Raindrops. A crackling fire. Birdsong. There are certain sounds that everyone, no matter what corner of the globe they’re in, likes to hear. We share an appreciation for these sounds as part of our human experience, regardless of culture, religion, or borders. Similarly, one Harvard study proclaimed that music too is a cultural universal, in that there are certain [...]
Ask someone to do an impression of a California accent and you’re likely to get a laidback “Fersure, dude,” with perhaps a shaka hand sign thrown in for good measure. But does anyone in California actually even speak like this? Fersure, dude. Not everyone though, and the standard baseline “California accent” is quite moderate and more akin to “General [...]
From Southern drawl to Midwest normy to California cool, the United States is made all the more colorful by its abundance of local accents. A region's accent can be as emblematic as its cuisine and history, and they give an exciting new flavor to the plain old English we use every day. No matter how formulaic Hollywood has tried [...]
"Attention!" Any recruit who has survived the first few days of boot camp has already been made well aware of the extreme importance of language in the military. The armed forces, and the US Army in particular, is packed with acronyms, rank names, and other terms that absolutely must be learned on the double. Your hat, for example, is not [...]
Much like the linguistic phenomenon of similar sounds for the word "mama" across diverse languages, our words for the colors that grace our world exhibit a remarkable universality, bridging cultures and generations. Like the mother-child connection, colors are part of our first and most fundamental comprehension of the environment, and they ultimately constitute a cornerstone of human perception and [...]
Unless you were presented by Hollywood as the sultry Latina temptress or the debonair Italian suitor, having a thick foreign accent while speaking English has traditionally been depicted as somewhat of a negative. Common stereotypes and tropes for non-native English speakers were the Mexican laborer who talked like Speedy Gonzalez, the always-angry Asian clerk who screamed at customers, and [...]
Nearly every product that reaches our hands these days has already been on an impressive journey around the world. 97% of our clothes are produced abroad, typically in garment factories like those of H&M in Asia or Nike in Brazil. The automobiles made by American companies like Tesla or GM all have parts that originated in countries like China, [...]
The linguistic history of enslaved Africans in the United States is a testament to the oppressed people's rich cultural heritage and the resilience of African traditions in the face of the cruelest and most barbaric of conditions. Despite all odds, slaves were able to not only maintain the culture of a wide variety of countries and locales from Eastern, Central, [...]
Sometimes there is just the perfect word or phrase for a situation. The wittiest of us seem to effortlessly come up with these in real life. Authors and screenwriters are in constant pursuit of them. But when just the right thing is said at the right time, audiences simply know it, and ultimately remember and cherish those words. Such [...]
The debate over what is a language and what is a dialect may seem like a linguistic issue best suited for the halls of academia, but the distinction actually has far-reaching real-world implications that can affect the welfare of millions of people worldwide. Anything as fluid and nebulous as language is difficult to classify, and linguists, researchers, and politicians [...]
