“You learn something new every day of your life,” my dad used to say to me. He was right, of course. A week ago I learned a concept that is, apparently, familiar to economists and philosophers but was for some… Read More ›
Linguistics
Entitlement, Part Two
This is a follow-up to yesterday’s post in the form of three items that could have been in it, but the post was already long enough without them: First of all, I am bothered by the complainer’s use of an anonymous… Read More ›
What is Modern Standard Arabic?
Three months ago I wrote a post about whether Chinese is a language (a language vs. a family of languages). Now it’s time to ask a comparable question about Arabic: is it a language? It’s a comparable question because naive Westerners… Read More ›
International Pronouns Day
As everyone knows, today is International Pronouns Day. Why, you might ask, does such a day exist? There’s no International Adjectives Day, after all. Or International Verbs Day. What’s so special about pronouns? It’s all because English has these gendered… Read More ›
The Magician King
The Magician King is the sequel to The Magicians, which I reviewed on September 1. As the second book in Lev Grossman’s trilogy, it follows closely after book #1 and appropriately leaves the reader hanging, waiting for #3. Darker and more mature than The… Read More ›
Where to store your rage and keep ire away
Credit to Nigel Fabb via Arnold Zwicky for this photo of the Metropolitan Rage Warehouse in Cambridge, where you can store your rage and keep it safe from anyone’s ire:
Singular “they”
I am not on Twitter. If I were, I would have to re-retweet this tweet, originally from Kory Stamper, already retweeted by Gretchen McCullogh: She’s a little less temperate than I am, but… yeah. And do read her book —… Read More ›
Arrival
It has been nearly two years since I’ve seen Arrival, so why am I just now getting around to writing about it? I have no idea why, but it just happened that way. Anyway, I couldn’t resist this movie, partly (largely?) because… Read More ›
Is Chinese a language? (I.e., is Chinese a language?)
Note the subtle use of italics to express emphasis in the title. 😀 Why do people persist in referring to Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, and so forth as dialects rather than languages? Actually, there are a couple of good explanations — “good”… Read More ›
Egyptian Hieroglyphics
Just completed the second week of Weston High School’s June Academy, in which I taught a course on Egyptian Hieroglyphics. In the photo below you can see two posters that showcase some of the students’ work, including carefully drawn name… Read More ›
Five languages in five days?
“Five languages in five days” is the name of the four-day course I have just finished teaching. Yes, you heard me: despite the name, it’s a four-day course. So which is it, five days or four? Let’s see what Lewis… Read More ›
The Vocal Fries (yet another linguistics podcast!)
Yet another linguistics podcast has come to my attention! It’s The Vocal Fries, subtitled “the podcast about linguistic discrimination.” This series, now four months old, is of course named for the phonological register commonly called “vocal fry,” but that’s only the starting point…. Read More ›
Duolingo
For dual reasons (appropriately enough) I have made myself a commitment to pursue several months of language lessons on Duolingo, which describes itself as “the free science-based language education platform that has organically become the most popular way to learn… Read More ›
Happy Hangul Day!
Happy Hangul Day — five days late. Sorry that I missed it! “What’s Hangul Day?” you ask. You mean you didn’t follow the link in the previous paragraph???? Or perhaps you do know what Hangul is but you don’t know… Read More ›
Lexicon Valley (and a bit of Freakonomics)
And now we come to my fourth and last post about linguistics podcasts, which I promised almost two weeks ago. You get two for the price of one here — well, more like 2¼ for the price of one, as we… Read More ›
Very Bad Words
Now for the third installment of posts about linguistics podcasts: Very Bad Words. Yes, it’s what you’re thinking. But it’s a podcast, not a broadcast, so they can get away with it without being bothered by the FCC. It’s the creation… Read More ›
The World in Words
As the title suggests, The World in Words is an offshoot of Public Radio International’s The World. It’s a linguistic podcast that focuses on…well…the world. And words. It’s also the subject of this second review of linguistics podcasts, as promised in… Read More ›
Lingthusiasm
OK, yes, I know that on September 26 I wrote that “My next four posts will deal with four different linguistics podcasts.” But then I was overtaken by events and just had to write a post about the noxious and… Read More ›
Linguistic Podcasts
My next four posts will deal with four different linguistics podcasts — a new medium that has recently come to my attention. I’m sure you’ve been listening to podcasts for years, but I became aware of them only six months… Read More ›
Nine ways (or six, she said originally) to do linguistics in high school
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 ›
Learning Strategies 