What an amazing class project! Claiming to be the world’s first film in ancient Babylonian, it was made by members of an Assyriology class at Cambridge (not our Cambridge: the other one) along with some local residents. Their pronunciation is… Read More ›
Linguistics
Is it Hanukkah, Chanukah, Hanukah, or … ?
This post in All Things Linguistic is the best description I’ve seen yet of why there are so many English spellings of Hanukkah (but the author oddly leaves out “Chanukah” in her list at the end, even though it’s in… Read More ›
Misplaced modifier
Hmmm:
Hyperpolyglots/Babel No More
“What do you call someone who speaks three languages?” “Trilingual.” “And what do you call someone who speaks two languages?” “Bilingual.” “And what do you call someone who speaks only one language?” “American.” OK, it’s a stereotype, but — sadly… Read More ›
O Canada!
Exactly one week ago I wrote about the podcast Word Bomb, describing the first eight episodes. Now the ninth episode has come out, and I feel compelled to address one point: how Canadian is Word Bomb? The official description of Episode #9… Read More ›
Word Bomb
Fat, doxx, like, trigger, moist, they, partner, renoviction — what do these eight words have in common? The answer is that they are the topics of the first eight episodes of Word Bomb, a new podcast from Canada. Unlike most of… Read More ›
Moral hazard?
“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 ›
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 ›
Learning Strategies 