One of the great things about speaking a language as widespread as English is enjoying the enormous diversity of the ways in which it is spoken. In this article we'll listen to some very different English accents - then you can post a recording of your own and compare it with others in the community. Read more...

English, like most other languages, has changed drastically throughout its history and as is often the case when in the middle of such change, many people cry out that this change is in fact destruction. That the language is being “mangled” or “ruined”. In spite of these dire warnings, the language has continued to survive through these changes and in fact see its usage grow tremendously over the past couple of centuries. Nonetheless, new developments in the language still continue to cause panic.. Read more...

When you are addressing a group of people as you, how do you differentiate between speaking to just one person? Unlike many of its linguistic neighbors, English technically only has one second person pronoun. Languages like German and French have two words for you - one for speaking to one person and one for multiple people, and the second term in many cases doubles as a more formal manner of speaking to one person - tu versus vous in French, for example. In earlier times, English did have a second person plural - ye - while the original first person singular, the ancestor of you, was thou, which is still used in some areas. As the influence of French grammatical structures grew on our developing language, ye also came to be a more formal, polite mode of address while thou was the familiar form. Read more...

Get a group of kids from all over the United States together, give them some soft drinks, and pretty soon you'll most likely hear an argument about what they are drinking is supposed to be called. Minnesotans and Oregonians will probably call it "pop", most Texans will call it "coke" - even if it's a 7up - and Californians and New Yorkers will call it "soda". In 2003, Matthew Campbell and Prof. Greg Plumb of Oklahoma's East Central University conducted a survey and made this detailed map which breaks it down county by county across the nation: Read more...