August 22nd, 2004
Peter Cashwell leads a double life. He’s an English teacher who likes to bird. But using the noun “bird” as a verb can get you in trouble in English teachers’ lounges.
Read More »July 8th, 2004
With the outsourcing of American jobs comes the exporting of American accents. In Bangalore, India—the Silicon Valley of the subcontinent—the booming customer service call center industry depends on coaching Indian workers to talk like they’re from Wisconsin. Sort of.
Read More »July 1st, 2004
Since Rico was on his own when retrieving the toys, his feat was heralded by scientists as a breakthrough for animal recognition of language. “The study suggests to scientists that the ability to understand sounds is not necessarily related to the ability to speak, and that some aspects of speech comprehension evolved earlier than, and independent from, of human speech,” wrote Daniel Kane at the Web site of The American Association for the Advancement of Science.
But while there was no question that Rico’s skills were remarkable, the study did reignite a contentious debate among linguists about whether animals can actually understand language.
Read More »June 24th, 2004
CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien once owned a lavender Citroen, she recalled on the air June 10.
“Wow! That was back in the day,” her guest remarked.
“That was so back in the day it’s not even funny,” O’Brien replied. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Which “day” we are talking about is not always clear, but there has been a lot of going back to it lately.
Read More »June 10th, 2004
“Saluton!” The greeting rings throughout the Sulzer Regional Library auditorium in Ravenswood as members of the Esperanto Society of Chicago gather for their monthly meeting. They have come to study and celebrate the language of Esperanto, invented in the late 19th Century to be an international language.
Read More »June 3rd, 2004
“Spelling bees are largely an American phenomenon, something that is unique to the English language,” said Paige Kimble, 1981 champion and director of the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee. “We are simply not aware of any long-standing spelling bee programs in other languages.”
Read More »May 25th, 2004
There is a moment every marketer both dreams of and fears. It is the time when a brand name, by decree of the dictionary or whims of the zeitgeist, becomes a common noun or a verb. This can be a blessing—the ultimate validation of a name that is both catchy and meaningful. But it can also be a curse. The more widely a word is used, the harder it is to legally protect as a trademark.
Read More »April 22nd, 2004
The Loyola University Graduate School of Business has new billboards around town that read, “We educate values-based leaders.”
As timely as the tagline is in this era of Enron/Tyco corporate scandal, it raises one question: What exactly is a values-based leader?
Read More »April 8th, 2004
Centuries ago, the word “stickler” meant the judge of a duel who made sure all the rules were obeyed. To author Lynne Truss, those were the good old days. At least people listened to that kind of stickler.
Read More »March 25th, 2004
Sometimes language lovers sound as if they’re on a safari. They talk about observing words in their natural habitat and studying their behavior in herds.
With the first release of the American National Corpus, an annotated body of over 10 million words, linguists can hunt like never before.
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