You South Africa

1 min de citit

One of my fondest childhood memories is of sitting on my dad’s lap, a Richard Scarry word book open on his knee. He’d point at the cute pictures that crowded the page and my job was to identify each object. How clever I felt! And it was such fun. Per

You South Africa

1 min de citit

DURING a recent conversation involving several people, one person repeatedly pronounced “vice versa” as “visa versa” and, in an effort to be polite, no one attempted to correct her. One finds too that people constantly confuse “you’re” with “your”, “

NPR

2 min de citit

There are no exceptions. If a piece being prepared for broadcast has an offensive word or phrase, or involves excretory or sexual issues, care and consultation are required.

Scoop

3 min de citit

I was wondering how to begin writing this. I stared at the blank page and it stared back at me. I had so much to say, but the words didn’t seem to be to hand: perhaps the subject was just too complex. It must have been like this when my grandma first

India Today

1 min de citit

Saura, Munda, Kui, Juanga-all tribal languages from Odisha-are just some of 124 languages that can be found on StoryWeaver, a treasure trove of engaging illustrated books for children. The storybooks are categorised according to reading levels, with

MASK The Magazine

1 min de citit

Do: Use proper language, grammar, and spelling. Be explanatory. Justify your opinions. Credit ideas of others; cite and link to scholarly resources. Avoid: Misinforming others when you may not know the answer. If you are guessing about, clearly state

Woman

2 min de citit

Parading my new hairdo in front of my daughter, Hannah, 29, I was beaming. But it wasn’t because I liked the cut, rather that I’d managed to go to the salon in Mexico and tell them exactly what I wanted, all by myself, and in Spanish. Just two years

The Guardian

3 min de citit

Influential people have always had the power to change language. The president’s late-night typo sent the internet crazy, but will it stick around?

The Guardian

3 min de citit

We shouldn’t worry when a word falls into obscurity. There’s usually a good reason, and a new one will always fill its place

The Christian Science Monitor

3 min de citit

It’s impressive how educational hand-drying the dishes can be. Almost without knowing it, one may absorb a range of more or less useful information as the cutlery gets drier and the dishcloth damper. I am thinking in particular of two literary dish t

The Christian Science Monitor

5 min de citit

What makes a story, a story? For Harry Bruinius, the Monitor’s New York bureau chief, it’s the moment a person’s life changes. He has long brought this approach to his reporting, covering issues of religion, race, and even gun violence.

The Christian Science Monitor

2 min de citit

The more research I did into the history of fulsome, the more confused I became. This slippery word has distinct, sometimes contradictory meanings.

The Atlantic

1 min de citit

As soon as Donald Trump announced his presidential candidacy, people noted a few of his linguistic quirks, such as the extended, supervowel pronunciation of huge and the references to himself in the third person. But beyond those, the version of Engl

Nautilus

2 min de citit

Many of us have been taught that pronouncing vowels indistinctly and dropping consonants are symptoms of slovenly speech, if not outright disregard for the English language. The Irish playwright St. John Ervine viewed such habits as evidence that som

Pretoria News Weekend

1 min de citit

EVERY year, the home of world-renowned language data, Oxford Languages, releases its word of the year. However, due to this unprecedented time, the institution has decided to select several official words of the year. The English language has undergo

The Christian Science Monitor

2 min de citit

English has so many creative ways to proclaim that something is ‘nonsense.’ Part 2 of a series on the nuts and bolts of humorous words.

Literary Hub

5 min de citit

Me and my sister had our own language as children. I was an inventor of language—of elaborate code in my childhood diaries, rune-like and incomprehensible, and of big words, as many as you could fit into a sentence. But this language, it was between

Nautilus

12 min de citit

You’d be forgiven if, settling into the fall 2003 “Literature of the 16th Century” course at University of California, Berkeley, you found the unassuming 70-year-old man standing at the front of the lecture hall a bit eccentric. For one thing, the cl

Games World of Puzzles

1 min de citit

In this puzzle, all of the answers are the first (or last) halves of a word or phrase made up of two identical syllables or words. For example, “Sweet treat” would be BONBON, so you would enter BON in the grid. Proper nouns are allowed. Once you dete

New Internationalist

7 min de citit

‘Nana-Ama!’ my mother called out. ‘Come meet one of your cousins.’ We were in Accra, at a family gathering – a wedding or funeral or naming ceremony, I can’t say which; they all blur into what, essentially, seems like the same memory of delicious pla

Racecar Engineering

4 min de citit

Communication has always had its pitfalls, dependent as it is on noises accepted as ways of passing on thoughts to others, plus the miracle of squiggly lines that crystallise them on stone, parchment, paper or screen. Just ponder how those squiggles

NPR

3 min de citit

Some linguists are arguing that the advent of softer food, thousands of years ago, led to changes in biting patterns and eventually, to more frequent use of sounds like "f" and "v" in human language.

NPR

1 min de citit

Bruce McEldowney plays the puzzle with puzzlemaster Will Shortz and NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro.

Saturday Star

1 min de citit

EVERY year, the home of world-renowned language data, Oxford Languages, releases its word of the year. However, due to this unprecedented time, the institution has decided to select several official words of the year. The English language has undergo

PaperCraft Inspirations

1 min de citit

We love a fun new card technique and these clever cascading alphabet dies are most certainly fun – and so versatile, too! If you want to add a bit of oomph to the greetings on your cards, these die sets are perfect! Whatever you want to say on your d

Futurity

2 min de citit

Using the generic “you” can help make ideas resonate, research on what readers highlight indicates. Writers often use the word “you” generically to make an idea seem more universal, even though it might not be. A paper on the linguistic device appear

The Christian Science Monitor

2 min de citit

Many Scandinavians frown on tipping, and they’re not too keen on please or thanks (as English-speakers think of them) either.

Surfer

3 min de citit

By JUSTIN HOUSMAN Do you have other interests besides surfing? Other life-consuming hobbies or sports, complete with their own unique cultures, charmingly peculiar vocabularies, verbal signifiers of who’s part of the in crowd and who’s not? Can you m

NPR

1 min de citit

On-air Challenge: I'm going to read you some sentences. Each sentence contains two words that have homophones that are opposites. Ex. Does Liv Ullmann dye her hair? --> LIVE & DIE (homophones of "Liv" and "dye") 1. In London, bar patrons who misuse

New Zealand Woman’s Weekly

1 min de citit

Join classes and nurture curiosity with one or two new hobbies each year – dance, take up a foreign language or learn how to invest. Before you feel let down, explain your expectations. Don’t be afraid to delegate.