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Join NOW!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 to remedy that confusion, a fact which used to weigh heavily on Herwees. A preview: […]
...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 […]
...moreVia 22 Words, here’s a video demonstrating how Shakespeare plays sound when performed in their original pronunciation. That’s right: the sonorous received pronunciation we associate with Shakespeare didn’t evolve until long after the bard’s death. This new, old accent sounds strangely Irish (to American ears, anyway) and reveals all kinds of rhymes, jokes, and double-meanings […]
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