Johnson

A pun is a pun is a pun but is not always fun

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/10/14/punnest-weekend-ever

For three years, we've blogged about language. We now (re)turn Johnson to a weekly column format

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/07/05/johnson-becomes-a-column-once-again

Timothy Doner, an enormously accomplished language learner at age 17, talks with us in French, Mandarin and Russian, explains how each language "feels" to him, and shares some of his tips

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/07/04/shrug-like-a-frenchman-and-frown-like-a-russian

The perils of machine translation

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/07/01/mottakelse-to-new-york

Karnataka state in India struggles with its multilingual and multireligious identity

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/06/25/one-state-many-worlds-now-what

The Arabic language is a many-splendoured thing

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/06/21/a-language-with-too-many-armies-and-navies

One free and one inexpensive bit of language-learning software to compete with the pricier stuff

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/06/14/review-babbel-and-duolingo

Long words do not make the Germanic languages especially difficult

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/06/12/crazy-long-words

Some languages consider digraphs—two letters that form a single sound—to be a single letter, confusing learners

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/06/10/growing-pains

The booming country is contributing fairly little to the English language

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/06/06/why-so-little-chinese-in-english

Additions to our glossary of Brazilian speech for foreigners

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/06/04/more-perplexing-portuguese

The Dutch make it difficult to learn their language by speaking such excellent English

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/05/31/schibboleth

The rise of an obscure Iberian dialect to be the world's second-most spoken language

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/05/30/book-review

RSS feed for the Johnson Economist blog.

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/05/29/lexical-facts

What Brazilians say and what they mean

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/05/24/portuguese-for-the-perplexed

Differing terms for ethnicity, citizenship and group belonging ruffle feathers

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/05/21/of-nations-peoples-countries-and-minzu

With no restrictions on the language of songs, English dominates the Eurovision Song Contest

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/05/20/english-atop-the-eurovision-pile-yet-again

Discussions of language in India are distorted by nationalist fantasies of a pure and unbegotten Sanskrit

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/05/13/setting-the-record-straight

Criticism of "exotic" television interviews with poor black Americans

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/05/08/the-performing-black-folks-next-door

A new attempt to lump language families into a 15,000-year-old macro-family

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/05/07/eurasiatic

Languages a world apart have a similar habit of borrowing elevated vocabulary from other languages

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/05/01/unlikely-parallels

Language-immersion programs in school are wildly popular in lily-white Utah

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/04/29/multilingual-in-the-west

Not all languages use the present tense for jokes

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/04/25/a-man-walked-into-a-bar

A skewed study of business-English skills

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/04/24/whos-number-1-really

Seeking balance in trying to make language gender-neutral

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/04/23/an-ombudsman-by-any-other-name-would-still-field-complaints

Many ways to disguise prejudice through euphemism

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/04/19/212-only

The EU's high court strikes down a law requiring Dutch-only contracts in Flanders

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/04/18/going-beyond-dutch

Prisoners who lack a shared language with other prisoners experience severe psychological problems

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/04/16/solitary-linguistic-confinement

Controversy over describing American policies in the fight against terrorism

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/04/15/words-of-war

Should appeals-court lawyers in India use languages besides English?

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/04/11/tamil-in-the-courts

Moving back and forth between accents and dialects

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/04/10/how-black-to-be

What can we learn from a fifty-year-old book of writing advice?

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/04/08/a-half-century-in-language-change

International courts can teach American courts how to provide adequate interpretation and translation services

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/04/05/justicia-mas-accesible

The AP drops "illegal immigrants" from its pages. Who's next?

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/04/04/words-appearing-in-newspapers-controversially

It is perfectly possible to straddle the "descriptivism versus prescriptivism" divide in talking about language

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/04/03/in-praise-of-sensible-peeving

French is increasingly anachronistic as a language of diplomacy. What should replace it?

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/04/02/towards-a-fairer-distribution

Why users of sign language have better spatial skills

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/03/29/mental-gymnastics

An abstruse feature of poetry hits the headlines

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/03/27/broken-promises

How different international tribunals deal with the array of languages involved in the cases before them

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/03/25/laws-in-translation

A panic over apostrophes is a tempest in a thimble

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/03/18/apostropholypse-now

Why do we describe sporting crowds as "insane", "mad" and the like?

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/03/18/theyre-all-a-little-mad

The election of a Pope with interesting linguistic consequences

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/03/14/habemus-papam

How many technological metaphors will survive in the long run?

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/03/13/the-half-life-of-metaphors

The head of Quebec's language inspectorate steps down amid a scandal over "pasta"

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/03/11/once-they-start-laughing-at-you-youre-through

Some languages are surprisingly vibrant on Wikipedia

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/03/07/the-keenest-wikipedians

As Kenya's elections unfold, some observers are fretting over the subtext of text messages

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/03/06/coded-red

Most people would say yes. Language scholars would usually say no

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/03/04/is-a-comma-grammar

Should you call an American lawyer, a juris doctor, "Doctor"?

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/03/01/trust-me-im-a-doctor-of-law

The more intimate a situation, the more people prefer their mother tongues

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/02/27/texting-in-the-underwear-language

Overuse of reflexive pronouns like "myself" isn't just egotistical; worse, it's often ungrammatical

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/02/26/the-scope-of-the-self

An intriguing coincidence in slang use on opposite sides of the Pacific

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/02/22/convergent-as

More evidence that bilingualism is not bad for babies

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/02/20/pitch-perfect

State of the Union speeches are not being simplified for idiots

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/02/13/dumber

Benedict XVI's linguistic choices, and a look to the future of papal tweeting

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/02/12/catholic-linguistics

Some over-clever brand names pose a conundrum for style-book editors

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/02/08/yum-no-more

Germans lived for decades without learning English in the America of a century ago

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/02/07/stolz-amerikaner-zu-sein

What unites Indian languages, and gives Indian English its distinct sound?

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/02/05/the-humble-retroflex

The political importance of English requirements in America's immigration reform

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/01/31/the-magic-words-make-them-learn-english

Which languages do best in winning the Oscar for a foreign-language film?

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/01/29/academie-americaine

The elaborate multilingualism of New York on display

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/01/25/we-speak-your-language

How powerful are the effects of metaphorical language in political argument?

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/01/24/gun-safety-versus-gun-control

Joe Biden makes two tiny changes to his oath of office

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/01/22/flub-redux

Computer translation has made great strides, but its failures are still frequent—and funny

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/01/18/the-name-to-me-is-

The pronoun's winding way to second-person dominance

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/01/17/you-a-short-history

But the traditional ban on it is weakly grounded

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/01/16/singular-they-everyone-has-their-own-opinion

Catch-all terms for gender and sexual identities are a mouthful

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/01/14/alphabet-soup

An open-minded reflection on the differences in American and British English

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/01/10/thank-the-ft-for-a-sensible-contribution

An odd choice for the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/01/08/and-the-winner-is

Insiders invent their own terms for things, to show that they are insiders

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/01/07/do-spooks-call-themselves-spooks

Helping the barista with difficult names

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/01/04/my-starbucks-name

An in-depth look at a widely touted bit of language-learning software

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/01/03/rosetta-stone

Some people believe, incorrectly, that a verb cannot be split from its auxiliary

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/01/01/split-verbs

What's going on when science fiction writers attempt to depict language change?

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/12/21/tomorrows-english

Why are some words fun to say?

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/12/20/bork

Linguistic nativism should take a back seat to good sense when considering workplace safety

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/12/19/para-su-seguridad

How is the use of English by non-natives likely to change the standard language?

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/12/18/im-in-ur-internets-creolizin-ur-english

The Pope begins life on Twitter in seven languages--with one notable omission

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/12/12/and-he-tweeted-saying

A controversial argument that the split infinitive and sentence-ending prepositions are Old Norse

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/12/11/do-you-make-scandinavian-mistakes

Spain's education minister infuriates Catalans with a plan for more Spanish in Catalan schools

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/12/10/a-spanish-own-goal

Modernising the legal language used to describe mental disabilities

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/12/07/the-meaning-of-idiot-in-new-jersey

A putative Scandinavian basis for English is far-fetched

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/12/05/do-you-speak-a-scandinavian-language

RSS feed for the Johnson Economist blog.

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/11/29/the-erkernermerst

RSS feed for the Johnson Economist blog.

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/11/28/merry-war-on-christmas-and-have-a-blessed-day

The linguistic elements of Catalan nationalism

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/11/27/catalonian-confusion

The difficulty of proving Rwandan and Ugandan involvement in Congo through language

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/11/26/linguistic-sleuthing-in-eastern-congo

The future of dictionaries is digital

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/11/22/finding-their-ideal-format

How did the "right" come to mean "correct", "natural entitlement" and "not left" in so many languages?

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/11/20/theres-whats-right-and-theres-whats-right

A tricky construction and some expert advice

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/11/16/people-such-as-he

An amazing panoply of English and Hindi words from one root

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/11/14/happy-diwali

RSS feed for the Johnson Economist blog.

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/11/12/hablen-ingles--por-favor

Struggling to navigate linguistic formality

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/11/08/t-v

The most emotional topics become deadened when filtered

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/11/02/very-much-lost-in-translation

Worries about the invasion of other languages mask a fear of globalisation

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/10/31/yes-we-kannada

A website tracks homophobic language on Twitter

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/10/30/tracking-casual-homophobia

A new census shows surprising linguistic changes in Canada

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/10/29/o-canada-now-also-in-tagalog-mandarin-and-hindi

A big survey of English abilities around the world reveals some fascinating detail

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/10/24/english-where-she-is-spoke

A usage that is almost always ambiguous, if not impossible to interpret

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/10/23/if-not

The ambiguity of "if not"

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/10/23/a-question-for-readers

Sometimes a verb is followed by an adjective where an adverb might be expected

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/10/22/standing-proud-for-adjectives

Tensions at an international linguistic organisation raise questions about the organisation's purpose

https://www.economist.com/johnson/2012/10/19/the-ties-that-bind