The Dictionary of American Regional English, or DARE, has launched a campaign to save fifty words and phrases it deems are dying from lack of use, reports Alison Flood for the Guardian: Although language change is inevitable, it’s too bad to see some of our most colourful expressions going out of use,” said Joan Hall, former […]
...moreMany of the best books in classic literature innovated some aspect of storytelling, but few can claim to have ventured into tinkering deeply with language itself. Over at Lit Hub, Stephen Sparks writes on some of the best books that have created their own languages. To “inhabit languages unique [to the book],” Sparks argues, is to […]
...moreMuch like the parochial vocabulary it strives to catalogue, the Dictionary of American Regional English is in danger of extinction. A stopgap crowdfunding campaign is currently open to support the project in the short term, but the long-term forecast for the entity protecting such gems as “flumadiddle” (nonsense), “slippery jims” (pickles), and “rantum scooting” (going […]
...moreYou’ve probably seen this regional-dialect quiz from the New York Times making the rounds on your social networks. You answer questions about your vocabulary and pronunciation, and it tries to determine where in the United States you’re from. But the New Yorker‘s Shouts & Murmurs blog is really upping the ante with their own dialect quiz, which […]
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