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Diacritical marks are placed above, below or next to a letter to indicate a particular pronunciation. A Sacramento-area family is pushing to get California to recognize those marks on state-issued documents.
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Maybe you don't want to write the great American novel, but you do at least want to make your reports for work clear and concise. A lot of us have to…
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John Simpson spent much of his adult life laboring on a book. You'd think he might have long since devoted himself to streaming video, but no, he still…
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RU ROFL about Internet communication, or do U H8 it? SWYP?Linguist and author Gretchen McCullough explores how the Internet is changing the way we speak…
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The way we use language today is not the same as a couple of generations ago. If we used the word "cool" to describe something interesting to our…
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Close to half the people on Earth can speak more than one language. The percentage (43) is actually higher than the percentage of people who speak only…
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America's independence from England wasn't just fought on the battlefield. Early Americans insisted on a new way of speaking that would be a distinctly…
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Even when we're not uttering malapropisms, we may not be using the exact words we intended. Charles Harrington Elster can help; his voluminous knowledge…
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Did you leave your brolly in the boot of your car? If the phrase makes immediate sense, you might be British. We share a language with the United Kingdom,…
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Language and pronunciation are constant issues in the radio business. If we call Yreka "Eureka," we're not just wrong, we're off by 200 miles (by road).…
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"What's that word?" If there were ever a person to ask that of, it's John Simpson. He spent half a lifetime as the senior editor of the final word in…
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Maybe you've visited one of those web quiz pages that asks you about some word choices, then tells you--often accurately--where you're from. The quiz…
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We've been tasked with interviewing John McWhorter. It's not that big an ask, and he literally will not be here in person. Do those first two sentences…
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Tired of the rhetoric in this year's political campaigns? There's a lot more of it coming, and some of it might be uplifting. If you take that optimistic…