Little is nerdier than writing phrases about studying phrases about, properly, phrases. With that tortured introduction out of the way in which, listed here are my favourite web collection, columns, and blogs in regards to the English language (from American and Canadian views). Embedded in every column are the character and explicit pursuits of the creator.
If Social Justice is Your Bag: Chi Luu at JSTOR Each day
Computational linguist Luu is terrific at getting beneath the hood of on a regular basis or ignored language patterns. She hyperlinks to educational analysis with out being too wonk-ish. Have you ever ever questioned precisely why “Boaty McBoatface” is a humorous identify for a ship, or “Mister Splashy Pants” doesn’t look like probably the most dignified identify for a whale? Luu has damaged down why. (And in the event you’ve by no means discovered your self questioning about these, what on earth are you doing together with your life?)
Luu additionally excels at making politicized language controversies accessible to laypeople. Her pursuits are extremely broad although usually modern, from the ways of Nigerian rip-off emails to the advanced linguistics of consent. You get the sense, perusing her subjects, that each social sample has an attention-grabbing linguistics-related kernel ready for somebody like Luu to excavate it.
If Weirdness is Your Factor: Dan Nosowitz at Atlas Obscura
Journalist Nosowitz doesn’t concentrate on language, however does write entertainingly (and infrequently humorously) about it. As befits the ever-charming website Atlas Obscura, which delights in hidden corners of historical past and society, Nosowitz is desirous about quirky corners of language.
My favourite Nosowitzism remains to be his dive into the ever present Vietnamese surname Nguyen and its many pronunciations. The exploration of why Canadians say “eh” can also be charming.
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If the Web is Your Obsession: Gretchen McCulloch at WIRED
McCulloch is the bursting-with-enthusiasm linguist behind the appropriately named podcast Lingthusiasm, in addition to the pleasant latest e book As a result of Web: Understanding the New Guidelines of Language. And she or he has the weird distinction of being WIRED’s resident linguist, the place she focuses on know-how and web language.
McCulloch is worried with language justice, for example the unfair marginalization of sure languages, however treats these weighty subjects with a light-weight contact. An instance is the pointless dominance of English as the idea of coding languages. Simply one of many methods she’s modified my views on language is in her Lingthusiasm dialogue of various conversational kinds: high-consideration vs. high-involvement. I’d all the time thought of high-involvement chatters (who steadily discuss over one another) to be impolite interrupters. However it could simply be a definite, and customary, conversational tradition that individuals are socialized into and has little to do with impoliteness.
If Transatlanticism is Your Jam: Lynne Murphy at Separated by a Widespread Language
This weblog is the newborn of Lynne Murphy, an American linguist residing within the UK. She posts sporadically however with pleasing consideration to element in regards to the intricacies of language variations between the 2 nations. In every publish she offers alternate spellings of each ambiguous phrase, reminiscent of chil(l)i, proving that she has a greater ear and eye for divergence than most individuals.
place to begin is her Phrases of the Yr collection, the place she chronicles typically under-the-radar phrases which have crossed over from one aspect of the pond to the opposite. As an illustration, the newest U.S.-to-UK phrase of the yr is gotten (versus bought).
For extra studying and listening about linguistics, strive:
“Books to Learn If You Liked Arrival or Nice Science Fiction Books on Language”
“Why I Stopped Italicising Non-English Languages”
“The Dream of a Common Language”
