linguistics

Despite rising conversations about systemic racism and societal inequities, we have rarely reevaluated the biases we hold ⁠toward each other for the way we speak.

The few masters of the toughest tongue twisters earned playground glory. But who knew there was more to Peter Piper’s pick or the woodchuck’s chucking?

When you first get to college, the process of picking a major is a little bit like dating.

How have UC Berkeley professors spent their favorite summers? Read on to find out what campus faculty have done during their most memorable summers.

Lacking a pithy term for exchanging explicit instant messages? Fear not; English quickly conjures up “sexting,” and voilà: The new word, equally a noun or verb, neatly synthesizes two existing words and is nigh impossible to misunderstand.

I’ve always been struck by how odd language is — how meaningless combinations of speech sounds can be strung together in meaningful ways to somehow create an infinite possibility of phrases.

Of all of the problems I expected I would encounter in the present, the “grammar police” have not turned out to be one of them.

Subtlety, of course, is the enemy of “rules,” those one-size-fits-all, dictatorial commandments that ensure that all over the country, newspapers are using the same style and process for sharing information. I understand the need for these rules, and most of the time, it saves a lot of confusion.

Our relationship to language is … complicated. Language still manages to surprise with its inbuilt laws and quirks, obvious or not, that continue to confound and delight us.

Before my first linguistics class, I felt an immense frustration at the smallest of grammatical errors. As I began taking more and more courses in the subject that would end up becoming my major, I saw my relationship to grammar transform.