Look up into the night sky, and imagine that you’ve never heard the term Milky Way. What would you call that glowing band of stars across the heavens? In Sweden, it’s called Vintergatan, or “Winter Street.” In Hawaii, the Milky Way is sometimes called Iʻa-lele-i-aka, a name that translates as “fish jumping in shadows.” And in the Cherokee language, this celestial arc goes by a name that translates as “where the dog ran” — an allusion to a folktale about a dog that snatched some cornmeal in its mouth and spilled some as humans gave chase. 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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