Latest articles by Arika Okrent
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5 nations that sit out of alphabetical order at the UN General Assembly
feature When you're a club with 193 members, as the United Nations is, it can be hard to keep things fair for everybody
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Why is Y sometimes a vowel?
feature In "yes," Y is representing a consonant, and in "gym" it is representing a vowel
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The tiny island where men have their own language
feature Women and children can understand the language, but it is primarily used among men engaged in male domain activities like fishing and boat-building
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Argle bargle: 5 meanings of word reduplication
feature You may have a hoity toity degree from a fancy schmancy school, but blowing a gasket over certain kinds of hanky panky makes you an old fuddy duddy
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11 spam comments that look like drunk thesauruses
feature Nothing is certain but death, taxes, and spam comments on your blog
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15 less-than-inspirational quotes from a book of moral advice
feature Reaching for the stars probably isn't the most practical advice after all...
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3 fascinating facts about English's most adorable suffix, -ling
feature Surely you've heard of ducklings. But what about viperlings, frumberdlings, and deathlings?
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14 fascinating language facts from the U.S. Census bureau
feature Americans speak more than 300 languages
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35 classy slang terms for naughty bits from the past 600 years
feature Your vulgar vocabulary can now span centuries
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Google vs. Sweden: The linguistic war over the word 'ogooglebar'
feature The lovely, bouncy word means "something unable to be found on a search engine." And Google doesn't like it
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10 old-fashioned swears to spice up your cussin'
feature People just don't swear like they used to
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9 extremely pretentious Latin and Greek plurals
feature What do you do when you're talking about more than one octopus?
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5 pairs of countries that Americans confuse
feature Newsflash: The Czech Republic is not the same as the Russia region of Chechnya
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11 totally redundant place names
feature Lake Tahoe means Lake Lake. La Brea Tar Pits means The Tar Tar Pits. And more!
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What the spelling bee loses by adding definitions
feature Scripps is turning its National Spelling Bee into a vocabulary quiz. B-A-D D-E-C-I-S-I-O-N.
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Where did the expression 'OK' come from?
feature It's amazing that we ever got along without it at all. But we did until 1839
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Fascinating facts about 10 national anthems
feature Andorra is the only nation whose anthem has a first-person narrative. France's anthem is incredibly gory. And more!
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The many failures of the 'I before E except after C' rule
feature The one general language rule that most people remember from school is not a very good rule at all
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Rules shmules: 5 phonetic pitfalls of shm- reduplication
feature With shm- you can be simultaneously grumpy and cute. But it's not always easy to figure out where to put the shm-
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11 mots merveilleux recently added to the French dictionary
feature The term "French kiss" is finally being captured in the eponymous language with a single word: galoche
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6 dictionary mysteries you can help solve
feature Where did the word "mullet" really come from?
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16 simple concepts made simpler on Simple Wikipedia
feature Wikipedia is great for getting a quick overview of a subject. But did you know you can get it boiled down even further?
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Is it possible to think without language?
feature There is evidence that deaf people cut off from language, spoken or signed, think in sophisticated ways before they have been exposed to language
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Why are there two pronunciations for the letter 'G'?
feature In English, words beginning with 'g' can have a soft (giraffe) or hard (give) pronunciation. And therein lies the problem.
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