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sarahgrace123's review against another edition
4.0
This was, like, really interesting. No but for real sorry to my girlfriend and my roommate for giving them the play-by-play of this entire book because I found it all so fascinating and simply had to share my new knowledge.
theforereffect's review against another edition
Absolutely fascinating but way too quick for a beginner listening to an audiobook. I couldn't keep up with all the cool facts.
emilyyyytug's review against another edition
5.0
I highly recommend this book. I think it has a lot of interesting stories around the language that we use daily, and don't even pay attention to, or sometimes overly pay attention to for various reasons.
Listening to this as an audiobook was particularly good because you could hear some of the pronunciations or the vocal variation that she was writing about. But I do plan on buying a physical copy of the book as well since it was so good and I want to revisit some chapters.
Listening to this as an audiobook was particularly good because you could hear some of the pronunciations or the vocal variation that she was writing about. But I do plan on buying a physical copy of the book as well since it was so good and I want to revisit some chapters.
kalliegrace's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
3.5
3.5, this wasn't anything new if you've read anything on language recently, but it's a nice summary of where "casual" language comes from and why it's so useful. I think this could have delved deeper into the social implications of "poor" or "casual" language, but it's still a quick, fun read.
alerycelery's review against another edition
4.0
Rounded up from 3.5 stars. Interesting subject, with some cool information, but it sometimes felt long-winded, and I found myself getting distracted at times. I enjoyed the portion with the history of the word “dude” as well as the last chapter about “they” as a nonbinary pronoun.
unladylike's review against another edition
4.0
This was a great switch-up of topics for my audiobook digestion kicking off the new year. I've always been a woerd nerd [sic] and, when Gmail started to overtake Hotmail and other email services towards the end of my senior year of college, I coined the word "linguisticness" to serve as my username, which has worked well on many a platform, despite my not having taken a single class in linguistics. Because, as the author points out, you don't have to speak multiple languages or find yourself among the academics or upper classes of society to understand and influence how language is spoken, written, and used. One of the only things on Facebook I have still found worthwhile and fun in recent years has been reading the threads in a group called Linguistics Shitposting ['ʃɪt̚.,pʰʌ̈̈ʊ̈̈.stɪ̃̃ŋ] and its spinoff group, Linguistics Kidposting. I don't know how to read IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet, which you see used in many dictionaries' pronunciation guides) yet, but it's not too late for me to take a deeper dive into linguistics proper. This book is definitely not that. It is a short collection of essays, each of which are broken up into their own chapters (which may turn some readers off), on mostly popular subjects such as the three titular words like, literally, and dude, as well as the singular third person pronoun they/them, the gendered differences of both influence on common [English] language trends throughout history and misogynist criticisms of uptalk and vocal fry.