Archive for the ‘Linguistics in the comics’ Category

Bizarro groaner

January 7, 2016

Today’s Bizarro, with a major pun:

(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)

Groan: analogyan allergy. Fairly distant pun for rhotic (r-ful) speakers like me, potentially perfect pun for non-rhotic (r-less) speakers in connected speech (where the indefinite article an is part of a phonological word with allergy, so that the [n] moves from a coda to an onset; then things depend on the vowels in the –ogy part of analogy and the –ergy part of allergy).

The linguists’ revenge

January 7, 2016

A cartoon from the Speculative Grammarian site, passed along on Facebook by John Lawler:

Linguists, wearied of being asked how many languages they speak, now get their revenge.

Bilkpoe (and fractured Stein)

January 7, 2016

The Zippy from the 5th, with writer Edgar Allan Poe (under the name Elgar Durwin Poboy) crossed with Army Sgt. Bilko from the tv show The Phil Silvers Show (in a mash-up of high culture and pop culture):

(#1)

After these burlesques of Poe, today we get burlesques of Gertrude Stein:

(#2)

No writer is safe.

(more…)

The New Year’s resolution

January 6, 2016

Two days ago I posted a Mother Goose and Grimm strip on New Year’s resolution (#1 there, with the character Ralph confusing resolution and revolution). Now comes a Eugene Chan cartoon with a musical pun on resolution:

(#1)

It resolves to a G minor triad.

(more…)

The news for penises, issue #1 of 2016

January 5, 2016

A continuing series on this blog, with at least 9 postings before this under the heading  “The news for penises” (plus a great many other penis postings not under that heading). Four items that have come to me in the past few days: an ad for gay porn with some phonological play in it;  horse penises in Kyrgyzstan; beef whistle as a slang term for the penis; and the celebrated candiru fish of the Amazon.

(more…)

Urinating superheroes

January 4, 2016

(Considerable frank talk about men’s bodies and sex between men, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)

Armed by two recent postings on urinals — January 1st ,”On urinals and the conventions of the men’s room”, and January 2nd, “The news for urinals” — I can reurn to an issue raised in another January 1st posting, “Holiday images”, with a section about a Christmas composition of superhero action figures by Indonesian photographer Edy Hardjo, who distributes photos of his entertaining compositions under the pseudonym Hrjoe. That Hrjoe posting had a quote from a Cultura Inquieta (CI) piece about Hrjoe’s work, describing his compositions and how he creates them. In the CI piece there’s a reference to one of Hrjoe’s works, with five superhero figures lined up against a wall, described in the following way:

Watch as Earth‘s mightiest heroes pee on a wall

  (#1)

At the time I doubted that this was quite the right way to think about #1, and now that I’ve written quite a bit about men pissing, I can explain why.

(more…)

For Sainte Geneviève, who saved Paris from the Huns

January 4, 2016

Two language-related cartoons yesterday, for Saint Genevieve’s Day:

(#1)

(#2)

(more…)

Two for New Year’s Day

January 1, 2016

For the day, a Zippy and a Mother Goose and Grimm:

(#1)

(#2)

(more…)

Holiday images

January 1, 2016

Two odd sets of holiday images: a superhero Xmas greeting, and BDSM images for both Xmas and New Year’s.

(more…)

Zippy’s Eve

December 31, 2015

Today’s Zippy has Griffy and Zippy together for New Year’s Eve, apparently in Coney Island in 1951, though their minds seem to be in the present day (Griffy’s looking forward to 2016, and Zippy’s annoyed with Justin Bieber, as he often is):

(#1)

In the last panel, their minds roam back to 1892. Time is fluid in Zippyland.

(more…)