Why would some Spanish speakers use adaptations of certain English words when perfectly good Spanish words for the same thing already exist? Plus, handy terms in a dictionary of the Sussex dialect from 150 years ago: Back then, a dezzick was “a...
John in Tucson, Arizona, remembers his grandfather from Sharon, Vermont, saying possessives such as hisn, hern, yourn, and ourn, as in Those cattle are hisn or That house is hern. These archaic forms go back to Middle English, shaped by analogy with...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...
For a deep dive into the world of emoji, check out Keith Houston’s new book, Face with Tears of Joy: A Natural History of the Emoji (Bookshop|Amazon). Emoji offer what’s called paralinguistic restitution, that is, restoring to written language...
Why is it harder to talk if we don’t move our hands? Even when we’re talking on the phone we feel the need to gesture to aid communication. A new book offers a look at the relatively new field of gesture studies. And: Ever wonder why we describe the...
Why is it harder to talk if we don’t gesture? Why do we still move our hands if we’re talking on the phone but the other person can’t see us? Such questions are tackled in the new book Gesture: A Slim Guide (Bookshop|Amazon), a...