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Mx: a gender-neutral title; and ludic language
I have two new posts up at Macmillan Dictionary Blog. The first is about a term you might not be familiar with but whose profile seems certain to grow: Mx – a new gender-neutral title. Mx, which has...
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A–Z of linguistics in rhyming couplets
Here’s a self-explanatory bit of silliness from Twitter yesterday. There were requests to assemble it somewhere, for convenience and posterity, so I thought I’d reproduce it on Sentence first. I’ve...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Link love: language (63)
For your weekend reading and viewing pleasure, a selection of recent language-related links from around the web: Love letters to trees. How to design a metaphor. Two medieval monks invent writing. The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book spine poem: Broken words spoken here
New books mean a new book spine poem, aka bookmash. This one has a language theme. [Click to enlarge] * * Broken words spoken here Broken words spoken here: Swearing, texting, The unfolding of...
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Cutthroat compounds in English morphology
A houseboat is a type of boat; a boathouse is a type of house. This illustrates a common pattern in English morphology: the rightmost part of a compound (houseboat) is usually the ‘head’. In other...
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Gender differences in listening signals
Deborah Tannen, in her 1991 book You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation,* describes how easy it is for a speaker to get the wrong idea about a listener’s behaviour if the listener is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mx: a gender-neutral title; and ludic language
I have two new posts up at Macmillan Dictionary Blog. The first is about a term you might not be familiar with but whose profile seems certain to grow: Mx – a new gender-neutral title. Mx, which has...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A–Z of linguistics in rhyming couplets
Here’s a self-explanatory bit of silliness from Twitter yesterday. There were requests to assemble it somewhere, for convenience and posterity, so I thought I’d reproduce it on Sentence first. I’ve...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Link love: language (63)
For your weekend reading and viewing pleasure, a selection of recent language-related links from around the web: Love letters to trees. How to design a metaphor. Two medieval monks invent writing. The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book spine poem: Broken words spoken here
New books mean a new book spine poem, aka bookmash. This one has a language theme. [Click to enlarge] * * Broken words spoken here Broken words spoken here: Swearing, texting, The unfolding of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Danger Mouse, linguistic prodigy
In idle half-hours I’ve been watching Danger Mouse on a DVD I picked up for the price of a croissant. As well as being enjoyably daft and wryly amusing, it’s a trip down memory lane; my sister and I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fear and loathing of the passive voice
A great many people are unsure what the passive voice is, and what (if anything) is wrong with it. That wouldn’t be such a problem, except that a lot of those people misidentify and misrepresent the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gender differences in listening signals
Deborah Tannen, in her 1991 book You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation,* describes how easy it is for a speaker to get the wrong idea about a listener’s behaviour if the listener is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mx: a gender-neutral title; and ludic language
I have two new posts up at Macmillan Dictionary Blog. The first is about a term you might not be familiar with but whose profile seems certain to grow: Mx – a new gender-neutral title. Mx, which has...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A–Z of linguistics in rhyming couplets
Here’s a self-explanatory bit of silliness from Twitter yesterday. There were requests to assemble it somewhere, for convenience and posterity, so I thought I’d reproduce it on Sentence first. I’ve...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Link love: language (63)
For your weekend reading and viewing pleasure, a selection of recent language-related links from around the web: Love letters to trees. How to design a metaphor. Two medieval monks invent writing. The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book spine poem: Broken words spoken here
New books mean a new book spine poem, aka bookmash. This one has a language theme. [Click to enlarge] * * Broken words spoken here Broken words spoken here: Swearing, texting, The unfolding of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Danger Mouse, linguistic prodigy
In idle half-hours I’ve been watching Danger Mouse on a DVD I picked up for the price of a croissant. As well as being enjoyably daft and wryly amusing, it’s a trip down memory lane; my sister and I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fear and loathing of the passive voice
A great many people are unsure what the passive voice is, and what (if anything) is wrong with it. That wouldn’t be such a problem, except that a lot of those people misidentify and misrepresent the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘Because X’ in Finnish and Norwegian, because borrowing
Languages often borrow from one another: it’s a common source of linguistic growth and change. Normally what gets borrowed is words, called ‘loans’, ‘loanwords’, or ‘borrowings’ (though the terms...
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