David Crystal has posted a couple of noteworthy pieces on his blog just lately. One is ‘On linguistic apps’, in which he points readers in the direction of a grammar app from the Survey of English Usage at University College London. According to David, ‘it’s called iGE, the interactive Grammar of English, and it’s available for iPhone 3 and 4, iPod Touch, and the iPad’.
I hope he right when he suggests that it won’t be long before we see the emergence of lots more linguistic apps, ‘especially’, as he says, ‘in areas of language which are difficult to handle in traditional ways, such as phonetics and phonology’. Mmm. I do hope so. Then perhaps the DfE will provide one for the scrutinisers of the self-evaluations submitted to them by phonics providers.
And, if, as I’m sure you’ve always wondered, you want to know the difference between ‘On being persuaded and convince’, there’s the usual elegant and descriptive explanation.