What Are Diminutives - and Why We Like Them
Adults LanguageA diminutive is something you stick on the end of a word to make the thing it describes sound smaller. ie. Dog goes to Doggy. Every language has them, but some have more than others. Why are we drawn to diminutives? And why is English particularly resistant to them, compared to Spanish, for example?
How to use a semicolon - Emma Bryce
Adults LanguageIt may seem like the semicolon is struggling with an identity crisis. It looks like a comma crossed with a period. Maybe that's why we toss these punctuation marks around like grammatical confetti; we're confused about how to use them properly. Emma Bryce clarifies best practices for the semi-confusing semicolon.
How misused modifiers can hurt your writing - Emma Bryce
Adults LanguageModifiers are words, phrases, and clauses that add information about other parts of a sentence-which is usually helpful. But when modifiers aren't linked clearly enough to the words they're actually referring to, they can create unintentional ambiguity. Emma Bryce navigates the sticky world of misplaced, dangling and squinting modifiers.
What makes a poem ... a poem? - Melissa Kovacs
Adults LanguageWhat exactly makes a poem ... a poem? Poets themselves have struggled with this question, often using metaphors to approximate a definition. Is a poem a little machine? A firework? An echo? A dream? Melissa Kovacs shares three recognizable characteristics of most poetry.
Where do new words come from? - Marcel Danesi
Adults LanguageThere are over 170,000 words currently in use in the English language. Yet every year, about a thousand new words are added to the Oxford English Dictionary. Where do they come from, and how do they make it into our everyday lives? Marcel Danesi explains how new words enter a language.
Why 'love' is a useless word - and three alternatives
Adults LanguageMany of our relationship problems stem from the emptiness of our vocabulary around our affectionate emotion. We have only the minimal word 'love'. Luckily, the Ancient Greeks had a more nuanced and complicated vocabulary that we can usefully borrow from.
The world's most mysterious book - Stephen Bax
Adults LanguageDeep inside Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library lies a 240 page tome. Recently carbon dated to around 1420, its pages feature looping handwriting and hand drawn images seemingly stolen from a dream. It is called the Voynich manuscript, and it's one of history's biggest unsolved mysteries. The reason why? No one can figure out what it says. Stephen Bax investigates this cryptic work.
How to Be Charming When Talking About Yourself
Adults LanguageIt's sometimes assumed that talking too much about ourselves is rude; and asking questions of others is polite and charming. But the distinction is not quite so simple. There are far better and worse ways of speaking about ourselves. We end up charming when we dare to reveal our vulnerabilities to others.
Does grammar matter? - Andreea S. Calude
Adults LanguageIt can be hard sometimes, when speaking, to remember all of the grammatical rules that guide us when we're writing. When is it right to say "the dog and me" and when should it be "the dog and I"? Does it even matter? Andreea S. Calude dives into the age-old argument between linguistic prescriptivists and descriptivists - who have two very different opinions on the matter.
When to use "me", "myself" and "I" - Emma Bryce
Adults LanguageMe, myself, and I. You may be tempted to use these words interchangeably, because they all refer to the same thing. But in fact, each one has a specific role in a sentence: 'I' is a subject pronoun, 'me' is an object pronoun, and 'myself' is a reflexive or intensive pronoun. Emma Bryce explains what each role reveals about where each word belongs.
A neuroscientist explains how being bilingual makes your brain more robust
Adults LanguageMarian Sigman, a neuroscientist and author of "The Secret Life of the Mind: How Your Brain Thinks, Feels, and Decides," explains how babies that grow up bilingual will have brain functions that might be superior to those children that only speak one language.