About this website

This website was set up to accompany my newsletter on how English is evolving and how it is spoken around the world. I like making lists. I like categorising the things I come across. It’s just how I tick. This website is a side project, and I usually only come to it once a month,… Continue reading About this website

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What does “75 cozy” mean?

screenshots from relevant TikTok videos

Rebecca Jennings wrote a column for Vox about all the new terms that are being coined on TikTok for the clicks. She even gave the phenomenon a name: trendbait. It was a great piece and I featured it in my newsletter. One annoying thing, though: one of her examples was a term that I had… Continue reading What does “75 cozy” mean?

Why do people sometimes write “wen” instead of “when”?

In the most recent episode of podcast Because Language, presenter and linguist Daniel Midgley tells us about some interesting Internet English he has observed. It is about the placement of the word “when”, sometimes spelled as “wen”. Here are some examples: (I apologise for all the examples being on Reddit, Daniel Midgley did name some… Continue reading Why do people sometimes write “wen” instead of “when”?

AI ghost words: a list

An AI ghost word is a nonsense word that has been given a nonsense definition by AI. In practice, we see that the same ghost words are given different definitions on different junk-AI websites. Here are a few examples. lrtsjerk 2460 results on Google (January 2024) This was the first AI ghost word I encountered.… Continue reading AI ghost words: a list

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lrtsjerk & AI ghost words, part 2

I'm just a ghost word. I'm not doing anything wrong.

I’ve had a few responses to my blog post from 30 January 2024 about AI generated articles making up definitions for nonsense words. For the term “lrtsjerk”, for example, I found 2460 articles; a few definitions were “a group of online jerks”, “a leading technology solution”, “an out-of-the-box way of thinking”, “a magical land”, “a… Continue reading lrtsjerk & AI ghost words, part 2

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Enregisterment explained

Today, fellow English teacher, blogger, and podcaster Dan Clayton posted this on BlueSky: In a follow-up post, he clarified that the enregisterment in this xtweet was the “like roadmen” part. I had never heard of the term “enregisterment” so I googled “enregisterment meaning” and “enregisterment linguistics”. I found lots of very dense, academic papers and… Continue reading Enregisterment explained

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I checked out 9 language learning AIs

dramatic reenactment of just exactly how happy I looked while doing the research for this article

The moment ChatGPT came out and amazed the world in late 2022, I immediately thought “this would be great for language practice”. Except it wasn’t. ChatGPT is simply not a good conversation partner. It’s made to answer questions, not to keep a conversation going. You can use it as a language tutor, but you keep… Continue reading I checked out 9 language learning AIs

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Neologism: microgooning

I collect neologisms for my newsletter English in Progress. Sometimes I find them myself on social media (by searching for “English language” and similar). Then I write a blog post about them, because I don’t like linking to social media in my newsletter. “Gooning” is either masturbating a lot, or masturbating in such a way… Continue reading Neologism: microgooning

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