Here’s the problem. Netflix shows shows in many different languages. Some languages, like English, allow compact phrases like that “shows shows” (which looks confusing); others use circumlocutions that take up more room on the screen. Why does matter? Because it… Read More ›
Linguistics
Everyone mispronounces omicron! (Well, almost everyone.) And it means more than just a COVID-19 variant…
Right now—with good reason—everyone is focused on Omicron as the name of the new COVID variant. But most people are unsure how to pronounce the word, or they (confidently) mispronounce it. And they also don’t know what it means. I’m… Read More ›
The hidden meaning of crypto
What does the word “crypto” mean to you? For many decades it has been a term of art in applied mathematics—shorthand for both “cryptography” and “cryptology,” being thereby particularly useful for those of us who don’t want to argue about… Read More ›
The answer is “Ladino, not Yiddish.” What is the question?
Well, the question is “Which Indo-European language, spoken by many Jews mostly around the Mediterranean, is derived from Old Spanish but is not Castilian nor Catalan nor any other language that most Americans have heard of?” The answer, as you… Read More ›
“The Awful German Language”
For the past eight weeks I have been trying every day to use Duolingo to review my once-decent-but-now-rusty knowledge of German. It has been going pretty well. I suppose it ought to. My parents, after all, used to tell me… Read More ›
“But Chinese is such a simple language,” he says. “It has no grammar!”
The problem here is not what you’re thinking if you’re a non-linguist: most non-linguists think of language as writing, and they know that written Chinese looks intimidating. But language is primarily speaking, not writing, and the person quoted here is… Read More ›
Look it up! But first understand the purpose of dictionaries.
A dictionary in every room. That was an essential feature of our home when I was growing up. That way, when a question came up in conversation, no matter which room we were in, we could always look up a… Read More ›
Translating Medicarespeak into other languages
I was looking through the newest information from Medicare, which looked to my untrained eyes just like the previous version and the one before that and the one before… What caught my eye won’t surprise you: some sentences (presumably equivalent… Read More ›
On the planet of the apps: Between Glossika and DuoLingo, who wins?
I have been trying these two language-learning apps every day for a month now. You may recall that I wrote about them three weeks ago, when I continued to review my rusty German, since I used to be pretty good… Read More ›
The curious, enthralling and extraordinary story of English spelling
That’s the subtitle of a wonderful book that was written for you, if you are a reader of English. Also if you’re a writer in English. And most especially if you have to spell English words, as the main title… Read More ›
The Court Jester
Robin Hood or The Princess Bride? Which one inspired The Court Jester? Well, if you look at the image, you see that Danny Kaye (born דוד־דניאל קאַמינסקי—that’s Yiddish, even if it looks like Hebrew) starred in The Court Jester, and… Read More ›
How do you learn a foreign language? “There are no subtitles in real life.”
“One fine day, it’s like going from the black and white to the color part of The Wizard of Oz.” That’s John McWhorter’s striking description of one of the things that happens when you learn a new language. It’s from… Read More ›
“Scientific discoveries are never given the names of their actual discoverers.”
When I teach cryptography, my students learn that the Caesar Cipher wasn’t actually invented by Julius Caesar, that the Playfair Cipher wasn’t created by Lyon Playfair, that the Vigenère Cipher is wrongly attributed to Blaise de Vigenère, and so forth…. Read More ›
Oh no! The International Astronomical Union has been lying to us all these years! What is this world coming to?
“These explanations are entirely bogus. They’re made up.” That’s what the Kiwi Hellenist, Peter Gainsford, says about the International Astronomical Union’s incorrect explanations for the names of the planets. But how could the explanations be entirely bogus? Scientists don’t just… Read More ›
What is the secret to writing a successful popularization?
What? You think I’m going to reveal the secret? No way! That’s partly because I don’t actually know the secret—but we can explore the question, as sparked by a recent post by Gretchen McCulloch, known for her surprise best-seller Because… Read More ›
Did the ancestors of today’s Middle Easterners come from Africa?
Of course they did, you reply. But not so fast! There has, of course, been a lot of interest lately in tracing one’s DNA to find out one’s individual ancestry. But I haven’t seen much about the results of doing… Read More ›
Emoji and hand gestures
There’s a lot of misinformation about emoji(s) floating around. Aside from the question of whether the plural is “emojis” or “emoji,” we have plenty of people who think the word is etymologically related to “emoticon” and “emo”—but it’s not! The… Read More ›
Easttown? Where’s that? And what (or who) is Mare? And what’s so special about the Philly accent?
Four questions in that headline—and it isn’t even Passover. You may or may not know that the distinguished linguist John McWhorter’s wonderful podcast Lexicon Valley recently moved from Slate to BookSmart. Not that you care. But what you do (or… Read More ›
עס און עס
No, that’s not Hebrew in the title of this post. Yes, it is written in the Hebrew alphabet. The alphabet is Hebrew, but the language is not—it’s Yiddish. You can’t tell it from the name of the restaurant as shown… Read More ›
“They Might be Linguists.” Linguists—not giants???
You all do know the band They Might Be Giants (TMBG), don’t you? But you might not know my personal connection with them. The connection is that John Flansburgh and John Linnell, founders of TMBG from Lincoln, MA, were students… Read More ›
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