ANT/LIN5310 videos

These are some videos that I’ll be showing my linguistic anthropology class over the next few weeks and that I thought might be of more general interest. Enjoy!

Bill Labov on the Northern Cities Vowel Shift
Newfoundland English: A ‘nonstandard’ dialect spoken in Canada
My Big Fat Greek Wedding – Etymology of ‘kimono’
Celebrating Chiac
Radio Radio – Jacuzzi
Tongues of our Fathers (Kromanti creole)
Grammar Nazis
Metalanguage about the verbal phrase ‘be like’
Is is is a problem?
That’s so gay
Erin McKean on dictionaries and the history of English
Irregardless: a double negative
How English sounds to Italians? Crazy ancestor to hip-hop? You decide
‘I am Canadian’ commercial

Language Map of the US (by native language)
Ethnic Origin Map of the US
American Dialects (simple version)
American Dialects (complicated version)
Pop vs. Soda
Alabama political ad on English Only

Barbara Johnstone speaks on ‘Pittsburghese’
A discussion of African American English in Ann Arbor
African American English in ‘Springville’

Weird or What?: Voynich

Tomorrow night (May 5) at 8 / 11pm on the Discovery Channel, the episode of the new show ‘Weird or What‘ featuring yours truly commenting on the Voynich Manuscript will be showing to US audiences. Unfortunately, not being a US audience, I and my maple-loving brethren will have to wait for the summer, but if you want to accumulate blackmail material on me while learning (hopefully) about this enigma, tune in (and those of you with Tivo … let me know). On the plus side, apparently the non-US versions of the show are hosted by none other than William Shatner, while the US version is hosted by … nobody? I haven’t seen my contribution (which is just a piece of the Voynich segment, which is just a piece of the episode with the overall title ‘Cocaine Mummies’) – it’ll be interesting to see to what extent my skepticism comes through. Let me know how it goes!