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| Dear friends,
Last week we sent out a simple survey to tens of thousands of A Way with Words listeners and fans. Our goal: to find out your consensus on the state of the English language: negative, positive or neutral? We said we’d wait a few weeks to reveal the results. But why wait? We have an answer!
That makes us so happy! Here’s why: our primary goal has been to change the way our listeners — you included — talk and think about language, including grammar, dialect, new words, and more. We’re trying to get you to:
If that sounds like something you can get behind (and we know it is — we have the poll results now!) add your voice to ours by giving to support the program today. Let’s see if, together, we can convince the 28% who voted “neutral” or “negative” in the survey that there’s no reason to worry — English is on a great path and we’ll show you the way. Best wishes,
Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, |
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The results were very positive! Seventy-two percent positive! That’s great! That means a large majority of you clicked on the button for “The English language has wonderful diversity! We should find delight in and learn more about its ever-changing features.”
Further reading
In the 15th century, the word respair meant “to have hope again.” Although this word fell out of use, it’s among dozens collected in a new book of soothing vocabulary for troubled times. Plus, baseball slang: If a batter...
The English language has been greatly enriched by borrowings from the languages of Asia. Barely scratching the surface, we have from Japan skosh, tycoon, tsunami, origami, yen, kimono, futon, and karaoke. From Chinese comes yen, kowtow, gung ho, and...