“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 ›
Linguistics
“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 ›
What language do they speak in Scotland?
Scottish, you say? English? Gaelic? Scots? All of the above? Sounds like a simple question…but it isn’t. In the newly elected Scottish Parliament, where members were allowed to take their oaths in the language of their choice, the following languages… Read More ›
The “Ich bin ein Berliner” myth. Admit it, you’ve always believed this urban legend, haven’t you?
You know JFK’s famous speech in 1963, where he said “Ich bin ein Berliner,” where the American pedants and English-language German books all claim that it really means “I am a jelly donut,” not “I am a Berliner” as Kennedy… Read More ›
Avoid a risk in eleven languages!
Look at the image below. How many of these eleven languages can you identify? No fair asking Dr. Google! And I don’t think we can count English, since if you’re reading this blog you obviously can identify English. So how… Read More ›
Vichit-Vadakan
When you watched the Jeopardy Tournament of Champions last week, you noticed the outstanding performance of finalist Veronica Vichit-Vadakan. And you probably wondered about her last name. You figured that there were several possibilities: perhaps she has a parent named… Read More ›
Nine Nasty Words
John McWhorter is a well-known (at least in certain circles) public intellectual, mostly because of his first-rate podcast, Lexicon Valley. His latest book, Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever, is a lively but scholarly account… Read More ›
The First King: Birth of an Empire
The spoken dialog is entirely in Old Latin! Well, yes; it’s a movie, after all, so what do you expect? There surely are many movies in Old Latin, a.k.a. Archaic Latin, right? Well, maybe not. At least this one has… Read More ›
Following directions, a.k.a. lather-rinse-repeat
If you’ve ever built a model railroad structure (or a model airplane or whatever), you either build it from scratch, build it from a kit, or do some combination of the two. I am definitely not a scratch builder, so… Read More ›
Calendrical linguistics: What a wonderfully nerdy combination!
You’ve wondered, I’m sure, about some of our names for the months. Perhaps you are puzzled about why October is the tenth month when the name clearly suggests that it should be the eighth. Similarly for September, November, and December…. Read More ›
What’s in a (color) name?
Who cares what names Crayola chooses to use for the colors of its crayons? Do you? Do I? There was only one color name that used to bother me when I was a kid: “flesh.” Even then, I guess, I… Read More ›
Hwæt?Beowulf? newly translated for your enjoyment
The world is atwitter at the arrival of a new translation of Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley. Well, a certain segment of the world, anyway. And you may well wonder why. The idea of reading this epic poem has never appealed to… Read More ›
“Guess the Language”: quite a challenge!
If you heard a short sample of a language that you didn’t know, could you still guess which language it is? Quite a challenge, no? Well, in this video, you have the opportunity to see Latvian linguist Julie Maksimova face… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 