Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles about Linguistics
Every learner of a foreign language experiences a certain euphoria at the beginning, based (we believe) mainly on fantasies about what you'll be able to do when the studied tongue is mastered. After a short time, this feeling is often crushed — or at least, dealt a serious blow — by a collision with a wall.
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If your Saturday night needs some excitement, join us here in the Lounge for our weekly linguistic adventure: it's a thrill ride that you can enjoy without leaving the comfort of your recliner!
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For the past three decades Professor Connie Eble has been pursuing a unique project: Tracking the slang of her students. The in-house linguist of the University of North Carolina's English Department, she polls her students every semester about their non-standard language. This long-term research has given Professor Eble a singular window into the function of language in society, which she discusses in her book Slang and Sociability. Professor Eble recently gathered the latest crop of slang from her students, so we called her to find out what she found, and what it means.
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How do words enter our lexicon? Which ones survive in our language? Which ones die? Forensic linguist Dr. Allan Metcalf has developed a method to predict the success or failure of a word that's almost foolproof. English professor and registrar of MacMurray College in Illinois, Allan is also the Executive Secretary of the American Dialect Society, which famously announces their annual Word of the Year. It is this exercise that served as the catalyst for Allan's investigations, which he explains in his book Predicting New Words. We spoke to him about his fascinating findings, and, of course, the Word of the Year:
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Linguist Michael Erard, the author of Um. .. Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean who we recently interviewed, graciously sent us this article, which he first wrote and published in the magazine Lingua Franca:
In a recent issue of the moderated e-mail list Linguist, Brown University anthropologist William O. Beeman addressed an odd phenomenon: Apparently, there is a different word for butterfly in every language, even though historical relationships and geographic contacts often suggest the words should be similar. Beeman called it "the butterfly problem."
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How do our words relate to our thoughts? What does language tell us about human nature? What are we doing, language-wise, when we swear, use innuendo or name our babies? Harvard professor Steven Pinker examines these questions -- and much more -- in his terrific new book, The Stuff of Thought. We had a fascinating conversation with him about his research into language and cognition:
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Words like "spacesuit," "blast off" and "robot" weren't born in science -- but in science fiction. To learn more, we called Jeff Prucher, the editor of Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, a rich and fascinating compendium of words invented and popularized by the genre. We spoke to him about science fiction's impact on English:
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