Arika Okrent

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Writes about: language

Linguist, author of In the Land of Invented Languages, living in Chicago, doing her part to fight off the cot-caught merger and keep "gym shoes" alive.

5 Pairs of Countries That Americans Confuse

There are some place names that just sound so similar, we'll keep mixing them up no matter how little they have to do with each other.... READ ON

When and Why Did People Start Saying "Um" When They Talk?

Reader Darren wrote in to ask, "When and why did people start saying um when they are talking?"... READ ON

9 Extremely Pretentious Latin and Greek Plurals

Here are some uncommon but etymologically sound plurals that you may employ for petty pedantry at your own risk. You are better off using them in the fun way, though they are most likely to be received as confusing.... READ ON

What's the Real Origin of "OK"?

It's amazing that we ever got along without "OK." But we did. Until 1839.... READ ON

How to Converse Properly: 18 Tips From Old Etiquette Books

This is how you should talk to people, at least according to old guides to etiquette.... READ ON

Why is English Spelling So Messed Up?

If you're a kid learning how to write, English spelling can seem like a cruel prank.... READ ON

21 Creative TV Edits of Naughty Movie Lines

There's a lot of language in movies that you can't show on TV. We're so used to the standard ways of dubbing over words for TV that we hardly notice them—but sometimes the dubs or alternate versions do something so unusual that they stand out.... READ ON

7 Fun Facts About the Dothraki Language of Game of Thrones

The producers of Game of Thrones did the smart thing when they hired language creator David Petersen to work out realistic languages for the show. This season fans will be getting to know two new languages, High and Low Valyrian. But before you start trying to tackle those, here are seven cool facts about the language from the first two seasons, Dothraki.... READ ON

The 65 Year Battle over the Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act

Until 1907, it was illegal in England for a man to marry the sister of his dead wife.... READ ON

How the U.S. Army Made War with the Language of Peace

In the 1950s and 60s, the U.S. Army conducted training exercises using an imaginary enemy named, quite simply, Aggressor. The soldiers assigned to play the part of Aggressor troops had to speak a different language: Esperanto, the language of peace.... READ ON

50 Shades of Gray from the First Comprehensive Guide to Color Naming

After you read this list, you can proudly tell all your friends you were intellectually stimulated by reading 50 shades of gray.... READ ON

24 Canadianisms Way More Interesting Than "Eh?"

A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles is a wonderful place to search or browse through the wordy history of our neighbors to the North.... READ ON

11 Terms from a Knock-Your-Socks-Off 1943 Song about Slang

"Murder, He Says" gives a killer-diller run-down of all the hep words of the day, served up with some serious zest. About half of these terms have fallen out of use, but a bunch of them have lasted. Many of them got their start in the jazz world.... READ ON

7 Geeky-Cool Translations of Hamlet

Hamlet has been translated into hundreds of languages. But normal human languages can be so, well, normal. These seven translations go beyond the normal, right into the awesome.... READ ON

17 Overly Optimistic Book Titles

7 Book Dedications that Basically Say "Screw You"

Not all authors' dedications are nice. Some—like these—are just plain mean.... READ ON

How Many Languages is it Possible to Know?

There are millions of people, even in the mostly monolingual US, who speak more than one language at home. Competence in three languages is not unusual. But what about 10, 20, 30, 100 languages? What's the upper limit on the number of languages a person can know?... READ ON

4 Defenses of the Hamantash from the Latke-Hamantash Debate

This weekend is the Jewish holiday of Purim, and families will be headed to the bakery for the hamantashen, the traditional triangular poppy seed or fruit filled pastries. But the hamantash has always had a hard time competing with the latke, the potato pancake eaten at Hanukkah, in the age old latke-hamantash debate.... READ ON

Bella, Cha Cha Man, Boogles, Fido, Mopsulus: Dog Naming Trends Through the Ages

Looking for a name for a new pup? From Nosewise to Bella, here's what people have called their dogs through history.... READ ON

Latina vivit: 7 Ways to Be Ready Next Time News Breaks in Latin

Iko iko wan dey: What Do the Words of the Mardi Gras Song Mean?

11 Cynical Proverbs About Love From Around the World

Sure, love is wonderful, but sometimes it can be…complicated. Cultures all over the world have captured the hard lessons of love in the tiny, polished nuggets of wisdom we call proverbs. These 11 cynical proverbs about love won't make you feel warm and fuzzy, but they show that everyone, everywhere, has had it bad at some point.... READ ON

18 Complicated Scientific Ideas Explained Simply

Geologists Anne Jefferson and Chris Rowan created the Tumblr "Ten Hundred Words of Science" to collect examples of scientific text rendered into up-goer five speak.... READ ON

Singing the ABCs in 8 Different Languages

The Art of Reviling: 10 Tips for Criticizing People More Effectively

Here are the keys to becoming a master reviler, courtesy of a Chinese scholar in the early 20th century.... READ ON

How Many Words Do Eskimos Really Have for Snow?

There are three answers to this question: a heck of a lot, not that many, and a whole heck of a lot. Or, if you want specifics: 5, 2, and 99. Confused?... READ ON

Terms for the Penis Among American College Students

Happy National Thesaurus Day!... READ ON

8 Words of the Year from Other Countries

The United States isn’t the only country with a fetish for word of the year pronouncements.... READ ON

The American Dialect Society's Word of the Year Is Hashtag

These days it seems like everyone goes around declaring the "word of the year," but the tradition began with the American Dialect Society, which met last night in Boston for its 23rd annual Word of the Year vote. It's a spirited event, where the members of the society—a group of linguists, lexicographers, and other professional language scholars—argue for their choices. And we were there! Here are some of the words that were discussed. 1. hashtag Hashtag won for Word of the Year. Though it didn't... READ ON

12 Mind Blowing Number Systems From Other Languages

Today is a big day for lovers of the number 12, and no one loves 12s more than the members of the Dozenal Society. The Dozenal Society advocates for ditching the base-10 system we use for counting in favor of a base-12 system. Because 12 is cleanly divisible by more factors than 10 is (1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 12 vs. 1, 2, 5 and 10), such a system would neaten up our mathematical lives in various ways. But a dozenal system would require us to change our number words so that, for example, what we know as 20 would... READ ON

8 Great Arguments from the Latke-Hamentash Debate

Every year, a few weeks before Hanukkah begins, eminent scholars don their formal academic robes and convene in one of the great Gothic halls at the University of Chicago to present their arguments on the most important question of our time: Latke or hamentash? The hamentash is a triangular pastry with a sweet filling served during the Jewish holiday of Purim. The latke, of course, is the fried potato pancake eaten during Hanukkah. The merits and drawbacks of each have been passionately expounded upon... READ ON

5 Songs from the Eurovision for Endangered Languages, Liet International

English has taken over pop music to the point where many bands from other countries will write their songs in English in order to appeal to a wider audience. The Eurovision Song Contest provides one place where other languages can get a chance at a bigger stage, but there are smaller, more fragile languages that are threatened not only by English, but also by the robust European national languages that surround them. For them, there is the Liet International song contest, established in 2002. This is a... READ ON

How Do Computers Understand Speech?

More and more, we can get computers to do things for us by talking to them. A computer can call your mother when you tell it to, find you a pizza place when you ask for one, or write out an email that you dictate. Sometimes the computer gets it wrong, but a lot of the time it gets it right, which is amazing when you think about what a computer has to do to turn human speech into written words: turn tiny changes in air pressure into language. Computer speech recognition is very complicated and has a long... READ ON

The Wisconsin Town That Didn't Learn English for Five Generations

The story of Hustisford looks very much like the story people usually tell about their immigrant ancestors. But in this story, there's a twist.... READ ON

11 Movie Chess Scenes Where The Board Is Set Up Wrong

Once you start to look for them, you see chessboards everywhere. In commercials, print ads, TV shows, and movies, chess is a go-to symbol for class, intelligence and the drama of strategic one-upmanship. However, very often – by some estimates almost 50% of the time – the board is set up wrong. For whoever is in charge of these things, here's a tip: from the perspective of the player, the bottom left corner square should be black. The bottom right corner square should be white. Here are 11 movies where... READ ON

Why Do Sign Language Interpreters Look So Animated?

As New York City Mayor Bloomberg gave numerous televised addresses about the preparations the city was making for Hurricane Sandy, and then the storm’s aftermath, he was joined at the podium by a sign language interpreter, who immediately became a twitter darling. People watching the addresses tweeted that she was "amazing," "mesmerizing," "hypnotizing," and "AWESOME." Soon, her name was uncovered—Lydia Callis—and animated .gifs of her signing were posted. A couple of hours later, a tumblr was born.... READ ON

24 Useful Words From Laádan, a Language Invented to Express a Woman's Point of View

In 1981, author Suzette Haden Elgin was working on a speech when she began to wonder why feminist science fiction always portrayed either matriarchy, where women were superior to men, or androgyny, where women were equal to men. What about another alternative, where women were simply different from men? Perhaps it was difficult to imagine such a possibility, she thought, because we lacked the language to express it. Over the next few years she developed Laádan and wrote her Native Tongue trilogy, in... READ ON

11 Common Words With Very Specific Meanings on Food Labels

16 Words That Are Much Older Than They Seem

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