Brett Reynolds

Joined: May 26, 2023

Brett Reynolds teaches at Humber Polytechnic and is an adjunct professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto. He's part of the team behind A Student's Introduction to English Grammar and is presently working with collaborators on a treebank project based on The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language and on a popular linguistics book. Beyond academia, Brett bikes, swims, lifts, and reads. He also spends more time than intended editing Wikipedia.

English doesn’t always abide by its own rules.

5 Ways the English Language Breaks Its Own Rules

The Great Passive Voice Panic: Why Everyone (Even Grammar Experts) Gets It Wrong

These things are pretty weird when you think about them.

Positively Negative: 5 Surprising Ways We Say “No” Without Really Meaning It

In Japanese, ‘ringo’ means both “apple” and “apples.”

5 Ways Nouns Change in Different Languages

The words ‘galaxy’ and ‘lactose’ have a surprising connection.

Linguistic Siblings: 14 Pairs of Words With Surprisingly Shared Etymologies

The connections between words aren’t always as straightforward as the link between ‘run’ and ‘runner’; often, figuring them out requires the subtle unraveling of linguistic evolution, the kind of detective work that makes etymology so fascinating.

You won’t bee-lieve how honeybees give directions.

5 of the World’s Most Interesting Directional Systems

Not everyone gives directions the way you do—in fact, the way people tell others how to get where they want to go can vary by city, town, and culture. Some of these directional systems might just change how you navigate the world.

Speech Bubble: How Scientists Working in Antarctica Inadvertently Developed a New Accent

A 2019 study of scientists over-wintering in Antarctica revealed subtle but measurable changes in the participants’ speech.

Time Traveler’s Guide: Verb Tenses in 8 Languages From Around the World

If you've ever felt that English could use a couple more tenses to truly capture the nuances of the past, present, and future, this exploration of languages that have taken verb tenses to fascinating new heights is for you.

These linguistic illusions will hurt your brain.

5 Linguistic Illusions That Will Make You Go “Wait, What?”

Linguistic illusions—a phenomenon in which your judgment or understanding of a sentence or phrase conflicts with its actual meaning or structure—reveal how we process the world, and remind us that things aren’t always as they seem.