Arika Okrent

The lyric “Vamos a la playa, todos con sombrero / El viento radiactivo, despeina los cabellos” translates to “Let’s go to the beach, everyone in a sombrero / The radioactive wind, messes up the hair.”

Here are some word endings that have become productive to varying degrees.

Word is a word. Noun is a noun. Autological words are a self-centered, self-referential bunch.

Lots of languages have distinct plural forms for ‘you.’ Wouldn’t it be useful if English had one too? Spoiler alert: It does. Several, in fact.

‘Radíidin’ means “a time allegedly a holiday but actually so much a burden because of work and preparations that it is a dreaded occasion.” ‘Thehena’ is a word for “Joy despite negative circumstances.”

Not even the strictest sticklers seem to care about how we use words like ‘abhorrent’ and ‘sodden’ anymore.

Without a Rosetta Stone for these centuries-old writing systems, the meaning of the texts may never be known.

These mistakes show that little kids know a lot more about the rules than we think.