Month: September 2012

A shout-out to HRSFAN Aaron J. Dinkin, linguist of the dialectological variety, who appeared as a Major Quoted Someone for Slate last month in an article on the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (NCVS aka NCS). The article is raising awareness of some recent (~our lifetime) re-jiggering of “linguistic turf” for short vowels (cat, cot, caught,

I owe Elisabeth a massive apology for some poorly considered writing of mine last winter. I’m really sorry: it was thoughtless of me not to ask you directly first. A standard apology probably would have sufficed had I given it when it came due, but that was seven months ago. And culpability, like Rumour, grows