Both the humor and the rapture come from the same source: a keen, obsessive attention to language that combines fascination with frustration at words' faltering ability to convey the wonder, strangeness and sadness of experience.
Oracle was already using Java to build software and Catz was concerned that, if Sun tanked, Oracle's go-to programming language would falter.
"Mi ches don cook," she says in the Krio language, her voice faltering even now: "My chest started to boil".
Throughout, Gee exhibits an infallible ear for the faltering language of racial embarrassment, such as this well-meaning white couple discussing an Arab family in a south-coast hotel: "Did she take that thing off in the Leisure Club?" "Who?
I now have a language for the way my brain falters.
By Dan Chiasson In "Gap Gardening," language is most beautiful when it slips or falters.
Mr. Hill's faltering body language as the terminally nearsighted Ivan remains priceless.
"Bellona" sometimes falters.
