How do you pronounce Missouri? Is it /miz-URR-ee/ or /miz-URR-uh/? There are actually four distinct pronunciations of this word. Linguist Donald Lance of the University of Missouri-Columbia studied the history of this name extensively and found that...
If you speak a second or third language, you may remember the first time you dreamed in that new tongue. But does this milestone mean you’re actually fluent? And a couple’s dispute over the word regret: Say you wish you’d been able...
McPaul lives in Montclair, New Jersey, but grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, where several casual restaurants spelled the name of their establishment as dinor rather than diner, as in Stan’s Dinor. This spelling variant is largely limited to...
A husband and wife from San Antonio, Texas, disagree over the meaning of the word regret. Is it possible to say you regret that you never met Albert Einstein or heard Freddy Mercury in concert? Is regret a matter of having remorse for something you...
The anatomy of effective prose, and the poetry of anatomy. Ever wonder what it’d be like to audit a class taught by a famous writer? A graduate student’s essay offers a taste of a semester studying with author Annie Dillard. Also, what...
Stephanie, a social worker in Tallahassee, Florida, talks with people all day long, and she’s noticed that sometimes when she’s talking to a client, that person starts silently mouthing Stephanie’s words. This may be a form of...
