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[ForteBass]

So, I have been doing a fair bit of reading as of late. A lot of my books are on the English language, including history and dialects. As far as dialects go, I have a few on American dialects, but I am finding them to be pretty foolish. The main problem is they are ridiculously out of date. Pronunciations of words are attributed to one region of the US, but is actually found nationwide (at least today they are).

Anybody else ever come across material they consider far too antiquated*? Furthermore, does anyone have decent recommendations for books on English dialects?


*by the way: the first "durrhurrhurr the bible" response earns a furious soul punch. That's not what this thread is for. Constructive conversation or get the fuck out.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

I have a racist dictionary from the late 60's or early 70's that has some fairly offensive definitions for some racial slurrs.

not like "this word is a racial slur for ____" but like "____ is a word used to describe the sub-human, slanty-eyed Asians" or some shit like that. It's ridiculous.

[KaosPilot]

For part of my thesis I've been reading a lot of key feminist texts. Since feminist studies pretty much became gender studies at the end of the 20th century it's difficult to pin-point 'key' texts since they're so recent no-one has had time to figure out just how 'key' they are. So Judith Butler's Gender Trouble is pretty much the latest and that was 1990. If anyone knows any recent (last ten years?) texts I'd be happy to hear them. I know Butler wrote another one called 'Undoing Gender' which is fairly recent.

As for English dialect, I know some of Bill Bryson's 'Made in America' deals with how the English dialects at the time had an effect on how the American language came to be shaped, but for anything on recent dialects I'm at a loss, sorry!

[Jimor]

My grandfather had his grandmother's junior high school Geography textbook from 1876 where there was a section in the back about the characteristics of the seven races of the world. Wasn't deliberately insulting, but you can imagine the unintended condescension dripping from it.

The only thing I can think on dialects was a PBS series, The Story of English, but it probably doesn't go into as much depth as a book would.

[McTaggart]

For my project at uni I was reading a whole lot of stuff about supernovae, usually in the form of collections of conference proceedings. One of these books was from 1977 and was a summary of the current sum of knowledge and the state of research in the field at the time. Early in 1978 a supernova occurred in the large magellanic cloud, which is really nearby. This one supernova is probably the most studied event of it's type and a huge amount was learned from observing it. As a result this 1977 book is completely obsolete and actually quite wrong in some places. I thought the timing on that was pretty neat.

[Graphite]

For part of my thesis I've been reading a lot of key feminist texts. Since feminist studies pretty much became gender studies at the end of the 20th century it's difficult to pin-point 'key' texts since they're so recent no-one has had time to figure out just how 'key' they are. So Judith Butler's Gender Trouble is pretty much the latest and that was 1990. If anyone knows any recent (last ten years?) texts I'd be happy to hear them. I know Butler wrote another one called 'Undoing Gender' which is fairly recent.

A lot of the really strong feminist/gender studies writing of the last ten years can be found in "grey literature" sources, especially on the internet. This is one good place to start; I was going to put in about ten links but then I realised that you may well already be very familiar with these sources.

[KharBevNor]

I have a couple of Tomorrow's World annuals from the early 70's. Almost nothing they discuss ever actually worked, and in many cases was never built, (examples include walking diggers and submarine megatankers that can go underneath the arctic ice floe) they also include incredible predicitons of the world of 2040, a disturbingly fascist dystopia where everyone lives in kilometre tall white skyscrapers and is forced to wear contraceptive implants and are semi-voluntarily euthanised at the age of 60, described in awfully glowing terms that confirm every hippy dippy types worst ideas about scientists. Another one contains a timeline of the future, which is endlessly quotable for gems like:

"1986 Channel Tunnel closed for installation of magnetic accelerator/hover system"
"1990 Cure for Cancer discovered"
"1993 Average national working week 22-33 hours"
"1996 Thermonuclear fusion controlled and economically viable"
"1999 Ceation of intelligent artificial life achieved"
"2001 Manufacture of Elements to Order"
"2030 Average age of puberty reduced to 9 years old" (?????)

and the endlessly sad

"2016 2000th edition of Tomorrow's World"


I also have a great little book by war porn publishers Salamander called 'An Illustrated Guide to Space Warfare', which I read endlessly as a young teenager. It doesn't have a date but it must have been written in the mid to late 80s, and it's essentially an in-depth description of how the Star Wars program was supposed to work, including some pretty unique pictures of early weapons tests, at least some of which I know for certain to be US propaganda fakes, such as the apparent accuracy of the bizarre HOE missile, which was only achieved sporadically by linking the fire control computer of the missile with that of the one it was supposed to intercept. The main value though are the paintings of some of the ludicrous proposed Star Wars weaponry, like laser cannons the size of a 747 powered by open-circuit nuclear reactors, and for the intricately detailed diagrams that try to explain the tactical and strategic purpose of missile defence shields, anti-satellite weapons etc.

[JD]

I got some outdated phonebooks

[David_Dovey]

Yeah it's a shame that predictions of the future never take into account the fact that humans are petty, easily-distracted fuckheads

[Zingoleb]

Yeah, they do. Those are usually the predictions titled things like "We're all fucked".

[Nodaisho]

I've got a book on nuclear physics that used to belong to my grandfather, it was some sort of government report released around '47. I still can't understand most of it, but I have had a few interesting moments when looking something up in a more modern source and there will be something extremely different. Not surprising, considering that it had been only two or three years since the first successful nuclear experiment, but interesting to see a historical point of view.

I also have a cheesy sci-fi book from the '70s, it used to be my father's and spent a couple of decades in a box full of his old books. It is called Earthblood, and one of the things that consistently put me off is how little regard for alien life there is in the book. Even though they are presented as relatively major characters, aliens are written as not at all mattering, even though only the villains espouse space racism. I suppose that is what it is like when someone thoroughly inundated in an openly racist culture tries to be egalitarian.

[JD]

I discovered north korean tourist book from 1988 in a old box downstairs. Kim Jong Il looks so young.

[valley_parade]

Been reading Sherlock Holmes stories lately. Some of it is just making me go "huh, whazzat?"

[benji]

Somewhere I have a workbook for pastoral marriage counseling from the 1940s or 50s. It includes an exercise where a woman comes to meet with you because her husband is cheating on her, and you're supposed to figure out what to say to convince her that the reason he's cheating is because she's not "cooking enough meals at home."