If you are reading this, your world is in grave danger. Touch nothing. Take no samples. Leave this place immediately. Destroy everything you have brought here, and never return. We have left this message in stone, in every language we have ever known, to stop a horrible threat. Heed these words, even though you do not want to. "What does it say?" "Beats me." "Isn't language supposed to be a big subject for a linguistics specialist?"
"For a long, long time, spicy meant exactly what it is supposed to be: that which is containing spice, or redolent of spice," Anatoly Liberman, a linguist at the University of Minnesota. But it was around the 19th century, that records show people started to use spicy in other less literal ways, he said. It can also refer to "racy" or "engagingly provocative" in reference to scandalous gossip or anything tantalizing.
The intrigue: The debate on how to say "pecan" is still nutty. According to Merriam Webster "puh-KAWN," "puh-CAN," and "PEE-can" are widely used. And depending on which survey you point to, either "PEE-can" (preferred by Northeasterners) or "puh-KAWN" is the most popular way for Americans to say it. Some people have very strong feelings about their preferred pronunciation.
Delve, intricate, surpass. Perhaps you've been hearing and seeing these words more often -- ChatGPT may be to blame. People are adopting language from the chatbot's lexicon, according to Florida State University researchers . The university's Modern Languages and Linguistics, Computer Science, and Mathematics departments collaborated to reveal that the chatbot's most overused words are influencing human speech patterns.
If women speak and hear a language of communication and intimacy, while men speak and hear a language of status and independence, then communication between men and women can be like a cross-cultural communication . . . .
The most basic structural rule of conversation is taking turns, with a corollary that conversational turns should be similar in length. If someone is dominating a conversation, then they are violating this basic structural rule.
Chinese characters, contrary to popular belief, are not merely pictures; they predominantly represent distinct morphemes, revealing a complex language system that goes back centuries.