Isolated for Six Months, Scientists in Antarctica Began to Develop Their Own Accent
What is often singled out as being the true marker of a “native speaker” is accent .
Rebecca Ericson-Hua • Are Kids Really Better at Language Learning Than Adults?
Decades of historical research have shown, surprisingly, that while the borders separating Europeans and Native Americans were important, those that separated different British cultures were just as significant. Eastern North America was colonized by four distinct migration streams that originated in four different parts of the British Isles. When
... See moreDavid W. Anthony • The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World
language is both endlessly regenerative and curiously circular.
Susie Dent • Dent's Modern Tribes: The Secret Languages of Britain
She could double any word or name to humorous effect, or for emphasis: Minal Binal, TV BV, bowling phowling. It was only when we visited India, when I was four years old, that I understood there was a world of other people who spoke the same funny way. Gujarati was a lilting, rhyming language, and with a child's knack I absorbed it completely in th
... See moreMinal Hajratwala • Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents
The acrid views expressed about colloquial speech in online comments sections today is a relatively new view of language, fostered by a combination of bourgeois sensibility and the dominance of unchanging documents such as dictionaries, both of which subtly but powerfully distract us from the dynamic reality of language’s essential mechanisms.