“What has a head like a cat, feet like a cat, a tail like a cat, but isn’t a cat?” Answer: a kitten! A 1948 children’s joke book has lots of these to share with kids. Plus: an easy explanation for the difference between...
Alex in Amarillo, Texas, says he often hears speakers dropping the sound of the first r in the word forward, sounding like foward or fuhward. It’s what linguists call dissimilation, where, when duplicate consonants are not far apart in a...
Oh no you di-int! The linguistic term for what happens when someone pronounces didn’t as “di-int,” or Martin as Mar-in without the t sound, is called glottalization. Instead of making a t sound with the tongue behind the teeth, a...