Talking Good, versus Speaking Well

Here are a couple of language-related goodies I’ve found lately:

:: First, some handy new terms for the workplace that I hadn’t seen before, such as “Seagull Manager” (every organization seems to have a member of Upper Management whose only function is to behave in this way) and “Irritainment” (not work-related, really, but reading certain blogs, such as Kim Du Toit’s, can be described thusly).

BTW, the linked list is apparently edited down from a longer list! I want to see the whole thing.

:: Second, via I Love Everything, here’s a list of words that are either very commonly mispronounced (“February”) or words that simply do not exist (“irregardless”). While I’m generally less anal about precision in language than many people I know (my view tends to be that you can’t stop language from changing and evolving, unless you kill all speakers), I do have my linguistic pet-peeves and thus I’m thrilled to see “Orientate” listed as a non-existent word. You don’t “orientate” yourself to the sun, and you don’t “orientate” new employees, people! Sheesh!

(It turns out that Languagehat hates this list, and points out a few errors.)

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