My article on what American English will sound like in 2050, which led to my being on a radio show in Los Angeles, has since gotten me interviewed on two more radio shows – like the first one, on National Public Radio, which seems to be the only kind of radio station that cares about this kind of thing. You can listen to the interviews:
New Hampshire Public Radio, May 11 (11 minutes)
Georgia Public Broadcasting, June 4 (5½ minutes)
Posted in The Week
Tagged interview, language change, National Public Radio, NPR, The Week
I’ve been interviewed a second time about that article I did for The Week on what Americans will sound like in 2050. This time it was with a National Public Radio station in New Hampshire, and it was pre-recorded and edited rather than live and on the spot. It’s about 11 minutes. They’ve put it up on their website:
What Americans Will Sound Like in the Future
(You have to scroll down a bit to get to it, as it’s one of several segments in the show.)
Posted in The Week
Tagged American accents, American speech, English, future, National Public Radio, NPR, radio, The Week, United States
My latest article for The Week, “What Americans will sound like in 2050,” has drawn some attention. In particular, it caught the attention of some folks at KPCC, an NPR radio station in southern California. They did a live interview with me this afternoon (this morning their time). They also recorded it and transcribed some of it. It’s 7:23 long, so it won’t eat too too much of your time…
Predicting the future of American English
Posted in language and linguistics, The Week
Tagged English language, English language history, interview, KPCC, NPR, radio
A couple of weeks ago, I did an “English language time machine” piece for The Week. This week, it’s up as a podcast, for those who prefer to listen:
What the English of Shakespeare, Beowulf, and King Arthur actually sounded like
Posted in The Week
Tagged Anglo-Saxon, Breton, Brittonic, Brythonic, Chaucer, English, English language, history, Middle English, Old English, Shakespeare, The Week
The Week is doing a special series on the US in the year 2050. They asked me to write an article on what English will be like then. I obliged. Here it is, with illustrative videos:
What Americans will sound like in 2050
Posted in The Week
Tagged American English, English, future, grammar, pronunciation, The Week
Some people really screw up their grammar. They do it by trying too hard and by misanalysing what’s going on – they’ve learned a few simple rules and don’t know the fuller facts of language, because no one told them about copulation… or resultatives or substantives.
Well, time to find out. Here’s my latest article for The Week:
What we talk about when we talk about (word) copulation
Posted in The Week
Tagged copular verbs, copulas, copulation, English grammar, grammar, resultative constructions, resultatives, substantives, syntax, The Week
Hop into a time machine to travel back in the history of the English language! How do you think it will go? Step out and talk with people from olden times who use quaint words and a bit of thou and –eth? Heh heh. Find out what’s really waiting for you as you travel back through the history of England in my latest article for The Week:
What the English of Shakespeare, Beowulf, and King Arthur actually sounded like
Complete with video clips!
(And yes, before you say it, “the English of King Arthur” is, shall we say, a trick question.)
Posted in The Week
Tagged Beowulf, Breton, Chaucer, English history, English language, King Arthur, medieval, Shakespeare, The Week
My latest article for The Week looks at 10 words that are further evidence of the malicious character of English spelling. They look like they should be easy to pronounce, and many of us pronounce them as they look… but they’re really supposed to be pronounced quite differently:
10 words we’ve forgotten how to pronounce
Posted in The Week
Tagged blackguard, boatswain, bosun, clapboard, English spelling, fo'c'sle, forecastle, forehead, gooseberry, gunwale, spelling, spelling pronunciations, The Week, victual, vittle, waistcoat, Worcester
The Pitkern language is dying. It’s dying because it has a small number of speakers and it’s not the language of opportunity for the youngest generations, who are moving away to Australia and New Zealand. Even the Pitkern-language version of Wikipedia has been proposed for closure – twice. What can we do? What should we do? Is saving endangered languages like saving endangered species? Are there reasons to let a language die? I look at all this in my latest article for The Week… and when it comes to Pitkern, there’s an additional twist. Read it now:
Why do we fight so hard to preserve endangered languages?
Posted in The Week
Tagged endangered languages, language preservation, Norfuk, Pitkern, The Week
My recent article for The Week on yup, nope, and related words has become a podcast. As always, my producer, Lauren Hansen, has added some extra audio illustrations. Give it a listen if you have five minutes:
Why do we have so many words for yes and no?
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