This post contains a selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English, language change, education in general, and language learning and teaching in particular.
Feel free to contact us if you would like to submit a link for us to include, or just add a comment to the post, with the link(s) you’d like to share.
Language change and slang
Our National Anthimeria
Some time ago, I read a blog post … about the trend of anthimeria in advertising — that is, using a word as a different part of speech than normal.
Global English
Don’t prepone it – do the needful. 10 Indianisms we should all be using
When expressions like “lol” and “bae” are part of modern lingo, can we sneer at prepone and its ilk?
Words, books, dictionaries and language
Just Not Sorry: Chrome plug-in to help make employees more assertive in emails
Sorry, but just in case it has escaped your notice, there’s a new Google Chrome plug-in that aims to help you make your business communication more assertive. You can read an assessment of it here.
RIP
The world lost two great performers this week, both of whom had a special way with words. David Bowie talks here about how he came to write Life on Mars. And here is Alan Rickman as Trollope’s most odious character, Obadiah Slope.
Adam Kilgarriff prize
A new prize has been established in memory of Adam Kilgarriff, who died of cancer last year. Adam was a very significant figure in the world of lexicography. He was one of the world’s top computational linguists, and – working closely with dictionary-makers – he developed the software we use in language analysis and dictionary-making. Adam was a close colleague and great friend of all of us at Macmillan Dictionaries, and wrote several posts for our blog. Details of the Adam Kilgarriff Prize can be found here.
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