english

Every Letter In The Alphabet Graphed By Its Frequency of Use

Some letters in the alphabet are workhorses, showing up everywhere and often, while others (looking at you, “Z”) are much rarer. But just where does each letter appear with the most frequency? This series of graphs, which plots out the frequency of appearance for each letter, shows us. [UPDATED] David Taylor over at Prooffreader put…

io9 Ria Misra Jun 3

Proof that the English language is crazy and makes no sense

English isn’t the hardest language in the world to learn but it’s definitely a crazy one with wacky rules. Things that apply for some words, never seem to be considered for similar ones. Change one letter here and it can sound completely different there but sound the same somewhere else. It’s all pretty ridiculous. AsapThought…

Sploid Casey Chan Apr 2

Kory Stamper Is Here to Answer All Your Questions About Words

Kory Stamper is a lexicographer over at Merriam-Webster, publishers of dictionaries and thesauruses. She’s here today to answer all our questions about how we use language, from 11 – noon (Pacific time). Ask Stamper anything, whether it’s about the correct way to pluralize “octopus”, or just how she parses out the definitions for words, both…

io9 Ria Misra Mar 25

A graph showing all the languages whose words invaded English

Languages are evolving, living things, a fact that this graphic that charts just which languages English has been taking its loanwords from over time makes clear. The graphic is the work of Philip Durkin the head etymologist over at the Oxford English Dictionary and offers a great look at the global influences that come into…

io9 Ria Misra Mar 10

Here’s the first recorded instance of the F-word in English

And it’s a monk expressing his displeasure at an abbot. In the margins of a guide to moral conduct. Because of course. Technically, “fuck” appeared two times before this. In 1500, it was used in a satirical poem to describe some friars. In that case, nothing like “fuck” was actually written out. Instead, the word…

io9 Katharine Trendacosta Feb 9

This animated history of the English language is wonderful

I didn’t mean to watch this entire thing, but dammit if I didn’t sit through all ten minutes (alright, technically 11 minutes and 20 seconds) of this fantastically witty, animated history of the English language. Created by the good folks at The Open University’s OpenLab, the animation is presented in ten “chapters,” beginning with an…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Nov 14

The Top Words of the Year Are “404” and “Fail”

No matter how you feel about 2013 it’s depressing to learn that the two most popular words of the year, according to the Global Language Monitor, are “404” and “fail”. You can’t paint a clearer picture than that. The Global Language Monitor releases a list of top English words every year from the internet (including…

Tech News Lily Hay Newman Nov 10

Selfie, Derp and Phablet Are Now Words in the Oxford Dictionaries Online

Because language doesn’t really matter anymore to the Internet, words that people use online all the time even though people are often too embarrassed to say it in real life are now a part of the dictionary. The Oxford Dictionaries Online is adding these wonky words to its dictionary: twerk, phablet, derp, selfie, bitcoin, vom…

Tech News Casey Chan Aug 28

Collectively, scientists love adverbs. Here are the ones they love most.

Recently, statistical bioinformatician Neil Saunders decided to look for sentence adverbs in close to 100,000 scientific abstracts. (You know sentence adverbs: “Remarkably, the guinea pigs were wearing armor they had fashioned themselves. Unfortunately, it seems humanity’s days are numbered.”) This is what he found. Writes Saunders: It seems that the most popular use of the…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jul 23

The Longest Word in English Takes 3.5 Hours to Pronounce

The longest word in English has 189,819 letters and would take you three and a half hours to pronounce correctly. Seriously. It’s the chemical name of Titin (or connectin), a giant protein “that functions as a molecular spring which is responsible for the passive elasticity of muscle.” You can listen to a guy pronounce the…

Tech News Casey Chan Nov 21

The Wacky Words That Are Now in the Oxford Dictionaries Online: LOLZ, Photobomb, Mwahahaha and More

Dictionaries exist in between a rock and a hard place: jump on new words too late and they look like a dinosaur, add in words too early and they’re made into a mockery. Words are hard, yes, but some words don’t exactly need defining like some of these just added to the Oxford Dictionaries Online.…

Tech News Casey Chan Aug 24

Language is hardwired to be optimistic, even if people aren’t

Between political disagreements, economic instability, and climate troubles, you might assume every newspaper is full of bad news. Weirdly enough, the exact opposite is true. No matter what’s going on in the real world, English is a perversely positive language. That’s the rather counter-intuitive finding of mathematicians at the University of Vermont, who just last…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Jan 12

Siri’s Achilles Heel Is Non-Native English Speakers With Thick Accents

9to5Mac stumbled upon a YouTube video that exposes one of Siri’s weaknesses – people who speak English with a heavy accent. These non-native speakers cause poor Siri to get all confused. The bewildered Voice Assistant keeps searching for Linda when the speaker wants the weather. And the response he receives when he asks Siri to…

Tech News Kelly Oct 13

The blackboards in classroom porn — just how accurate are they? (SFW)

This is truly inspired work. The blog Blackboards in Porn collects examples from the student/teacher porn genre that actually feature chemical formulae, mathematical equations, etc. on the chalk boards located on-set…and then, on behalf of nerds everywhere who just can’t help themselves, evaluates them based on their degree of academic difficulty, clarity, and overall accuracy.…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Oct 7

Why Is English The Language Of Science Fiction?

Science fiction authors from France, Finland and the Netherlands are all putting out books in English, notes Israeli author Lavie Tidhar (who’s also publishing a steampunk novel in English.) Why is English the language of science fiction anyway? Tidhar’s novel, The Bookman, is a “steampunk adventure, and a book about books, and a mystery, and…

Books & Comics Charlie Jane Anders Jan 6

Road Sign Translation Snafu Proves Machines Are Less Lazy Than Humans

What happens when you ask a guy to translate something for you into a language you don’t understand? This. The top part of the sign is in English, but when they emailed someone to translate that English into Welsh, the response actually said “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any…

Tech News Jason Chen Nov 1

Question of the Day: Do You Consider Yourself a Fanboy?

The word fanboy gets thrown around a lot these days-so much so that Webster’s decided to officially incorporate the term into the English language. Generally speaking, when referring to someone as a fanboy it is intended to be derogatory-but the bottom line is that Fanboyism is the root of all great nerdy debates. So, it…

Gadgets Sean Fallon Aug 12

Fanboy Is Now a Real English Word, Says Merriam-Webster

Yes, it’s official: you now can be a fanboy by the power of Grayskull and the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, which says the word is now part of the English language. They arrive a little late, because the Oxford American Dictionary in Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard running on my Apple iMac 24″ shows it, and…

Tech News Jesus Diaz Jul 8

Sharp and IBM’s Real-Time Language Translator

So is this finally it? Is this the real-time language translator that will make talking with people in a foreign language as easy as it is in science fiction films, where it seems like everyone speaks English? Maybe. Sharp and IBM introduced this hand held device that the companies say can translate Japanese to English…

Gadgets Charlie White Oct 4

Every Letter In The Alphabet Graphed By Its Frequency of Use

Proof that the English language is crazy and makes no sense

Kory Stamper Is Here to Answer All Your Questions About Words

A graph showing all the languages whose words invaded English

Here’s the first recorded instance of the F-word in English

This animated history of the English language is wonderful

The Top Words of the Year Are “404” and “Fail”

Selfie, Derp and Phablet Are Now Words in the Oxford Dictionaries Online

Collectively, scientists love adverbs. Here are the ones they love most.

The Longest Word in English Takes 3.5 Hours to Pronounce

The Wacky Words That Are Now in the Oxford Dictionaries Online: LOLZ, Photobomb, Mwahahaha and More

Language is hardwired to be optimistic, even if people aren’t

Siri’s Achilles Heel Is Non-Native English Speakers With Thick Accents

The blackboards in classroom porn — just how accurate are they? (SFW)

Why Is English The Language Of Science Fiction?

Road Sign Translation Snafu Proves Machines Are Less Lazy Than Humans

Question of the Day: Do You Consider Yourself a Fanboy?

Fanboy Is Now a Real English Word, Says Merriam-Webster

Sharp and IBM’s Real-Time Language Translator

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