Posts tagged “Language”
Cranky people
I love when cranky people write in to the newspaper about trivial things so much. This had me chortling over my toast this morning: • “Goes extinct?” (Salish Sea orca population on brink, 25 November). Since when did this become the normal way to talk about extinction? Is this some Americanism that has become acceptable […]
Native Tongue
In Native Tongue, women in a patriarchal society develop a new language, with new words to express new concepts, and teach it to their daughters in order to free themselves. In our society, oppressed groups also develop new language, though not quite so dramatically. Things like vocal fry, uptalk, “like.” When they use their altered […]
New Year’s Resolutions: rinse and repeat
New Year’s resolutions, heck, any change in (good) habits is hard, even when I’m doing something I really enjoy. Last year I resolved to keep studying Russian – to make it a part of my life in a way that would result in me speaking Russian with a “reasonable level of competency.” I didn’t do […]
New Year’s Resolutions: Studying Russian
I love learning languages, but I’m bad about starting and not ‘finishing.’ I know you never truly ‘finish’ learning a language, but I want to get to a reasonable level of competency, instead of just learning the basic structure of the language and colors, numbers, and food. I tend to put language learning on the […]