Reading Roundup: Joan in Flames, Happy Birthdays, Word o’ the Year
Ill Winds
Posted on December 9, 2017 - 6:28pm
linguistics
An Entomological Etymology
Over the centuries, bug has become an astonishingly versatile little word, with roughly six common meanings and 170 slang uses. But why? Where did the word come from and how did it manage to so infest the English language?
The question was buggin’ me, so I called up Geoffrey Nunberg, renowned linguist and professor at the Berkeley School of Information, to see what he could tell me.
From the Fall 2017 Bugged issue of California.
Waxing Poetic: New Tech Revives Sounds from Past Treasures
In a corner of the Digital Imaging Lab in the basement of UC Berkeley’s Moffitt Library, recent graduate Olivia Dill is checking on the latest shipment of fragile wax recordings from the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. These hard wax tubes, invented by Thomas Edison in the 1880s, are one of the earliest sound recording media.
Posted on January 3, 2017 - 12:44pm
For the Young and the Restless: Why Cal Linguist Declares “Gig” Word of the Year
Each year, UC Berkeley linguist Geoffrey Nunberg chooses a Word of the Year: A word, in other words, that was in particularly wide usage and seems to sum up the zeitgeist. Nunberg had a few good contenders for 2015, including “refugee” (due to the crises in the Middle East and Europe and along the Rio Grande) and “microaggression,” the practice of employing subtle snubs to denigrate or intimidate.
Posted on January 14, 2016 - 12:30pm
To Hear History: High-Tech Project Will Restore Recorded Native Americans Voices
Decades of wear and tear haven’t been kind to the 2,713 wax cylinders in UC Berkeley’s Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, which linguists and anthropologists have used for over a century to study the languages and cultural practices of Native California. But a new project promises to revitalize these old, fragile recordings — the first of which was recorded by famed anthropologist Alfred Kroeber in 1901 — with cutting-edge optical scanning technology.
Posted on August 27, 2015 - 11:21am
I Can Fry if I Want To: Why Are Females Chided for Vocal Tics That Guys Use Too?
It seems as if every time a women opens her mouth, she runs the risk of antagonizing the vocal police.
Posted on July 29, 2015 - 4:39pm
Tip of the Tongue: The Words We Use to Describe Wine “Changes” How it Tastes
You’re at an international dinner party, with friends from France, Italy, and China. Someone opens a bottle of wine. After a sip, you say, “That’s a big red, with strong blackberry and raspberry flavors. It’s delicious!”
From the Winter 2011 Taste issue of California.
