Monthly Archives: March 2020

Sociolinguist Shana Poplack has found that when bilinguals borrow words or phrases from each other, they respect the grammar of the donor and donee language : https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/dit-quoi

What’s happening today with the ubiquitous “eh” of Canadian English: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-02-20/eh-canadian-word

The Apostrophe Protection Society has folded. Do we need fear the loss of the apostrophe? Would this be a bad thing? http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20200217-have-we-murdered-the-apostrophe?ocid=ww.social.link.email

The OED is removing quotations exemplifying sexist stereotypes such as “nagging housewife”, “shrill female voice”, “high-maintenance girl”, and “rabid feminist”. Given the number of quotations in the OED, this is obviously a huge undertaking: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/06/no-more-nagging-wives-how-oxford-dictionaries-is-cleaning-up-sexist-language?CMP=share_btn_link

The Modern Language Association now accepts the use of singular “they”. Here is a link to the MLA style guide website: https://style.mla.org/using-singular-they/?utm_source=mlaoutreach&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=sourcemar20non