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Category: linguistics 言語学
Emoji Etymology
The Japanese language has now come full circle. ♻️ Kanji started as pictures, morphed into ideograms, and eventually was combined in Japan with a syllabary that held phonetic value, and now technology is taking people back to the origin of writing roots.
Misheard Words
You see, our brains are meaning-making machines and will try to make meaning make sense even when it does not, and will fill in words it thinks it hears. The school game telephone (also known as Chinese whispers) exploits this property linguistically known as a mondegreen, which got its name through Sylvia Wright’s famous mishearing of the poetic line “layd him on the green” as “Lady Mondegreen.”
How many languages do you speak?
Being able to speak a language is subjective. I have many Japanese friends who speak beautiful English but do not consider themselves to be English speakers.
Double Meaning Wacks & Smacks
“How did you hurt your face?” Asked my concerned coworker. “I hit my car,” was my matter-of-fact reply. Their looks of consternation […]
Sounds Beautiful
Isn’t it interesting that humans have feelings about the words that we use to express feeling?! This is property is called Phoneaethetics.