Listen & Learn Blog

An interesting article at The Atlantic explores the beauty of rare alphabets.

A Vermont-based writer has been documenting our alphabet heritage through wood carvings as part of his Endangered Alphabets Project. Tim Brookes exhibits the wood carvings and has written a book with an introduction by the linguist David Crystal.

Edward Tenner writes in The Atlantic:

My favorite from Mr. Brookes’ book, though, is Mandaic, spoken by only a hundred or so survivors of an ancient people and faith, the only language written so that even in handwriting all lines are equal. Mandeans also may be unique in believing their language was created by God before humanity itself, and highly developed letter mysticism is at the core of their religion.

The Endangered Alphabets project is not just about language or typography but about the unique insights into humanity and world that obscure scripts preserve. (Source: The Atlantic)

Take a look at the article to see a slideshow of some scripts, and at the Endangered Alphabets Project website for more information.

The University of Nottingham, along with video journalist Brady Haran, have come up with an interesting series of short films exploring words we use that have foreign origins or cultural history.

Words of the World shows experts from Nottingham’s School of Modern Languages and Cultures explain how words are used and their history. Chosen words include liberty, aficionado, and cravat. Cravat is intriguing – it’s from the French corruption of the Croatian word for Croatians – hrvāt!

Side note: also take a look at the university’s videos based on the periodic table. The one for K – potassium is pretty amusing (if only for the explosions!).

(Via LanguageHat)

The word ‘dude’ often conjures up images of surfers and Californian drop-outs, but it’s becoming increasingly well-used by English speakers all over the world.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, its origins are in African American Vernacular English (AAVE), the dialect spoken by African Americans throughout the United States:

dude
1883, “fastidious man,” New York City slang of unknown origin. The vogue word of 1883, originally used in reference to the devotees of the “aesthetic” craze, later applied to city slickers, especially Easterners vacationing in the West (e.g. dude ranch, first recorded 1921).
Application to any male is recorded by 1966, U.S., originally in Black English.

The Dialect Blog looks at this further and concludes:

Here is what’s interesting, though. Dude is currently used in both African American Vernacular English and “white” dialects like General American. But it’s used somewhat differently in these two contexts.

Among AAVE speakers, I have noticed that “dude” is used far more commonly in the third person. For example, an AAVE speaker might say:

“What’s wrong with that dude?”

But the sentence …

“What’s wrong with you, dude?”

… doesn’t sound right in AAVE. In California or other kinds of Englishes, on the other hand, this question would sound perfectly normal. This is my own perception, of course, but I’ve noticed that African Americans (who speak AAVE) rarely refer to the people they are directly speaking to as “dude.”

The comments on the blog post are also interesting – dude seems to have quite a history!

Do you say dude and in what context?