Author Archives: brinton

The conversion from the Cyrillic to the Roman alphabet in Kazakhstan has proved to be a matter of politics, all surrounding the use of the apostrophe: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/15/world/asia/kazakhstan-alphabet-nursultan-nazarbayev.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Why would Trump say he is “like, really smart” rather than simply that he is “really smart”? What is “like” doing in this expression. Read what the experts say: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/01/why-would-the-president-of-the-united-states-like-tweet-this-way/549890/?utm_source=eb

The use of “pled” vs “pleaded” in a Trump tweet may be evidence of authorship: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/12/looking-for-the-linguistic-smoking-gun-in-a-trump-tweet/547361/?utm_source=eb More generally, can “forensic linguistics” point to the authorship of Trump’s tweets? https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/forensic-linguists-tackle-trumps-notorious-flynn-tweet/547898/

Here is a wonderful rendition of McCartney’s “Yesterday” in Old English by a German group: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTRl0bMfWUQ

After over 50 years of work and six published volumes, the Dictionary of American Regional English is finally coming to end: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-closing-of-a-great-american-dialect-project See “Indexes and Databases” in the UBC Library for an electronic copy of the dictionary.

This article from the BBC needs to be read critically. Does British English really have a lot to fear from American English? http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170904-how-americanisms-are-killing-the-english-language?ocid=ww.social.link.email

A large number of factors –– social, geographical, political, linguistic –– have been proposed to account for the number and range of languages in the world. One thing that is agreed upon is that there are a greater number of … Continue reading →

An analysis of Jane Austen’s language compared to that of novels published in the same period shows that she uses a higher proportion of intensifiers (quite, really), time markers (always), descriptions of states of mind (dislike, sorry), terms denoting women … Continue reading →

UBC’s own Eh-lab (Director Martina Wiltschko) and Derek Denis (Post-doc, Univ. of Victoria) are featured in this excellent article/interview on Canadian eh: http://www.cbc.ca/1.4115715

Here is an smart article “decoding” the meaning of some common words that Donald Trump uses frequently: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/07/bad-dudes-dumb-deals-trumpspeak-decoded-donald-trump-language?CMP=share_btn_link