Language
Category archives for Language
What English Sounds Like To non-English Speakers
Posted by Greg Laden on March 11, 2014 
This is nice. Karl Eccleston and Fiona Pepper are amazingly good actors. The writing is excellent as is the directing. The subtext. THE SUBTEXT IS BRILLIANT. When I was living with the Efe Pygmies in the Ituri Forest, they would imitate French and English speakers while ranting about specific people who had annoyed or amused…
What the heck is Vocal Fry?
Posted by Greg Laden on January 7, 2013 
Until a few minutes ago, I didn’t even know what the heck Vocal Fry is. Apparently some people have gotten really annoyed about it, as it is a speech mannerism that has emerged among young folks, who are always annoying, and especially females, who are always annoying. Apparently. (I also did not know that until…
soda. pop. snap.
Posted by Greg Laden on November 30, 2011 The other day, and I kid you not, I saw someone say to someone else “would you like a soda” and the person stared back and said “why would I want a soda” and a third party repeated the question, only saying “would you like a pop” and the person said “yes, very much, thank…
Patricia Ryan: Don’t insist on English!
Posted by Greg Laden on April 2, 2011 At TEDxDubai, longtime English teacher Patricia Ryan asks a provocative question: Is the world’s focus on English preventing the spread of great ideas in other languages? (For instance: what if Einstein had to pass the TOEFL?) It’s a passionate defense of translating and sharing ideas.
What is the most important human adaptation?
Posted by Greg Laden on October 22, 2010 Human infants require more care than they should, if we form our expectations based on closely related species (apes, and more generally, Old World simian primates). It has been said that humans are born three months early. This is not accurate. It was thought that our body size predicted a 12 month gestation, and some…
A study in dialects
Posted by Greg Laden on October 7, 2010 … of English:
Putting Exodus into Words: The sed Bible Translation Project
Posted by Greg Laden on June 21, 2010 So, a while ago, Ben Zvanwas talking about doing something with the Bible, which would involve processing the text through some filters and recompiling it. This sort of thing has always interested me: Not recompiling the bible, but rather, textual analysis in general using the basic material stripped of intended meaning by classifying and ordering…
The Queen Cares about the English Language
Posted by Greg Laden on June 10, 2010 The Queen’s got a point: (Hat tip, Jennifer Ouellette)
I don’t mind that you don’t really understand the term “passive aggressive.”
Posted by Greg Laden on June 9, 2010 Or … What I had for breakfast. I just got the Caribou Coffee trivia question wrong. I got it so wrong that the Barista stared at me in disbelief for a moment, then blurted out the correct answer with audible snark and disappointment. If I told you what the question was (and that is not…
A run in my stocking is not a worn out salmon: Response to Mark Liberman
Posted by Greg Laden on June 1, 2010 I’m very please that my discussion of the “we can’t ever know what a word is” Internet meme has elicited a response from Mark Liberman at Language Log. (here) Mark was very systematic in his comments, so I will be very systematic in my responses.