The haunting new novel Clear (Bookshop|Amazon) by Carys Davies is set amid the Scottish Clearances of the 19th century, a relentless program of forced evictions that drove whole communities of tenant farmers off the land. The story concerns a Scotsman who struggles to communicate with one of the last speakers of Norn, a language of the Shetland Islands. The book includes a glossary of Norn words, such as leura, the “short, unreliable quiet between storms,” gruggy for “threatening weather,” and skump for “a fog bank.” 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...
Subscribe to the fantastic A Way with Words newsletter!
Martha and Grant send occasional messages with language headlines, event announcements, linguistic tidbits, and episode reminders. It’s a great way to stay in touch with what’s happening with the show.
