A Dallas, Texas, caller says his girlfriend from a rural part of his state has an unusual way of pronouncing certain words. Email sounds like EE-mill, toenail like TOW-nell, and tell-tale like TELL-tell. These sounds are the result of a well-known feature of language change known as a vowel merger. This is part of a complete episode.
After an international team of scientists and staffers spent six months at a research station in Antarctica, their accents changed ever so slightly, according to an acoustic analysis by German researchers. The slang terms they shared include dingle...
Is the booty as in shake your booty related to a pirate’s booty? The booty that means “derriere” is an alteration of botty, which is itself an alteration of bottom. The booty that means “loot” or “plunder”...
