“Bamboozle”, “momther”, “hooman”, “hungery”. I have never understood this odd dialectal pattern: I don’t find it funny, and I don’t think it adds all that much to content which I think is already pretty excellent. Why, then, is it so wide-spread?
Browsing: Nicola explains linguistics
Time is an abstract and nebulous concept – it’s not something we can see, and its nature is difficult to physically determine. Because of this, much of the language we use to describe time relies on metaphor. While these metaphors are typically consistent within a language, they tend to differ cross-linguistically.
Although it may not be the subject of many films, there is actually a lot to explore when looking at how language is represented onscreen, especially in the realm of translation.
Every comma I added, split infinitive I repaired, hung preposition I cushioned in noun phrases was proof that I was articulate. Articulate was the last few marks on my English assignments, the judge’s feedback from the debates I won, the glowing words printed on my report card. To be articulate was to be intelligent. To be worth listening to.
These disadvantages are linguistic, cultural, and invisible to those who make up a cultural hegemony. Without tearing down these barriers, our justice system cannot serve true justice.
The sound of your voice is shaped by the geography of your mouth, the length of your vocal folds, the exact way you place your tongue. The way you pronounce words is a lineage of the accents and affectations you grew up hearing.
A, E, I, O, U… and sometimes Y. How can it be that the relatively exclusive set of vowels has…
Surnames connect us to people with our same names millennia before us and they set us apart as modern, global, and freed.
We build meaning with words and the definitions we understand them to have. It’s also hard to have a conversation with a limited set of words — if you want to express something but you don’t have a word for it, your explanation tends to be less precise, less streamlined.
For hundreds of years, we have engaged in unimportant chit-chat.
