The NDP leader switches seamlessly from formality to so-called ‘multicultural Toronto English,’ sounding educated and down-to-earth at the same time
Tag Archives: linguistics
11 Canadian words, phrases and slang most Americans wouldn’t understand
Pass me a pop or I’ll turf you out of here, hoser (and so on)
How Canadian schools stack up in QS rankings (part two)
Subject rankings for psychology, law, economics…
It’s not ‘fracking!’ We call it ‘deep earth massage’
Alberta made a cameo on the justly popular Language Log linguistics website last week. U of Calgary prof Julie Sedivy signed in to discuss some survey evidence from Louisiana that public resistance to “fracking” (i.e., hydraulic fracturing, a method of extracting oil and gas more efficiently by injecting high-pressure sand, water, and sometimes other chemicals into wells) may result, in part, just from the unpleasantness of the word. The industry tends to use “frac” as an adjective; “fracking” as a verb is a media creation, though, it must be said, not really an unsuitable one. Hydraulic fracturing is intended in part to crack up petroleum-bearing rock strata, so there’s an onomatopoeic appropriateness there.
REVIEW: The Story of English in 100 Words
Book by David Crystal
The sounds of silence
The last two living fluent speakers of a dying language won’t talk to each other
Does this count as summer school?
I never knew that hair could talk