Yelp and the Huffington Post have published a map of the most popular cuisine by state (or, more precisely, the most overrepresented compared to an all-US baseline ( Read more... )

About a year and a half ago, I was on my way to a dentist's appointment when a Rastafarian-looking dude greeted me with "Good morning Mr. Jewish Man." I replied "Good morning ( Read more... )

How To Do Worse in Your Intro Linguistics Class:
"
...
4. Print out a blank IPA chart. Fill it in in real-time with sounds you hear in class. When you complete a row or column, shout /bɪŋgow/.
...
"

When at Emilio's Sol y Nieve yesterday with innerdoggie, lhn, and prilicla, I realized that I enjoy Spanish food occasionally because it's like alternate-history Mashriqi food.

Emilio's menu said explicitly "European Spanish Food". My theory was that they meant to rule out the foods of Ceuta and Melilla. A quick search suggests that Ceutans focus on fish with ( Read more... )

Why do the French tolerate such an obvious anglicisme as "football"?

A lecture in Scots about the Scots language. Partially intelligble to me.

we vow to sequence them:

"If it tastes good you should sequence it," he tells me. "You should know what's in the genes of that species ( Read more... )

The Law of Superheroes is now out in paperback. Possibly of interest to those of you working in law libraries (or superheros libraries, for that matter).

According to LanguageHat, "sheefish" is another name for the fish "inconnu". The etymology the OED gives for "inconnu" is from French "inconnu" (as I'd expect), meaning literally "unknown".

The short story I was trying to recall at bunj's is William Tenn's "Brooklyn Project", full text available near the end of http://web.pitas.com/kerfluffleb/jul2aug2003.html