Monthly Archives: March 2016

A dying American accent

An accent spoken on the Outer Banks of North Carolina is known as “Ocracoke Brogue”: http://www.greatbigstory.com/stories/hoi-toider-ocracoke-brogue-in-north-carolina?iid=ob_homepage_NewsAndBuzz_pool&iref=obnetwork

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English punctuation

This article argues that English punctuation is not fixed and unchanging: http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21694497-punctuation-has-rarely-been-truly-stable-dont-pnic

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How linguists are reacting to Facebook’s new reaction icons

Linguists point to the syntactic problems with Facebook’s new icons: http://www.wired.com/2016/02/linguists-not-exactly-wow-facebooks-new-reactions/

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Many of Shakespeare’s puns have been lost

Because of changes in pronunciation, many of Shakespeare’s puns (including his ribald ones) are lost for modern audiences: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/03/loves-labours-found-saving-shakespeares-puns/471786/

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The effect of speaking with an accent

Does speaking with a foreign accent have important consequences socially and economically? This article addresses this important question: http://qz.com/624335/the-reason-you-discriminate-against-foreign-accents-starts-with-what-they-do-to-your-brain/

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The “bilingual advantage”

New studies discussed here in the New York Times claim to show that not only are bilinguals better at various linguistic and cognitive tasks, but they may also have superior social skills: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/opinion/sunday/the-superior-social-skills-of-bilinguals.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

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Estuary English

Dr. Emma Moore speaks about l-vocalization and other features of Estuary English in British English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttWYFU6QK88

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