Researchers at the University of Reading are speculating that today’s languages share a common root dating as far back as the last Ice Age. Words like "mother," "man" and "ashes" are categorized as "ultraconserved," meaning they are survivors of a lost language from which many modern tongues are descended.
http://www.npr.org/2013/05/09/182624059/could-you-talk-to-a-caveman-researchers-say-yes
Tagged with npr language linguistics words
Anthropologists find that the use of "emotional" words in all sorts of books has soared and dipped across the past century, roughly mirroring each era’s social and economic upheavals. And psychologists say this new form of language analysis may offer a more objective view into our culture.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/04/01/175584297/mining-books-to-map-emotions-through-a-century
"Big Data" had just as much to do with President Obama’s victory as phrases like "Etch A Sketch" and "47 percent," says linguist Geoff Nunberg. Big Data is also behind anxieties about intrusions on our privacy, whether from the government’s anti-terrorist data sweeps or the ads that track us on the Web.
http://www.npr.org/2012/12/20/167702665/geoff-nunbergs-word-of-the-year-big-data
Get out your skinny jeans and pass the PBR! Martha and Grant discuss the definition of the word hipster. Also, what happens when you pull a brodie? And why do we describe something cheap or poorly made as cheesy? Also, sawbucks, shoestring budgets, the origins of bootlegging, and cabbie lingo, including the slang word bingo.
We have collective nouns for animals, like “a gaggle of geese,” “a pride of lions,” and “an exaltation of larks.” So why not collective nouns for plants? How about a “greasing of palms,” or a “pursing of tulips”? Also, the difference between further and farther, the proper use of crescendo, how Shakespeare sounded, and why a child’s runny nose is sometimes referred to as lamb’s legs.
Tagged with language linguistics words collective nouns
Why do spelling bees include such bizarre, obsolete words as cymotrichous? Why is New York called the Big Apple? Also, the stinky folk medicine tradition called an asifidity bag, the surprising number of common English phrases that come directly from the King James Bible, three sheets to the wind, the term white elephant, in like Flynn, Australian slang, and what to call foam sleeve for an ice-cold beverage can.
Simon Winchester discusses his book The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Video here: http://ww3.tvo.org/video/177526/simon-winchester-his-book-meaning-everything
When The Associated Press said it would no longer condemn the use of the adverb "hopefully" in its style guide, most people shrugged. But the announcement was a red flag to people who have made the adverb the biggest bugaboo of English usage over the past 50 years.
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/30/153709651/the-word-hopefully-is-here-to-stay-hopefully
Tagged with npr language words linguistics
Why do auctioneers talk so fast? Martha and Grant discuss the rapid-fire speech of auctioneers, and how it gets you to bid higher. Also, why so many books have ridiculously long titles, where you’d have sonker for dessert, and an appreciation of that children’s classic, “The Phantom Tollbooth.” Plus, “different from” vs. “different than,” the origin of suss out, words that apparently entered English in 1937, and the many names for those little gray bugs that roll up into a ball.
Public radio’s show about words and language and how we use them, with Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett
Tagged with auctioneers fast language linguistics words
University of Toronto Physics professor Robert K. Logan on The Origin and Evolution of Language and the Emergence of Concepts
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