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language change

Illustration of a blank scroll of parchment beside a quill in an inkpot. (magicleaf © 123RF.com)

But what about plural “they”?

September 21, 2021 | Filed under: James Harbeck

Singular “they” is here to stay, and that’s a good thing. There is no decent reason to require that third-person singular pronouns — and only third-person singular pronouns — always specify gender. “He” has never truly covered men and women equally, though starting in the 1800s some people tried to …

The Ongoing Demise of English

September 13, 2016 | Filed under: James Harbeck

English just isn’t spoken as well as it used to be. As people who have to deal every day with the abuses of common users, we will surely all agree with this sentiment: “our unfortunate ears are doomed not only to excruciate in the torments of bad grammar, but to …

Being Intercultural: The Language of Health

August 30, 2016 | Filed under: Zanne Cameron

Being intercultural is often defined strictly in terms of ethnicity and geography, when really each of us lives a multiplicity of cultural identities on a daily basis. Our interactions at work and with family and friends, our activities, faith, offline and online personas, all have their own overlapping and intersecting …

A Whole Nother Thing

May 17, 2016 | Filed under: James Harbeck

As editors, we pay attention to the written form of our language. Its relation to the spoken form is a whole other thing. The spelling is odd, we know. But even our hyphenation doesn’t really break according to pronunciation. Consider the word breaking. Where do you hyphenate it? Break-ing. But …

Wasted Words: Quarrelling With Pronouns

April 12, 2016 | Filed under: Wilf Popoff

Around the time the Great Flood started to recede I was taught to write, “Everyone must remove his shoes.” Funny how boys aren’t bothered by such preferential usage of male gender pronouns. Back then feminism was a feature of the French Revolution and the current usage of politically correct had …

Wasted Words: The Origins of Texting

February 9, 2016 | Filed under: Wilf Popoff

Is digital discourse destroying the English language along with civilization? Does texting portend doom? Let’s not be so hasty: I often read letters from the past — for example, the 19th-century correspondence of Bertrand Russell’s family.1 These aristocrats (Russell’s grandfather was twice the British prime minister) habitually took shortcuts in …

What Do Words Really Mean?

February 2, 2016 | Filed under: Victoria Neufeldt

How discombobulating words can be! You feel certain about what a word means, but then are challenged by another person’s interpretation. Sometimes the discussion, or even argument, is rooted in changing social situations. For example, what does poverty mean? What did it mean 200 years ago? A dispute about words …

Wherefore Pleaseth Archaic English?

January 5, 2016 | Filed under: James Harbeck

“O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made …

Change

Who Let That Word Into the Dictionary? | Linguistics, Frankly

August 18, 2015 | Filed under: James Harbeck

Every so often, Oxford or Merriam-Webster will release a list of words recently added to one of their dictionaries, and many people become grouchy at what they see as awful — or even fake — intrusions that have somehow been bootlegged into the hallowed halls of the official lexicon. You …

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