The Eggcorn Database is "devoted to collecting unusual English spellings that have come to be called eggcorns." (See this week's "Behind the Dictionary" feature for a related story.) Compiled by a group of linguists, the site looks at lexical errors that "tell us something about how ordinary speakers and writers make sense of the language they use." To find out how "tow the line," "fullproof," "beyond approach," and yes, "given up the goat" came to be click here.

Geoffrey Pullum, the co-creator of the language website Language Log, sums up his site's popularity this way: "A: We like to have fun. B: We enjoy writing. And C: We're linguists." Over 40,000 people a week visit for a smart, witty, wry -- and, yes, fun -- take on how we use this English language of ours. Now Geoffrey and his collaborator Mark Liberman, both linguistics professors, have captured the flavor of their website in a new book called Far from the Madding Gerund and Other Dispatches from Language Log. We called Geoffrey to talk about his work.

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We're all aflutter in the Lounge this month, and hope that what we're crowing about doesn't stick in anyone's craw.  Continue reading...

With the average American home watching more than eight hours of television a day, it's no wonder how we talk has become eerily similar to how they talk on the tube. Duh! Author Leslie Savan has studied the way popular idioms have crept into our language and -- long story short -- wrote an entertaining and enlightening book on the subject called Slam Dunks and No-Brainers. Just released in paperback, it was recently selected as a "Book for the Teen Age," by the New York Public Library and has been required reading at several universities. In her book, Leslie explains the phenomenon of what she calls "pop language." We phoned Leslie and said, Bring it on!

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Leslie Savan, the author of Slam Dunks and No-Brainers we interviewed about "pop language," recommends these books on how we communicate:

The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Steven Pinker

Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English by John Russell Rickford and Russell John Rickford

A linguistics blog called Anggarrgoon runs something it calls "Language of the week." If you've ever had a hankering to know more about Hadza, Emberá or Anejomon, you found your blog! The site recently talked about Iñupiaq, "spoken in northern Alaska by roughly 3000-4000 people, mostly adults over 40." The post is quite fascinating. You can read it here.