Category: Sociolinguistics

October 11, 2022

The Volkswagen Beetle Car Game

The long-awaited results of the Name That Car Game survey are here! I had to throw out some results that did not appear to have valid postal codes or that left the postal code blank. (Unfortunately, due to the original wording of the survey, some people who weren’t familiar with the game answered “N/A” or […]

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Sociolinguistics, Varieties of English 2 Replies to “The Volkswagen Beetle Car Game”
September 20, 2022

Name That Car Game

A few weeks ago, I tweeted about a car game in which players call something out when they see a Volkswagen Beetle and then hit the person next to them. The game is known by a few different names, and I’m wondering if there’s any sort of geographic distribution to the names. Whether or not […]

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Sociolinguistics, Varieties of English 9 Replies to “Name That Car Game”
November 4, 2015

The Drunk Australian Accent Theory

Last week a story started making the rounds claiming that the Australian accent is the result of an “alcoholic slur” from heavy-drinking early settlers. Here’s the story from the Telegraph, which is where I first saw it. The story has already been debunked by David Crystal and others, but it’s still going strong. The story […]

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Rants, Sociolinguistics 6 Replies to “The Drunk Australian Accent Theory”
December 12, 2013

Yes, Irregardless Is a Word

My last post, “12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes about Grammar Mistakes Makes”, drew a lot of comments, some supportive and some critical. But no point drew as much ire as my claim that irregardless is a word. Some stated flatly, “Irregardless is not a word.” One ignorantly demanded, “Show me a dictionary that actually […]

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Sociolinguistics, Usage, Words 23 Replies to “Yes, Irregardless Is a Word”
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