“This is America. Speak English, or go back to where you came from!” I hear that too often from Trumpian Americans who feel threatened by immigrants and others whom they don’t understand. The best story about that was told by… Read More ›
Linguistics
Irregardless
Irregardless of the price, I am buying a new computer. Well, no, not really. Not any time soon, at any rate. But that’s not the topic of this post; the word “irregardless” is. “That’s not a word!” you cry. “If… Read More ›
A Latin Christmas Carol?
Verb or noun? Two options from Gretchen McCulloch: Good King Wenceslo Good King Wenceslas Good King Wenceslat Good King Wenceslamus Good King Wenceslatis Good King Wenceslant Good King Wencesla Good King Wenceslae Good King Wenceslae Good King Wenceslam Good King… Read More ›
Carols for editors (and writers too)
Listen closely to the words (and don’t pay attention to the quality of the singing, which isn’t the point):
“Untranslatable” words (redux)
Six months ago I wrote an essay in my blog about “untranslatable” words. If you haven’t read it, you may want to do so now. The bottom line was that when someone claims that a word in some language is… Read More ›
It’s 50 years later; would I still be able to write something like my master’s thesis?
I can still teach linguistics — but could I still write a linguistics thesis? On April 10, 1969, I submitted my master’s thesis, The Development of Embeddings in the Speech of Young Children. Just now, for a somewhat complicated set of… Read More ›
Russian Script Hacking for Beginners
Is it Korsunsky or Korsunskiy or Korsunski or perhaps even Korsunskyi? Would it help to see it written out in Cyrillic rather than in our Roman alphabet? Related question: what’s the capital of Ukraine — Kiev or Kyiv? Actually, it’s… Read More ›
Semicolon
“What!? An entire book about semicolons??? You’ve got to be kidding!” “And an audiobook of all things???? How can you listen to a semicolon?” Yes, I have to admit: I really did listen to an audiobook about a punctuation mark…. Read More ›
Language Unlimited: “Syntax is where the magic happens.”
“Syntax is where the magic happens. It takes the words we use to slice up our reality, and puts them together in infinitely varied ways.” — from Language Unlimited, by David Adger. If I had to pick one paragraph as the thesis statement… Read More ›
The apostrophe? Its no longer needed.
Ive written earlier about apostrophes, but now we have the definitive essay on the subject for all the peevers and prescriptivists out there: “Thats all Folks: The Apostrophe Protection Society Gone for Good” by the distinguished Dennis Baron. Read it… Read More ›
