By Ben Yagoda. I was frankly a little disappointed to read Teddy Wayne’s recent New York Times piece “‘NPR Voice’ Has Taken Over the Airwaves.” Not that I’m not obsessed with the way people talk on the programs carried by National Public Radio stations. More...
By Anne Curzan. An astute language observer I know emailed me a few weeks back with the subject heading: “changing past tense form?” I was intrigued before I even opened the email. He knows how to hook a language geek. More...
By William Germano. Today’s investigation into the Oxford English Dictionary concerns two words, with a small hope that we can figure out what it is we talk in front of, or on, or near, when we’re before our students. More...
By Geoffrey Pullum. People whose experience of Spain goes back many decades tell me that Bilbao was once a nondescript little steel town on a polluted river, best driven past and avoided on your way to somewhere nicer. But today, as I stroll along the riverfront walk overlooked by the grandeur of the University of Deusto, and watch cormorants dive into the Nervion and come up with fresh white fish (river cleanups cannot be faked), it strikes me as one of the most attractive cities I’ve ever visited. More...
By Geoffrey Pullum. Imagine that the national government controlled education down to fine details of what to teach and how to test it, and in your own subject the government required that modern research should be ignored, and unreconstructed 18th-century beliefs should be taught. More...
By Geoffrey Pullum. I wouldn’t change one syllable of the beautiful lyrics that Al Dubin wrote (to Harry Warren’s music) for the huge 1934 hit that the Flamingos turned into a doo-wop classic in 1959. More...
By Lucy Ferriss. Like my colleague Ben Yagoda, I was intrigued by Teddy Wayne’s recent New York Times article on modes of speaking, but for a different reason. More...
By Lucy Ferriss. I write this not long after New England’s first frost, when the temperatures have suddenly rebounded into the 70s. Everyone I know calls this Indian summer. Everyone I know loves it. And every year I wonder what to do about the potential racism. More...
By Allan Metcalf. As I mentioned here last week, the Word of the Year season is upon us. More than five-sixths of 2015 has gone by, time enough to think of the word (or phrase, or prefix, or abbreviation) that best reflects the interests, style, attitudes, and preoccupations of the year so far. More...
By Allan Metcalf. What’s WOTY? That’s the convenient acronym (pronounced woe-tea) used by those of us who are intrigued by the notion of a Word of the Year — a word that captures the spirit, or concerns, or activities, or peculiarities of the year gone by. More...
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