language
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We’d Rather Be Looking at Pictures of Kittens, or How We Learned to Love TL;DR
We’ve probably all found ourselves in the middle of reading a long internet post only to conclude we’d rather spend our time looking at pictures of kittens. Anobium examines the rise of the “Too Long; Didn’t Read” culture pervasive on…
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“Don’t Let Them Call You Anything Else”
Tasbeeh Herwees has a fantastic essay up at the Toast about her Libyan mother’s insistence that Americans use her given name rather than an anglicized nickname, confusing though they may find it to pronounce. And apparently most Americans aren’t willing…
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Nabokov vs. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
“When Nabokov started translating [his English-language memoir] into Russian, he recalled a lot of things that he did not remember when he was writing it in English, and so in essence it became a somewhat different book,” Pavlenko says. At…
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“Pop,” “Soda,” or “Heaven Bubbles”?
You’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…
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When Language Fails
2013 has become the year of the emoji as the pictographs have made their way into iMessages, poem translations, and recently, an art exhibition. Betsy Morais’ article called “Do You Speak Emoji?” refers to emojis as “a new form of…
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“Because” Has New Meaning, Because Grammar
Like it or not, the meanings and uses of words are constantly shifting, because language. At the Atlantic, Megan Garber writes about how the word “because,” normally a subordinating conjunction, is increasingly being used as a preposition, with examples and possible…
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Lexicon Valley Now In Written Form
Slate‘s language podcast, Lexicon Valley, now has a blog component, by popular demand. (Surprise, surprise—word nerds want to read more.) So far, it’s mostly cross-posts from the always-wonderful Language Log on the topics of slang, translation, and the word meh. We look…
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When Incorrect Grammar Is Just the Right Thing
Vol. 1 Brooklyn has a nifty recurring feature called “Making Progress,” in which they interview writers about their process during projects that are still unfinished. In the latest installment, James Yeh has some really enchanting thoughts about “language that is…
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When Good Grammar Is Actually Bad
Adverbs acting as manner adjuncts “do not occur between whether and infinitival to,” you guys. Duh. Or, in other words, you can’t say, “…decide whether unconditionally to attend the Geneva talks.” Instead, you should say, “…decide whether to unconditionally attend…
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Language Log for Prairie Dogs
Con Slobodchikoff is a word nerd of a different sort than the ones we usually write about on the Rumpus. After studying prairie dogs for thirty years, he’s concluded that they have a language more complex than humans would ever…
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Doing the Math(s) On Across-the-Pond Vocab
If Americans roll their eyes at each other for pretentious uses of British English like “flat” and “queue,” Brits are just as likely to look down on compatriots who use Americanisms like “take-out” and “shopping cart.” But are the UK’s…
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The Evolution of Language
How did humans learn to talk, anyway? Vervet monkeys use different words (or, at least, “different alarm calls to refer to different types of predators, such as snakes and leopards”) but don’t arrange them into diverse kinds of sentences. Songbirds,…