Language is always a topic of conversation at our office. We love words (no surprise there), but there are certain words that we love more than others. My favorite word is antidisestablishmentarianism because I love the way it sounds and I love that it’s a double negative. Antidisestablishmentarianism was a political ideology that opposed the withdrawal of state support from the Church of [...]
Much like the seas incarnadine, the English language is multitudinous! We have so many words for various feelings and experiences, yet we’re missing some important ones. Luckily, many other languages have evocative words that perfectly describe common situations. Here’s a few I enjoyed! Tartle (Scottish) The moment of panic that happens when you can’t remember someone’s name when you’re about to introduce them. [...]
Did you know that English is full of little unspoken rules? One of these strange rules happens in ablaut reduplication, which is the repetition of a word with a change in one of its vowels. Terms like criss-cross, Kit-Kat and sing-song are examples of this linguistic phenomenon. But have you ever noticed that there’s a pattern to these phrases? Try saying them backwards: cross-criss, Kat-Kit, song-sing. [...]
Here at Publishing Solutions Group, we are passionate about punctuation. We take joy in seeing em dashes used properly in subway signs and cringe when holiday cards incorrectly include our beloved serial comma before an ampersand. So it should be no surprise that a New Yorker article about the roots of popular punctuation marks as well as more archaic ones quickly made its [...]
In our previous blog about language barriers, former intern Nora Chan went into detail about Google’s translation app, which features a voice-to-text translation option. Nora highlighted the app’s contribution to travel with its ability to translate the sound of your mother tongue into a written translation of another language. Although trying to communicate in a foreign country can be part of the fun [...]
How did you learn how to speak your first language? Don’t remember? Don’t worry…you shouldn’t! Theories and research about human language acquisition have been abounding for decades—from B. F. Skinner’s idea that we learn language from operant conditioning to Noam Chomsky’s opposition that language is innate. Now, recent studies suggest that humans are actually born with biases in language structure. A team at [...]
How language evolved is a question that has puzzled scientists and sociologists for decades. It is generally accepted that groups of ancient people who shared a language and culture would split up into smaller tribes in search of fresh land. Over time these smaller tribes would change, with outside influences causing them to develop different languages. However, a new study shows that migration [...]
On a hot summer day last year, I was stuck in the middle of a party supplies shop in Barcelona. I had exchanged smiles with a small girl in the shop, and now she wanted to become friends. I wanted to, too. The problem was that I couldn’t speak her language, and she couldn’t speak mine. After a long, awkward conversation of hand [...]
Like many other people, I have experienced times when a sarcastic comment has flown right over my head. The thing about these moments, though, is that when you don’t pick up on sarcasm, you tend to miss a lot. Who knew? A big reason why it’s so important to be able to recognize sarcasm is because of how common it is in our society [...]
Rather than take French or Spanish, I took Latin for four years in high school. I loved it, but people would always ask me why I was learning a “dead” language. You’re never going to speak Latin, they would tell me. Why learn it? I could always name plenty of reasons. The English language relies on Latin words and conventions (which definitely came [...]