What Happens When You Try to Put All The Words Online
Lexicographer Erin McKean’s interactive ‘Wordnik’ is projected to be the largest online dictionary ever. CHICAGO — Erin McKean doesn’t look much like a revolutionary….
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Turn to the left, turn to the Right: Get your Marxists right right right
Okay, people. I really don’t want to go here more than once. (And I haven’t, on the blog, but I have this conversation with…
Read MoreOn torture, from around the blogosphere
It is a topic of distraction, in part because of the news, and in part because of my most recent piece. Here’s an insightful…
Read MoreMaybe Kinyarwanda is actually the universal language
I was sitting in the bus station in Butare and four Asian men walked in. A tall guy in an Indian-style tunic went to…
Read MoreIf I had been there at creation…
I would have lobbied that languages be easier to learn; that we can all choose 12 to store in our brains at birth, and…
Read MoreLanguage Lessons II
Our gardener sought me out today–and before I go any further, yes, I feel strange and a little queasy saying “our gardener”–because he wanted…
Read MoreThat is, literally, not what I meant
I was having a meal with a Rwandan friend earlier today, and in the process learned that “Dufugurua” means both “We am eating a…
Read MoreThere are only so many ways to say something
Earlier this week, I went through recording after recording from Sierra Leone–interviews with forced wives, and with women who suffered every denigrating crime even…
Read MoreHearing the human, or, Why Marc Lacey is my hero
There’ve been a lot of articles about the rising price of food around the world and what it means for everything from the death…
Read MoreGetting right speech right
I’m pretty sure I waxed rhapsodic in my graduate school essay about the importance of telling people’s stories. Stories were the one thing in…
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