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...
You might be surprised to learn that a “hoosier” isn’t necessarily from Indiana. Around the St. Louis, Missouri, area, the term hoosier has a whole other meaning. And: Scotland is the home of the Golden Spurtle world championship, but what exactly...
Science journalist Laura Spinney’s new book Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global (Bookshop|Amazon) shows how lots of languages as diverse as Hindi, Italian, and English all stem from a single prehistoric ancestral tongue. A basic word for the...
Alright, alright, alright! How do some catchphrases become part of the larger vernacular—to the point where people don’t always know the original reference? And the island of Ocracoke off the coast of North Carolina has a distinctive dialect all its...
The distinctive dialect of Ocracoke Island is lovingly explored in the new book Language and Life on Ocracoke: The Living History of the Brogue (Bookshop|Amazon) by North Carolina State professors Jeffrey Reaser and Walt Wolfram and fourth...