language is in constant flux
like everything else. one of my teenage boys’ friends here in Montreal asks them “are you down to playing some basketball.” Meanwhile a hundred miles south, “down to” is still used by old timers in the Adirondacks to mean a destination that downstream or downhill. An old timer in Keene, for instance, would says he …Read More
did music start happening in one place ?
The New York Times had a very interesting article on April 14 by Nicholas Wade titled “Phonetic Clues Hint Language is African-born.” There are striking similarities in 500 languages throughout the world. Click-using African languages have 100 phonemes. Hawaiian has only 13, English has 43, so the further from the source the fewer the phonemes, …Read More