Tag Archives: tsk

Tsk, tsk! Or is that tut, tut?

“Tsk!” is a word that stands for something that isn’t a word that we use all the time because it’s not a word, but we mostly don’t use it for what we think we use it for. Here, let me explain in my latest article for The Week:

The not-word you’re always saying

You can get far by acting immature

That article I wrote for TheWeek.com about teenage noises, and its accompanying video, have grown slightly longer legs yet. It’s been reposted and featured on several sites, including PopSci.com and even in a column on Australia’s Crikey.com.au. The Huffington Post presented the video with a write-up.

And today listeners of National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Saturday heard Scott Simon interview me about it – listen to it on their website. The segment is 3 minutes long, which means I still have 12 minutes of fame coming to me. I hope it’s not for something humiliating.

Annoying teenage noises

Annoying teenage noises

My latest article for TheWeek.com looks at annoying noises that callow adolescents make. I give a detailed phonological analysis of each of them – and I reproduce all of them in a video.

A linguistic dissection of 7 annoying teenage sounds