By Madeleine Higgins There are thousands of languages spoken in the world. The exact number itself is unclear; people often disagree on the differences between dialects and languages. For instance, some Romance languages that we would consider distinct, like Spanish and Italian, are actually more similar than what we would consider different dialects of a …
Does the language we speak affect the way we think? Read More »
By Madeleine Higgins Have you ever used the slang words “camp”, “shade”, or “tea”? If you have, you’re at least somewhat familiar with “Polari”, the language of British gay men of the 1940s and 50s. Calling it a “language” is a bit of an exaggeration—most linguistic experts would refer to Polari (also spelled Palari, Palare, …
The rise and fall of Polari, the secret language of the queer community Read More »
By Madeleine Higgins November brings the ends of things closer.It calls to mind the plights of some medieval ancestor,Mother’s father’s father’s mother, or reverse,Fretting over grain storage and plague. The dry nights feed it.Still, falling in love in colder seasons—Gloved fingers interlocking,The knocking of boots,The touching of frozen noses—Seeing someone else’s breath in the air,Rubbing …
By Madeleine Higgins ConLangs, shorthand for “constructed languages”, are made-up languages commonly created in the context of fantasy and fiction media. The most famous ConLangs come from J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Constructed languages must not only have vocabulary, but grammatical and syntactical structures. Famous ConLangs …
By Madeleine Higgins These two poems, currently titled (rather uncreatively) “Airplane Window” and “Airplane Ride” were in response to an assignment given to me by the teacher who runs the writing workshop I participate in. The prompt was to write two poems about the same topic (I chose to write about riding in an airplane), …
Whom vs. Who The who/whom debate is fairly straightforward. “Traditional” English grammar states that “who” is used for subjects, and “whom” for objects. What that means in practice is that the phrase “the girl who I love” should be “the girl whom I love” because “who” is the object of “love”, not the subject. Nouns …
Many who have asked ChatGPT to write poetry immediately seek out the flaws—the writing lacks substance, it’s all cliche, it’s uninspired, etc. I don’t disagree; in fact, I actually agree very much that ChatGPT writing by design lacks originality. However, as a result of this feeling, very few engage with ChatGPT poetry on the face …
By Madeleine Higgins The story of English etymology (the study of the origins of words) is a muddled one. The linguistic ancestor of English is Germanic, which comes from Proto-Indo-European, a semi-theoretical linguistic ancestor of most European and some South Asian languages. It is believed to have originated in Southeast Europe some 5,000 years ago. …
By Madeleine Higgins The artiste, with a trembling hand,Drowns pencil-shapes with paint,Twitching at the loss of that rough-draft promise.Once finished, she isn’t quite—Is that cloud shaped to petty satisfaction?Couldn’t that red be more yellow?She trims and blots and razes untilA simmering sunset becomes an entirely different beast.Just as a chicken goes from corpseTo table-topper under …
By Madeleine Higgins In recent years, there has been a significant, alarming uptick in book bans in school libraries across the United States. The American Library Association commented in a 2022 press release that this year, there were 1,269 demands to censor library books, a near-double from 2021 and the highest number ever recorded by …
