Language Archives

REVIEW: Quarks, Elephants & Pierogi is a Delicious Exploration of the Polish Language

October 14, 2021

I love the sound of Polish. I have one Polish parent, which means I grew up listening to it, and can hear sounds that others struggle to distinguish. However, that’s the limit of my understanding – I know a few basic phrases, but have no understanding of its complex grammar. I live in a city ...

Bookmarked

Book Beat: Indie Bookstore Sales and Good Omens

January 3, 2019

Hello again, readers! Welcome to the first Book Beat of 2019. I hope your year is off to a good start and that your celebrations were successful, whether they included parties, going to bed early, or anything in between. The book world has been pretty quiet over the holidays, so aside from 2018 ...

Roundtables

Movies That Moved Me In 2016

December 26, 2016

I’m not particularly interested in Best Of lists. After the third list it gets stale and instead of discussing art that moved us, the discourse instead seems to focus on who wrote the best list, what rank the obviously good things appeared in. So this year I asked our writers to tell me ...

Essays

ESSAY: Disability and Language in Adventure Time’s “Bonnie and Neddy”

November 26, 2015

The seventh season of Adventure Time brought its audience back to a Candy Kingdom facing big changes. An exhausted and frustrated Princess Bubblegum handed her throne over to the selfish, air-headed King of Ooo, and left to build a new life in the middle of nowhere. In the midst of the first ...

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R/W: The Real and the Robotic

December 20, 2014

What does it mean to write a realistic novel? Or a realistic screenplay? Does psychological realism depend on the use of one or another sets of literary tricks? Does it feel real — is that the ultimate test? Some weeks ago now, a famous writer said that Shakespeare sucks because his work ...

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R/W: Do Worry

November 29, 2014

Well, add another book to my Jane Austen fangurl collection. Jane Austen Cover to Cover by Margaret Sullivan explores the various covers of Austen’s oeuvre. The covers are not only a delightful way to engaged with Austen’s continued legacy, but also to learn a little about what Austen’s books ...

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R/W: Concepts and Concept Art

November 22, 2014

A contest? For me? Yes, you! Glimmer Train is a pretty cool short story journal that pays out $50,000 every year to writers. It is a rare survivor, but continues to be successful in its attempts to showcase new work, and often new writers. Their New Writer Contest deadline is coming up. Details ...

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R/W: Flimflam, Fonts… Flaubert?

October 25, 2014

Welcome back to R/W, our weekend collaborative linkblog about language, literacy, and learning! Steven Pinker has a new book out, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, and Mother Jones likes it a lot. They’re geeking out over it and ...

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R/W: A Difficulty with Dialect

October 19, 2014

A Difficulty with Dialect This summer, I read The New Moon’s Arms by Nalo Hopkinson. I didn’t end up enjoying the story, but I did enjoy reading a book that took me back to the country of my birth. Not simply because it was set in Caribbean islands, but because it was written in a dialect I ...

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R/W: Adult Human Female

October 5, 2014

Word Nerdery Woman. Noun. An adult human female. Google suggests: “a female worker or employee; a wife, girlfriend, or lover.” Pack mule, brood mare, treasured possession. Ouch, Google. That’s way harsh. As usual, the Online Etymology Dictionary is more useful, and more ...

Language

REVIEW: Quarks, Elephants & Pierogi is a Delicious Exploration of the Polish Language

Book Beat: Indie Bookstore Sales and Good Omens

Movies That Moved Me In 2016

ESSAY: Disability and Language in Adventure Time’s “Bonnie and Neddy”

R/W: The Real and the Robotic

R/W: Do Worry

R/W: Concepts and Concept Art

R/W: Flimflam, Fonts… Flaubert?

R/W: A Difficulty with Dialect

R/W: Adult Human Female

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