Some letters of the alphabet aren’t in the alphabet. Here’s how. Songs (in order of appearance): Mystery Sax by Kevin MacLeod Silver Flame by Kevin
Read more
A London Accent from the 14th to the 21st Centuries
If you’d like to read more about the history of south-eastern English pronunciation, I’d recommend the Cambridge History of the English Language series. I used
Read more
Appalachian English
Excerpt on Appalachian English from the documentary film Mountain Talk. DVD available at: Mountain Talk ————————————— ABOUT MOUNTAIN TALK The people of Southern Appalachia tell
Read more
How Many Languages Are There?
The answer is, of course, a bit more complicated than you might think. • Written with Molly Ruhl and Gretchen McCulloch. Gretchen’s podcast has an
Read more
It’s pronounced GIF.
Is there a “right” way to pronounce it? And why is it so complicated? • Written with Molly Ruhl and Gretchen McCulloch. Gretchen’s podcast has
Read more
Ə: The Most Common Vowel in English
“Schwa” is the most common vowel in English. Every English speaker uses it, all the time, but most people have never heard of it. •
Read more
The Sentences Computers Can’t Understand, But Humans Can
The Winograd schema is a language test for intelligent computers. So far, they’re not doing well. MORE LANGUAGE FILES: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL96C35uN7xGLDEnHuhD7CTZES3KXFnwm0 Written with Gretchen McCulloch and
Read more
How Japan uses English
Some insights into how Japan uses English – e.g. can you really make a Japanese word by just adding a vowel onto an English one?
Read more