Romance

Image originally uploaded to Flickr by The Shopping Sherpa 

Such a romantic story in The Guardian Family section about dreams coming true, falling in love and second-hand bookshops ... what's not to like?

The Guardian | How I made a dream come true

Diagnosis, logophilia

This article in the Guardian Review examines words that 'make us merry', looking at sound symbolism.

We tend towards nice, soft sounds like "l", "m" and "n", dipthongs and polysyllabic words, and steer clear of hard sounds and short vowels. Apparently, dislike of certain words is called logophobia.

Discussion on the blog focused on hated words, from cliches to Americanisms and nouns as verbs, as well as phonetics. "Moist" was one of the most hated: interesting, it starts with soft sounds and a dipthong and ends with a hard sound.

Some of my favourite words are (in no particular order and in no way comprehensive!):

• Palanquin
• Luminous
• Catatonic
• Bride
• Undulate
• Arc
• Ululate
• Prolific
• Mediaeval
• Luscious
• Lyrical

Lots of soft vowel sounds, but also juicy consonants and a heavy sway towards the Latinate ... Go figure!

Diagnosis, logophilia ...

Gentlemen of Bakongo

The dapper gentlemen of Bakongo, as photographed by Daniele Tamagni in a book to be published in June by Trolley Books, were also featured in the Weekend Guardian: elegant and insouicant, I love the exuberance of their unusual dress sense.

Photograph: Daniele Tamagni, via The Guardian

A question of attribution?

This weekend, Oliver Burkeman's column in the Weekend Guardian 'This Column Will Change Your Life' covered an interesting concept, fundamental attribution error (FAE).

This means we fall into bias by overvaluing personality-based explanations - he was rude to me because he's a rude person - and undervaluing situational ones - he was rude because he's stressed about work. And we happily accept that our own personalities are a spectrum of emotions depending on the current (temporary) situation, but are unwilling or unable to attribute this to others. Apparently, FAE is less common in collectivist cultures ...

Interesting stuff. Perhaps more curious, how to address it in the hypocritical, hyper-critical snap judgements we casually make every day? Never judge a book by it's cover, I guess?