A corpus of the text found in the most popular images for “doge” on imgur on 23 February 2014. My article based on this is here. I went with imgur rather than reddit or tumblr for two reasons — many of the reddit/tumblr doge images are stored there, and it’s easy to search . The […]
Part 1 (A Matter of Some Consonants) is here. Part 2 (Disemvoweled) is here. Remember several thousand words ago when somebody asked me if all languages use the same sounds? And then I went and inventoried all the sounds that English has? Now finally – FINALLY – we can use that knowledge to contrast English […]
Part 1 (A Matter of Some Consonants) is here. Alright. Vowels. Much like last time, in this part we’re going to go over how English vowels work, so that next time we can talk about what other languages do differently. (No, I haven’t forgotten the original question, and we will get there… eventually.) In the […]
Hey Art Nerd, I have taken up sketching recently, and I’m getting better at line work. The shapes are starting to come out on the page like they are in my head, know what I mean? But I’m having a hell of a time trying to show what things are supposed to be. How do […]
Dear Language Nerd, Do all languages use the same sounds? -Sally Kimball *** Dear Sally, Short answer: No. Long answer: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooo. … ….. … All right, long answer with actual facts and stuff. But you asked for it: We make language sounds by exhaling* air and then blocking or partially blocking that airflow […]
Hey, everybody, welcome to our new website! The League is coming to the Big Leagues!* Everything should be up and running, but if you see any broken links or other problems, please shoot us an e-mail at asktheleagueofnerds@gmail.com. Thanks for all the support you’ve given us in our first year, which is what made this […]
Dear Language Nerd, What do the names of the days mean? Ok, “Sunday” I think I can guess, but “Tuesday”? Is “Friday” related to French fries? -Katon Lannis *** Dear Katon, Last year at this time, I talked about the meanings of the names of the months, so it seems apropos to start off 2014 […]