then or than

I've just read yet another example of someone writing 'then' instead of 'than'. It's in an article in news.com.au about a soon-to-be published book of dog photos. The article quotes the photographer, Carli Davidson:

"I shot [photographed] over 100 dogs, but some chose not to shake, so I scheduled a lot more then I needed."

Presumably this was a spoken quote, so whoever wrote it down decided on the spelling. I wonder if Ms Davidson said 'then', or whether she actually said 'than'. 

As I've posted previously, I believe that in the next few years the word 'then' will replace the word 'than' in this context.

Aboriginal Cultural Trail at Melbourne University

Melbourne University has developed a self-guided Aboriginal cultural walk around the campus. It aims 'to remind walkers of the Wurundjeri people's continued traditions and connection to this part of the Melbourne landscape'. Its called Billibellary's Walk.

It sounds great and I'll try to get to the University and take the walk, but I'll wait until the permanent signs are in place.

However, as I read about the new walk in today's edition of The Age newspaper, my eye was caught by this basically unreadable sentence:

According to Shaun Ewen, Deputy Director of the Centre for Health and Society in the Onemda VicHealth Koori Health Unit at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health and Associate Dean (Indigenous Development) for the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, the concept of the walk originates in one of the graduate attributes envisaged for all students across the University - that of being attuned to cultural diversity by valuing different cultures.

Whew! What a mouthful. I applaud the sentiments at the end of the sentence, but it sure took a long time to get to the point.

And later in the article:

For someone like Craig Torrens, a Wehumbul man from the Bundjalung nation north-east of New South Wales, who is with Shawana Andrews a member of the Billibellary's Walk research team and works as a corporate records officer in the University's Secretary's Department, taking the tour is an honour, and has also been an educative experience for him. 

There's an online link to the article here. I wish they had shortened some of the sentences in that article by inserting links.

And more information, including some about Billibellary, here.

desire lines

I noticed this poster the other day.

I seem to recall that you have to encounter a word or expression a certain number of times before it enters your vocabulary. So perhaps desire line will soon become an everyday expression for me. I've come across the word twice now.

The last time I wrote about it I used the slightly different expression desire path, so I thought I'd better check out the definition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. They say:

The title Desire Lines refers to the wayward, improvised tracks created by walkers and others who defy the ways designed for them by urban regulators and councils. Sometime known as ‘goat trails’ they show the preferable path, and indicate our more maverick and intuitive navigations. 

Yes, that about describes the situation in Clifton Hill where the council seems determined to regulate our favorite short-cut out of existence.

It sounds like an interesting exhibition:

Extrapolating from this premise, the exhibition takes us on a number of unexpected journeys, unleashing many lines, both actual and conceptual, pragmatic and poetic. Geographies, geometries and g-force elements are all activated in works that form poetic encounters and memorable moments, as artists seek to follow their hearts, minds and navigational desires. Including work by more than thirty artists, this international exhibition features important and seminal works by Samuel Beckett, Bruce Nauman, Lawrence Weiner and Richard Long, videos from the significant ArtAngel commission Seven Walks by renowned artist Francis Alÿs; new projects by Mel O’Callaghan, Steven Sutcliffe, Charlie Sofo and Dan Shipsides, rarely seen works by Pierre Bismuth, Marcel Broodthaers, A K Dolven and Catherine Yass and introduces many more new artists to Melbourne audiences.

Desire Lines will also feature several key performances, including

• British artist Dan Shipsides will create one of his renowned climbing based artworks on the exterior of the ACCA building.• Sydney artist Mel O’Callaghan will create a moving sculpture of rocks on ACCA’s forecourt.

Desire Lines – 15 December, 2012 to 3 March, 2013.

bumping in

Mary has posted about the bump in of her art exhibition Suspension at Tinning Street Gallery.

That's a new expression to me - bump in. A check of the internet reveals that the phrases refers not only to the setting up of an art exhibition, but also the movement of  equipment in an out of a theatre.

It can also refer to a short duration advertisement before or after a program, the same site says.

what is a quintile?

Today a family member asked me about a word in The Age newspaper - quintile. I asked her to read the sentence containing the word and she read:

The preliminary results showed the richest quintile of households received about 12 per cent of social assistance benefits while the second richest quintile got 11 per cent. 

I sounded like the word quartile, which I knew had something to do with quarters. [Here's the definition from Math Dictionary.] So I suggested quintile might relate to fifths.

And it does. The opening line of the article in The Age said:

The richest fifth of households receive nearly half of all the wages paid in Australia - but also get about 12 per cent of all government handouts, new research by the Bureau of Statistics show. 

Here's a more exact definition of the word from the Merriam-Webster 

now I'm officially a word buff

I learn so much from my regular email from 'A Word a Day' that I've decided to contribute a little to this excellent organisation. So today I became an official 'Word Buff' and I received this multilingual thank-you note:

Thanks, merci (French), gracias (Spanish), dhanyawad (Hindi), danke(German), efharisto (Greek), toda (Hebrew), grazie (Italian), arigato (Japanese), gratias tibi ago (Latin), khawp khun (Thai), takk (Faroese), mahalo(Hawaiian), dziękuję (Polish), mulțumesc (Romanian), spasibo (Russian), salamat (Tagalog), shukran (Arabic), köszönöm (Hungarian), obrigado(Portuguese), děkuji (Czech), ďakujem (Slovak), dankon (Esperanto), ...

more about the word misogyny

Further to yesterday's post about misogyny, misanthropism and misandry, I've noticed an article in The Sydney Morning Herald reporting that, since our Prime Minister's recent speech about misogyny, there are moves afoot to refine the meaning to reflect its modern usage.

The Macquarie Dictionary has announced it is broadening the definition of the word "misogyny".
As it stands, the reference book says misogyny is a hatred of women, the kind that's pathological.
But editor Sue Butler says it's time that changed to reflect what Ms Gillard really meant last week when she accused Opposition Leader Tony Abbott of sexism and misogyny during a speech to parliament.
Not that he needs a session on the psychiatrist's couch, but that he merely has an "entrenched prejudice against women".
That will be the official second definition in the next updated edition of the dictionary.
"We decided that we had the basic definition, hatred of women, but that's not how misogyny has been used for about the last 20, 30 years, particularly in feminist language," Ms Butler told ABC radio on Wednesday.
"Sexist does seem to be moving towards this description of surface features and misogynist applies to the underlying attitude."
It was the underlying prejudice that gave rise to these instances of sexism, Ms Butler said.
Misogyny was like sexism, with a "stronger edge to it".