Blogs about Language

Hello, happy to report that I have made another appearance on Paul Meier's fantastic podcast, "In a Manner Of Speaking"! Paul, Cameron and I discussed British and American accents in popular music, which is a …

lingthusiasm:Bonus 94: Metaphors be with you! Lingthusiasm x Let’s Learn Everything crossover episode | LingthusiasmLet’s Learn Everything is a podcast whose hosts take on their ambitious mission with infectious energy. Last month, we got to …

An invitation on Facebook on 12/13 from linguist Jennifer Arnold, performing her musical role (crucial phrase underlined): If you like to sing, come to the Chapel Hill Messiah open sing tomorrow evening! I’ll be in …

Let's look at two Hebrew words for clown - לֵיצָן leitzan and מוּקְיוֹן mukion. Leitzan is the more common of the two, so we'll start by examining it. It first appears in Rabbinic Hebrew, meaning …

I’ve spent a lot of time editing Wikipedia. I do it for many reasons, but one of the sillier ones floating around the margins of my consciousness is that I like to think that, by …

Hello again! Here’s some recent writing of mine that you may have missed: Just Add “Just”: The Four-Letter Word That’s All Over Supermarket Shelves and Advertising Copy (Medium gift link) Skippin’ Like a Dipshit: Minnesota …

Peder Mørk Mønsted was a prominent Danish painter, best known for exquisitely detailed and photorealistic landscape paintings. In this post, I’m inviting you to join me in a brief exploration of some of his winter …

Lab rotations are a regular feature of work in my research groups. Students join the lab and figure out a project they want to work on themselves. While this typically results in at least a …

I've a written a new book. It's a children's book and it's called A Riddle for a King. It's suitable for those aged between about eight and twelve, although it has been rigorously tested on …

The original: Io vidi già seder nell’arme irato uomo furioso palido e tremare; e gli occhi vidi spesso lagrimare per troppo caldo che al core è nato. E vidi amante troppo adolorato poter né lagrimar …

Thomas Anour has posted a number of Bible extracts: Mark 10:13-18, John 1:1-13, and James 4:1-3. Comparing these to a published translation from 2002 (from which he sometimes diverges slightly) and to the anonymous dictionary …

I don’t usually repost from Language Log, but this astonished me to such an extent that I can’t resist: this post shows an example of a Chinese signboard in which ’r represents Mr., and in …

Grammatically, that is a choice question: "is it city[-like] (or not)?" In other words, is whatever is at question sophisticated / modern? This phrase, which has been chosen by Sixth Tone* (12/17/24) as one of …

If you listened to the radio in 2024, you probably encountered the artist Shaboozey. His megahit A Bar Song (Tipsy) reigned for 19 weeks as America’s #1 single. When you did encounter him, you likely …

Zuleyka Rivera According to the U.S. baby name data, the name Zuleyka nearly quintupled in usage in 2006: Girls named Zuleyka (USA)Girls named Zuleyka (PR)200852620071167200610812200522.200416. It also re-appeared in Puerto Rico’s baby name data after …

It’s always instructive to look at H.L. Mencken’s The American Language,, which was originally published in 1919 and went through many editions before Mencken released the second and final “Supplement” in 1948. In his chapter …

In 1942, the literary critic and Princeton graduate, Edmund Wilson, then forty-seven, made friends with a scholar of Russian literature slightly younger than himself, Helen Muchnic. Born in Baku in 1902, Helen emigrated to the …

Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay collection The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction has a lot of interesting material on language use and politics. Well, it has interesting material on all …

When I was growing up in New York State, a beanie was a silly kind of skull cap, mostly worn by young people. My high school gave away felt ones like this (though with different …

It’s that time of the year again! You: a discerning reader of books about unconventional information technologies (unusual marks of punctuation, say, or pocket calculators). Your friends and family: the same, naturally. But what gifts …