The Lexicographer's Rules

Inuit Sign Language seems, plausibly, to be the newest language in North America. There’s a long article from 2005 in This Magazine about its relevance in a much-discussed legal case.

I’ve finally managed to move the Double-Tongued database to another server. This should greatly improve uptime and should eliminate all the “momentarily offline” messages visitors have been receiving for some weeks.

The problem was that DTWW has been outgrowing its hosting plan. Because it was a shared server, there were limitations on the number of simultaneous queries per user. Heavy searching using the built-in search function meant that just one or two searchers or a few simultaneous indexing bots could reach this cap. The new server is used only by Double-Tongued, however, and does not have any of those restrictions. It costs substantially more each month but advertising revenues should cover everything.

I’ve re-enabled a few features that had been disabled to reduce server load. Related terms are are appearing once again with each entry or citation. The display of recent searches has been restored. And the advanced search index page (which I reduced a week ago) has had all of its options restored.

This article in Japanese mentions Double-Tongued Word Wrester and, happily, also translates the name into that language:  二枚舌辞書. I think it just translates back into English as “double-tongued dictionary,” which is perfectly fine since that’s how I often refer to it, too. Update: Thanks to David Lurie for correcting the Japanese here; I was missing a character. He also transliterates it as “nimaijita jisho” and says that “double-tongued” has the same negative connotations in Japanese as it does in English.

Tim Warner at the blog MTA Annoyances has given my book a very nice review. Thanks, Tim!

Courtesy of Dana comes this hilarious rant: First, They Came for the Foreskin.