Author Archives: brinton

This article explains how we express tones of voice in texting and in video: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/style/tone-indicators-online.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20201210&instance_id=24891&nl=the-morning&regi_id=119842915&segment_id=46542&te=1&user_id=0a9e615b84ef22dc186607f2166707e3

An analysis of the DNA of viking remains yield some very interesting results:https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/viking-was-job-description-not-matter-heredity-massive-ancient-dna-study-shows

Here is an interesting discussion of the meaning of the term “BIPOC” (published in Good Housekeeping, of all places). The article makes the claim that the term was coined in Canada but provides no details: https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/a33436617/what-does-bipoc-mean/

Kevin Stroud has produced (to date) 139 podcasts about the History of English (each 1 hour in length). Try browsing his list of episodes: https://historyofenglishpodcast.com

Some archaic words get preserved in idioms: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/12-old-words-that-survived-by-getting-fossilized-in-idioms?utm_source=emailsynd&utm_medium=social  

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