give me very frankly now, and did hazer [make] whatever I voudrais avec l’ [would have with her], which did plaisir [pleasure] me grandement [greatly].”
“The garbled foreign phrases he often used for sexual incidents had something to do with concealment perhaps, much more with his pleasure in marking off sexual experiences through special words and so heightening the excitement of reliving them,” writes Claire Tomalin in Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self. “It is the clever schoolboy as lover, showing off to himself in two ways at once.”
In a Word
ambilogy
n. uncertain or doubtful meaning; ambiguity
raddled
adj. of a person: confused, fuddled
trilapse
n. a third lapse
recreant
adj. defeated
When a twelfth-century youth fell in love he did not take three paces backward, gaze into her eyes, and tell her she was too beautiful to live. He said he would step outside and see about it. And if, when he got out, he met a man and broke his head — the other man’s head, I mean — then that proved that his — the first fellow’s — girl was a pretty girl. But if the other fellow broke his head — not his own, you know, but the other fellow’s — the other fellow to the second fellow, that is, because of course the other fellow would only be the other fellow to him, not the first fellow who — well, if he broke his head, then his girl — not the other fellow’s, but the fellow who was the — Look here, if A broke B’s head, then A’s girl was a pretty girl; but if B broke A’s head, then A’s girl wasn’t a pretty girl, but B’s girl was. That was their method of conducting art criticism.
— Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, 1886