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Why do the speakers of different languages hear and produce sounds so differently? Ears and mouths are the same the world over. What differs is our brains. Exposure to a particular language has altered our brains and shaped our minds, so that we perceive sounds differently. This in turn leads speakers of different languages to produce sounds differ
... See moreAlison Gopnik, Andrew N. Meltzoff, • The Scientist In The Crib: Minds, Brains, And How Children Learn
The problem with living in a country where you don’t speak the language is that you start to sound like a child when you’re speaking, and so people begin to treat you like a child. Then, to complete the circle, you begin to act like one.
Adharanand Finn • The Way of the Runner
Twitter is particularly valuable: even the most casual of searchers can look for a word or phrase and form an impression of how people are using it. They might notice that a lot of people who used “smol” in 2018 also appeared to be fans of anime or cute animals, or that “bae” was used primarily by African Americans until around 2014, when it starte
... See moreGretchen McCulloch • Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language
In every corner of life, it’s true that the way we interpret someone’s speech corresponds precisely to the amount of power we think they ought to have.
Amanda Montell • Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
Why do we do it? Do we produce motherese simply to get the babies’ attention? (It certainly does that.) Do we do it just to convey affection and comfort? Or does motherese have a more focused purpose? It turns out that motherese is more than just a sweet siren song we use to draw our babies to us. Motherese seems to actually help babies solve the L
... See moreAlison Gopnik, Andrew N. Meltzoff, • The Scientist In The Crib: Minds, Brains, And How Children Learn
Language can also persuade us, for example, to slow down and pay close attention to what we’re doing.
Dan Ariely • Dollars and Sense
The internet made our personal punctuation preferences public, and brought with it a different set of priorities: writing needs to be intuitive, easy to create, and practically as fast as thinking or speaking. We drew these requirements together to create a system of typographical tone of voice.
Gretchen McCulloch • Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language
Linguists know that nonstandard forms of a language are not objectively “bad.” The grammatical forms themselves, like saying “he be”* instead of “he is,” are not inherently worse or better than what we learned in English class. They’re simply stigmatized based on how we feel about the type of person using them.