Althouse: "Judge Mental."

February 20, 2012

"Judge Mental."

Ever heard of him?

54 comments:

edutcher said...: It means you have standards.

How old-fashioned.; 2/20/12, 8:23 PM
dhagood said...: if the professor judges people, it surely means that she discriminates as well.

the horror!; 2/20/12, 8:28 PM
Ann Althouse said...: I'm going to be judgmental if not Judge Mental if people don't click the link.; 2/20/12, 8:30 PM
dhagood said...: i clicked on said linkage before i posted. eggcorn? that's a new one to me.; 2/20/12, 8:35 PM
Palladian said...: edutcher, in my experience, younger people in the US are very sensitive about those they perceive as "judge mental". I teach drawing at the college level and I'm often surprised to note that some of the students have never had to face criticism of their work, and tend to view even the most intelligent and constructive criticism as someone being "judge mental". I stress to them that the entire civilized world was created based on judgment, and that self-directed judgment is essential to becoming an artist.

The interesting thing about all of this is that, despite the aversion of young people to appearing "judgmental", judgment is still pervasive in their lives, from semi-literate comments on YouTube videos to their adherence to narrowly-defined fashion trends. Judgement is everywhere; it's good judgment that's disappearing.; 2/20/12, 8:35 PM
DADvocate said...: I thought you were referring to this whacked out, drug addicted judge in Knoxville. Truly frightening picture. Imagine being a defendant in a courtroom with this guy on the bench.; 2/20/12, 8:37 PM
Chip S. said...: I thought it was about Shirley Abrahamson at first.; 2/20/12, 8:37 PM
A. Shmendrik said...: I often see in the word "therapist" "the rapist" if the kerning isn't just right. Maybe it's just me.; 2/20/12, 8:39 PM
David said...: so true Palladian.; 2/20/12, 8:48 PM
David said...: I clicked the link. The writer seems to be saying that we should not be to quick to judge.; 2/20/12, 8:50 PM
Patrick said...: Eggcorns. I only had a minute, so I couldn't determine how they got their name. Tomorrow, maybe.; 2/20/12, 8:55 PM
Beta Rube said...: I assume eggcorns are acorns?

Anyway, I thought they had a crazy person in mind too, maybe the whole 9th Circuit.; 2/20/12, 8:58 PM
edutcher said...: Ann Althouse said...

I'm going to be judgmental if not Judge Mental if people don't click the link.

Hey, I clicked the link.

My point simply was that having standards and applying them is greeted as an almost Soviet-style pathology.

PS Palladian, I know where you're coming from and we probably both remember when this all started to filter into thew society about 40 years ago.

But, yes, that's part of the whole self-esteem thing and what a lot of us think is a big part of GodZero's problem.; 2/20/12, 9:02 PM
Chip S. said...: Althouse makes her commenters tow the line!; 2/20/12, 9:04 PM
Wally Kalbacken said...: The other day I saw the word "Alehouse" and thought for a nanosecond I had read "Althouse".; 2/20/12, 9:15 PM
sakredkow said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 2/20/12, 9:16 PM
Bill, Republic of Texas said...: The author needs to be more judgmental. Why excuse poor writing? How does "ad age" for adage show anything other than ignorance or laziness?; 2/20/12, 9:18 PM
traditionalguy said...: I love words used that way.; 2/20/12, 9:19 PM
Bill, Republic of Texas said...: @A. Schmedrik

I thought I was the only one who saw "the rapist" in therapist. I feel so much better that someone sees the same thing.; 2/20/12, 9:22 PM
David-2 said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 2/20/12, 9:23 PM
David-2 said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 2/20/12, 9:24 PM
David-2 said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 2/20/12, 9:24 PM
David-2 said...: "I'm often surprised to note that some of the students have never had to face criticism of their work"

They're going to be shocked when they get out of school - its a doggy-dog world out there.; 2/20/12, 9:27 PM
Phil 314 said...: vicious psycho; 2/20/12, 9:38 PM
Joan said...: Count me among those who do not find this "charming."; 2/20/12, 9:52 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: We used to have a kind of language when I was a kid where we would add a made up prefix to each syllable of a word.

The key was to speak it very fast and to keep changing the prefix so the adults would not pick up on it.

Chi-ma-chi-dre chi-no chi-me chi-de-chi-ja chi-ir.

Mother wont let me go.; 2/20/12, 10:09 PM
Saint Croix said...: Count me among those who do not find this "charming."

hey, don't make me go judge mental on your ass.

What has happened to me (more than once!) is that I mispronounce a word. Because I read it in a book. And none of my friends are smart enough to use words like the words I read in books. So I've got these little time bombs in my vocabulary that go off every once in a while.

I misprounced "ignorant" the first time I used it. That cracked up a whole room.

I misprounced "superlative." All those damn comic books I read as a kid. I'll bet there are thousands of people who misprounce superlative every frickin' day. As a matter of fact, I think ignorant America is going to keep misprouncing superlative until the dictionary says we're right.; 2/20/12, 10:40 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: I love this. How can one not feel a fondness for teenagers?; 2/20/12, 10:41 PM
Saint Croix said...: I went with "ignore ant," which was logical, I thought.

You'd think that experience would be humbling, but it wasn't.; 2/20/12, 10:47 PM
virgil xenophon said...: A modified take on this: Some 35+ years ago a HS teacher in Louisvilles' recently desegregated all-black Central HS was teaching American history and was on the War of 1812 unit. She mentioned that John Jay, prominent among the treaty's negotiators, later became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Later, when it came time to review for the test, after the review she asked if there was anything they thought she had not adequately covered. Up pops "Jonny's" hand: "Ms Evans, you didn't cover that Indian question.". "Indian question?" the wife of one of my friends said, "What's that?" she asked quizzically. "You know, " he replied, "The one about Chief Justice." LOL!; 2/20/12, 10:54 PM
Saint Croix said...: Right before I say "ignorant," now I get a little voice in my head that says, "make sure you pronounce the word right, dummy!"

It slows me down, I swear.

I can see me, pissed off at the Supreme Court, jumping up and down, and getting so mad I misprounce "ignorant." This is my nightmare.; 2/20/12, 10:57 PM
virgil xenophon said...: PS: Sorry, should have been: "...negotiators of the Treaty of Paris..."; 2/20/12, 10:59 PM
Saint Croix said...: The Supreme Court doesn't know what a "person" is.

There's nothing funny about that, though.

In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court scours the Constitution, looking for examples of how to use "person" in a sentence.

They are feigning ignorance, pretending to go on a search for knowledge.

It's dishonest.

This is why the Supreme Court today calls a corporation a "person." While a baby is not one.

Also, as an aside for Supreme Court Justices, widening the class to include corporations doesn't bother people as much as defining babies as dogs.

This is why the Occupy movement can't get hundreds of thousands of people to show up at their protest rallies.; 2/20/12, 11:19 PM
Saint Croix said...: A person is a live human being, in case you were wondering.

I looked it up.; 2/20/12, 11:23 PM
coketown said...: This is why I hated linguistics in college. The person asking the question is clearly a fucking retard--"Have been being..."; "Kay so..." (did she mean cheese?); "...lately, I need advice?"--yet the post's author thinks this "eggcorn" is evidence of latent genius. Every error is excused as a brilliant deconstruction of language. It's not. It is not at all "clear that the utterer had a theory about the word judgmental." Rather, it's clear the utterer is a babbling idiot--just like Gertrude Stein!--who can't spell. The theory came from the post's writer projecting his own inanity on our hapless utterer.

Anyway, I think this is a consequence of acquiring language primarily through conversation. Such errors were the norm in English before the language was codified in prescriptive dictionaries. But now we have standard American English, and this dullard needs to learn it.

However, there is a parallel for people who learn new words through written texts, which is that their pronunciation is awful. Sometimes I come off as a drooling ignoramus because I learn a word that I haven't heard before then try to use it in conversation. "Posthumous" is an example I remember distinctly.

In conclusion: "Today on Maurie: Ignorant assholes and the linguists who excuse them."; 2/21/12, 12:01 AM
Joan said...: I love this. How can one not feel a fondness for teenagers?

Freeman, I do love teenagers... I have 175 or so as students. I have to constantly remind them that it is my job to 1) tell them what to do and 2) judge how well they did it. They begrudgingly accept the first but rail mightily against the second. They figure that since they showed up, they deserve full credit. When they don't get it, it's my fault for being mental, and, ya know, judging them.

If the statement weren't a perfect encapsulation of the entitlement mentality I'm surrounded by, I might be able to find it charming. It's too typical to be charming.; 2/21/12, 12:06 AM
Chip Ahoy said...: Please stop being mong stirs and allow me to butt rest the egg shell ant and sub lime points made at the link with an anti dose.

The word for 'judge' in ASL is the old word for 'if'. But now 'if' has a new sign. 'Judge' is really cool because it is two 'F's held comfortably laterally in front. As if two small plates of a scale. Get it? A SCALE !

I love those humorous things that are serious. But 'judge' the person needs to be personified. In English an 'er' is added to a regular word and would produce 'judger' if the word were not irregular that way in English. Its not irregular in ASL. Judge the person takes the double karate chop hand motion that defines the trunk of a body. Not your own body, some other person's body. So, judge + person.

And that would have to do.

Until the judger became so judgmental that you drop the personification, er in English, and emphasize the mental instead. The word mental is a tap to the forehead. But so is 'think' depending on how fleeting the thought.

Judge + personification

There seemed to be a fight about this at the time that I learned. I was too young to sort it all but I think that Seeing Essential English was intruding on American Sign Language in the school system. I learned the sign personification to be similar to English, just add an "r," because that's the sound that is made that produces painter from paint.

You notice the personification suffix does the same thing that 'er' does in English and it can be applied to anything. But you also see how it would be an unacceptable pun to substitute the sign for nonpersonification purposes like an abbreviation for Emergency Room. It wouldn't do.

Although I have to admit when I do see that crap it does put me in stitches. My friends picked up the habit of deadpanning the letters OIC when no naturally occurring rejoinder appeared and they signaled a wish to not pursue the subject. The deadpanning is what made it so funny, and that there is almost no movement between letters.

So I punned, "surprise" +"icy" but that never caught on like OIC.

And then I punned "O" + "eye" +"stand" inverted, and that never caught on either.

So the pun things have unpredictable results.

mental.

Judge -person +mental and you end up with a new word. A coinage. A neologism of your own. And the way that you said that. It's what makes you so adorable and unique. Your style. These habits of yours take a bit of getting used to. For a minute there I thought you said "if think" and not "judge mental" because it's a new thing. This pun crap you do, it's going to take awhile to get you.; 2/21/12, 1:07 AM
Chip Ahoy said...: You're un sin pathetic because you lack come passion.; 2/21/12, 5:39 AM
Saint Croix said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 2/21/12, 6:26 AM
Saint Croix said...: chip that cracks me up.; 2/21/12, 6:38 AM
Saint Croix said...: I once sent roses on a Valentine's day and said "Happy V.D.!"

That could have ended badly. But she thought it was funny.; 2/21/12, 6:43 AM
CrankyProfessor said...: My secret identity is revealed! I AM Judge Mental!; 2/21/12, 6:59 AM
Toad Trend said...: My wife over the years has been a 'gold mine' of eggcorns ;)

She once referred to the band 'Don Halen'.

Where most people refer to the kitchen 'cupboard' she says 'covered'.

A throat lozenge is a 'lozenger'.

I shouldn't use her as an 'escape goat' though...; 2/21/12, 7:14 AM
The Elder said...: Aren't all judges mental?

I certainly know some that are.; 2/21/12, 7:47 AM
prairie wind said...: assistant living

I have no idea if that is on topic or not but I am sure that this audience will appreciate it.; 2/21/12, 7:50 AM
Eric Palmer, PeopleSoft Consultant said...: I think Judge Mental stepped in on a famous case after Judge Menthe recused herself.; 2/21/12, 8:05 AM
Saint Croix said...: She once referred to the band 'Don Halen'.

I use to sing that famous Paul Simon song, "Let Milo Open the Door."

Let Milo open the door.
Let Milo open the door.
Let Milo open the door.
To your heart.; 2/21/12, 8:07 AM
Farmer said...: For all intensive purposes

Butt naked; 2/21/12, 8:10 AM
Franklin said...: The question should be: how do you spell it? Judgemental or judgmental? (Firefox gives me an error for "judgemental".

I've always been taught to spell judgemental and the internets say that both are correct...; 2/21/12, 8:26 AM
Toad Trend said...: Heh.

Leonard Skynyrd.; 2/21/12, 8:27 AM
Jim said...: Eggcorns like that are interesting terms of speach, but they're not birthed by oxy morons.; 2/21/12, 8:49 AM
Jim said...: BTW, I hate hearing "six and a one half dozen the other." Um, does that mean 12?

Not that I'm pre-Judas'ed or anything.; 2/21/12, 8:54 AM
Saint Croix said...: I still say "butt naked." When I read your post I was like, "what's wrong with butt naked?" So I googled it. And then I was like, oh yeah, buck naked.

If you say butt naked, nobody laughs at you. At least in my experience.

Buck naked is really country. I think if you're in New York City, you should say butt naked. Or just naked. But I don't think naked gives the oomph of butt naked.; 2/21/12, 9:52 AM
wyo sis said...: My favorite is saddle lite. In Wyoming that's an easy mistake. The word that tripped me up, was subtle. And no, it' wasn't subtle, it was extremely embarrassing. I told one of my students the correct pronunciation once, and as she left the room she deliberately said sub-tull to her friend. I don't think she believed me. I was clearly being judge mental.; 2/21/12, 2:57 PM