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Having a hard time with writer’s block? So did Gustave Flaubert while trying to get his great novel Madame Bovary (Bookshop|Amazon) underway, telling a correspondent: I am finding it hard to get my novel started. I suffer from stylistic...
Elia lives in northern Arizona, alongside the Navajo Nation. He grew up in France and learned English as a second language, but he knows very little Navajo. When he overhears Navajo being spoken, he has a hard time picking up any emotional tones at...
Right off the bat, it’s easy to think of several everyday expressions that derive from America’s pastime–including “right off the bat.” The Dickson Baseball Dictionary catalogues not only those contributions but also...
As more transgender people are publicly recognized, what pronouns should we use to describe them? The best thing to do is find a polite way to ask how someone would like to be addressed. Epicene pronouns like they, ze, and others have had a hard...
A listener in Romania learned English in the Southern U.S., but after going back home to where a British English is taught, people are having a hard time understanding his accent. Where we learn a language plays a big role in how we speak it. This...
Does your handwriting look like chicken scratches, calligraphy, or maybe something in between? Martha and Grant discuss the state of penmanship, the phenomenon linguists call creaky voice, euphemisms for going to the bathroom, and the New England...