Unfortunately, I’ve never heard of a high school offering linguistics courses or indeed knowing much of anything about linguistics. So writes distinguished linguist Gretchen McCulloch. After all, everyone knows that linguistics is purely an undergraduate and graduate subject in colleges… Read More ›
Linguistics
The Fight for English
It seems that I have to write about David Crystal once a year or so. This expert popularizer of linguistics always provides well-informed but accessible antidotes to common myths about language, such as the one alluded to in the subtitle… Read More ›
Mansplaining
I have to share this cartoon (by Arnold Zwicky), but I’m not going to explain it:
Lingo: Around Europe in sixty languages
An informal and totally unscientific poll tells me that most people don’t realize that there are 60 languages in Europe; they are certainly surprised to hear that actually there are considerably more than 60. Dutch linguist Gaston Dorren has written a slightly flawed… Read More ›
Old medicine
As you can see, the cover page of this book looks old enough — 151 years old, to be precise. But you’ll notice that the title refers to “Early England” and the sub-sub-title refers to “before the Norman conquest,” so… Read More ›
A multilingual bookmark
I’ll have to give this as a puzzle to my incoming freshmen in September. You know how libraries give out free bookmarks as a service to their customers? (I’m sure it’s mostly just a way to discourage evil practices like… Read More ›
Spacing after periods
Three decades ago, when I was doing some contract work for a software company that shall go nameless, a co-worker suggested an optional plug-in for their flagship product. For a mere $5000.00, a customer could install a module that would… Read More ›
Which language do they speak in Canada?
There’s something wrong with the question in the title of this piece, isn’t there? I had asked some students “What language do Canadians speak?” Some of them said English, a few said French, some said both English and French. One said… Read More ›
Making a Point: The Persnickety Story of English Punctuation
If you use commas and periods, this book is for you. If you use semicolons and dashes; this book is still for you. And even if you use colons, hyphens, parentheses, and the dreaded apostrophes, this book is still for you. So, I… Read More ›
The Art of Language Invention
OK, let’s get a couple of things out of the way before we discuss this book: First of all, it is not a book for the general public. Despite its title, The Art of Language Invention is not a popularization. Yes, it looks like an ordinary trade… Read More ›
