Link dump

An unexpected history of ketchup in this NPR interview with Dan Jurafsky, author of "The Language of Food:  A Linguist Reads the Menu

A Quick Guide to Liberian English, by Michaeleen Doucleff on NPR Blogs

Don't 'let a frog out of your mouth' by misusing these fun international idioms

Vape beats out bae, slacktivism, and others for 'Oxford Word of the Year'

Languages "lost" in infancy imprint on the brain in a way similar to bilingualism

Get some writing juices flowing

How to fart in Korea

I happened upon this great Tumblr blog that you should check out. The owner, James Chapman, makes a weekly poster highlighting a specific theme and how it is represented in various languages around the world.

Some of his creations are even available for purchase on Etsy.

Beware! You might waste a lot of time on his site. Enjoy!

Did you know...

...why we call it a "trunk?"

(source)

Our Greatest Invention

I just happened upon this article about a book called 'Shapes for Sounds: Why alphabets look like they do, what has happened to them since printing was invented, why they won't ever change, and how it might have been.'

I haven't read the book yet (I just ordered it), but some of the pictures are so fascinating.

For instance, what if we wrote in blocks of color?

Linguists commonly use charts like this:

(source)

to map sounds that happen in our face:

Extrapolating from those charts, the book shows us this:

Which is really quite cool.

I should have my book in a few days, so I'll check back in when I've had a chance to study it. In the meantime, what do you think? Have any of you read this book? Do you agree that writing is one of mankind's greatest inventions?

I love this kind of thing

Source: Grammar.net

Ghetto, part deux

I did a post on ghetto a while ago, but I just saw this article on NPR and thought you might find it interesting. Enjoy!