In this second of three posts on accents and dialects, I summarize a relatively short article about the universality of accents. Article: “Everyone Has an Accent” (The New York Times) Contrary to popular belief, it’s not actually possible to speak a language without an accent. What’s more, our approval of certain accents and scorn of…
Author: hannah
What’s the difference between an accent, a dialect, and a language? These concepts are prone to a multitude of misconceptions, often with adverse consequences for millions of people whose speech doesn’t fall within the realm of what’s considered “standard” for their particular region. In this series of posts, I summarize three articles about accents and…
Think of a situation in which you might try to lip read. Would it be chatting with friends in a noisy bar? Or watching a muted TV? Maybe you were born (or became) deaf. In all of these scenarios, the channel for auditory input is severely obstructed or entirely absent. But what if I told…
Digital voice agents like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant are all the rage these days. But when we talk to our smart devices, are they actually “understanding” our speech in the same way that another human understands it? Take the command, “Find flights from Chicago to New York on February 21.” We can easily comprehend…
Happy Halloween! In tribute to the holiday (my favorite), here’s a smidge of spooky linguistics. Ever play that game where you repeat some word so many times it starts to lose its meaning? That’s actually a thing, called semantic satiation. Semantic satiation is a psychological phenomenon where a person temporarily loses the meaning of the…
You’re probably familiar with the old adage “the only thing that’s constant is change.” Still, so many people tend to think about language as a relatively fixed affair. I’ve said it before (and will inevitably say it again): all living languages change all the time, and at all levels – phonological (sounds!), morphological (word-bits!), lexical…
I could spill a lot of ink (well, use a lot of pixels) writing about endangered languages, and the reasons why language revitalization, or at least preservation, is crucial. But I’ll spare you today, dear readers. I will say in summary that linguistic diversity is both culturally/anthropologically important, and significant to the study of human…
I hope you’ve got your noses strapped on. If you’ve ever wondered what a poecilonym is (who hasn’t?), or needed a handy mnemonic for remembering how to spell diarrhea in British English, this video is for you. It’s educational. It’s funny. It’s dorkery at its best. And you’ll learn more than you (THOUGHT you) ever…
Back again, with some more cocktail origin stories! This time we’ll be delving into the emergence of gin-based drink names. During my bartending days a common response we gave to underspecified requests for custom cocktails was, “would you like something spirit-forward or citrussy?” If the customer chose the former, we’d mix them a drink with…
Cocktail culture in the U.S. (and in various countries around the world) has undergone an effervescent revival over the last ten or so years. Bartenders and drinkers in cities across America have become obsessed with rejuvenated classics – recipes from the 1870s through the 1950s – as well as with unique new creations, often featuring…