English spelling is messy to say the least, and a delightful new book by Gabe Henry recounts the long history of attempts to simplify English spelling. It’s called Enough is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell (Bookshop|Amazon), and details efforts by Mark Twain, Ben Franklin, and Teddy Roosevelt to improve on how English words are spelled. This is part of a complete episode.
The so-called “lifestyle influencer accent” you hear in videos on TikTok and YouTube, where someone speaks with rising tones at the end of sentences and phrases, suggesting that they’re about to say something important, is a form of what linguists...
Meg in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, gets why the state highway department encourages drivers to use their blinkers when changing lanes, but placing a digital sign at the Sagamore Bridge that reads Use Ya Blinkah is, well, a lexical bridge too far. Meg’s...
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