Dartblog

The book called “Relativ Frequency of English Speech Sounds,” abutting the Oxford English Dictionary in a dim corner of Sanborn Library, reports that “[T]he commoner sillables of English make up a strikingly large proportion of all ordinary discourse.”

To wit: “1,370 sillables occur over 10 times, and make up 93.3% of the total,” while “220 sillables occur over 100 times, and make up 68.7% of the total.”

Amazing what could be said with just 220 little sounds.

ONLY WEAKLY RELATED: Dartmouth’s Environmental Conservation Organization, one of many such organizations here, just sent out an e-mail advertising a rally today. I’ll reprint the first sentence for you:

“Be a part of the single biggest national movement to effect the progression of climate change!”

Effect the progression of climate change? Isn’t that the opposite of what environmentalists want? Or is the goal now to undo global warming, rather than to stem it, and is that called climate change?