Whether youโre a devout Catholic or just a fan of Dan Brown thrillers like The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, youโre likely familiar with one of the worldโs most exalted and eccentric places โ Vatican City. Despite its name, Vatican City is actually a tiny country, nestled in the heart of Rome, Italy. What it lacks in [...]
How could something so Plain Jane and American as apple pie like standard American English be controversial? Well, itโs because declaring that anything is standard or normal implies that everything else is not standard, and people tend to take issue with that, no matter what the topic. Standard English in the original thirteen colonies was what we would now [...]
Beautiful Boston figures prominently in US history and continues to stand tall as one of the East Coastโs major metropolises. Outsiders may traditionally know it for the food, beer, and passionate sports fans, but Boston has also gained a bit of recent notoriety for its unique accent. The Boston accent is of course nothing new, but it has enjoyed [...]
Just as some old-fashioned librarians and teachers decry the fact that the new generations no longer read (although people are reading MUCH more than previous generations, just usually online), some people also lament the increasing use of emojis, viewing it as a sort of regression back to the days of cave paintings. Is the internet not only shortening our [...]
People from New York City unabashedly show off their native accent, and rightfully so. Itโs powerful, straightforward, and charming in its own gruff way, just like the city itself. The US is often portrayed as a melting pot, and there is truly no bigger example than NYC. Some of the largest communities in New York City include Dominicans, Puerto [...]
When you think about how people speak in the Big Easy, youโre likely picturing a Southern drawl with a chic French flair, but the New Orleans accent and Cajun accent are actually two very distinct things. The biggest shocker for visitors to Nโawlins is that a real New Orleans accent can sound quite similar to the accent inโฆ New [...]
If asked to give an example of a Native American word, the average American today would likely struggle to provide much more than โtee-peeโ or maybe โmoccasin,โ but the United States holds a secret about Native American language, namely that over half of our states were originally named by Native Americans. From Alabama to Wyoming, the names of 26 [...]
Hawaii is known for good vibes, good waves, and a good deal of confusion over its language. It is one of the USโs few officially bilingual states, with English and Hawaiian of course being the official languages, but neither of those is the common language that actual Hawaiians and Hawaiian residents speak. The daily language is locally known as [...]
The Midwest is a BIG part of the country, and depending on who you ask, the region generally includes from North Dakota down to the bottom of Missouri, then east as far as Ohio. That means a lot of land mass and a lot of people, which is part of the reason the traditional Midwestern accent is generally considered [...]
Onomatopoeias are the delightful โsound wordsโ that different languages use to describe what we hear in an informal way. Though they are informal (and often sound a bit silly), they are no less important and in fact may be some of our very first words. As infants, we may refer to a dog as a โwoof-woofโ (English) or a [...]
