Language
The Atlantic covers news, politics, culture, technology, health, and more, through its articles, podcasts, videos, and flagship magazine.
The Atlantic covers news, politics, culture, technology, health, and more, through its articles, podcasts, videos, and flagship magazine.
The man bites dog / dog bites man conundrum applied to story-framing
Why Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra gave America its modern language, and why some preachers are struggling to haul it back into the past.
Clips that mark the progress of America’s weird decades-long linguistic detour
Why mid-20th-century American movies, plays, and public speeches were dominated by a dialect that no real American naturally spoke.
“A person can't pick up this way of speaking by going to the movies. You have to go to graduate school.” Was the stagey mid-century accent too easy a route to upward social mobility?
Is your language rhotic? How to find out, and whether you should care.
A particular style of American English once dominated respectable discourse. Now it has entirely disappeared. When? Why? How?
Airhead High: Home of the Stoners
A Mondegreen moment may be closer than you think.
Those were not General Custer's last words at the Little Big Horn. But if he were a modern politician, they probably would have been.
"Facebook is blocked in China, but Chinese media and social media was aflame with the story of the multi-billionaire founder of Facebook who speaks Chinese!"
Finale on the Zuckerberg-in-China saga