Tag: language

The QWERTY effect

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/04/The-QWERTY-effect.mp3[/podcast]I took to typing like…well, like a writer to a keyboard. In high school I was always the fastest typist in typing class. Possibly it was genetic: my mother, who worked as a secretary, was a very fast typist. Possibly it was because I was highly motivated: my handwriting was (and is) atrocious. Anyone who …

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The vernacular of fiction

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2011/08/The-Vernacular-of-Fiction.mp3[/podcast] It should come as no surprise to anyone reading this column that I write fiction in addition to non-fiction: specifically, science fiction and fantasy for both adults and young adults. Which is why Ben Zimmer’s recent article in The New York Times’s Sunday Book Review, describing the findings of lexicographers using modern computer databases …

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The Shatner effect

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2011/05/The-Shatner-Effect.mp3[/podcast] We’d like to think that we’re extremely rational beings who, when listening to someone trying to convince us of something, cannot be influenced by such superficial things as the person’s appearance or the way he or she talks. We’d like to think that, but we’d be wrong, as any number of studies have shown …

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It’s on the tip of my tongue…

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2010/03/Tip-of-the-Tongue.mp3[/podcast] How often has this happened to you? “So I was talking to…to…oh, you know, that guy, the one in the head office, big hair, bad teeth, only listens to Perry Como records…geez, why can’t I remember his name? It’s on the tip of my tongue!” It’s a common phenomenon, and it’s not just people’s …

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The benefits of chatspeak

When it comes to the brave new world of interpersonal communications via electronic networks, I believe I do quite well for a man who is…how can I put this delicately…no longer teenaged. Or twenty-something. Or thirty-something. Or, as of this summer, even forty-something. Despite my advancing years, however, I am still a with-it and happening …

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The hazards of bad jokes

How often have you heard someone say, “I just can’t tell a joke?” How often have you then heard the person who made that self-deprecating claim attempt to do just that? According to recent research, if you truly believe the former, you should stick to your guns, because telling a bad joke in a social …

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Hassenpfeffer is a cuss-free zone!

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From Babel Fish to Woohoo!

Today’s Web column for CBC Saskatchewan’s Afternoon Edition… ********* If you’ve ever watched Star Trek, you’ve heard of the Universal Translator. The Universal Translator is a computer device that is able to instantly translate almost any alien language, no matter how bizarre, into American English. Of course, the Universal Translator doesn’t exist…yet. But all over …

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Accents and dialects of the U.K.

This is a very cool site from the British Library: click on a map of the U.K. and hear a recording of someone from the region you’ve clicked on speaking in the local dialect. A great resource for actors trying to nail a particular accent, among other things. (Via The Corner.)

Shakespeare doth prod the brain most wonderously

Of course, Shakespeare would have said it better than that. Here’s the gist of this new study: Shakespeare uses a linguistic technique known as functional shift that involves, for example using a noun to serve as a verb. Researchers found that this technique allows the brain to understand what a word means before it understands …

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Language

Perro, chien, hund, sobaka, kelev, mbwa, animush, inu. No, those aren’t the ingredients for tonight’s special at a vegetarian restaurant–at least, one hopes not: they’re all words for the creature we who speak English would call a dog. At first glance, the languages from which those words come would seem to have little in common …

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The voice

With the season about to tilt from summer to autumn, Canada geese are once more filling the air with their melodious sounds as they prepare to fly south for the winter. To us, of course, the sound of a flock of geese “talking” to each other is more or less the same as the sound …

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