language
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Here’s How to Make Interacting With a Chatbot Less Frustrating
Hands up if you’ve ever cursed, mocked or yelled at a chatbot. No surprise if you have. Those automated “helpers” – supposedly designed to make customer service smarter, faster and more efficient – can certainly be a source of frustration for sentient beings. Interactions with chatbots have become increasingly common in our daily lives. But…
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You’re Not Meant to Capitalise Star Wars’ ‘tauntaun’ — and There’s a Suitably Weird Reason Why
Welcome, friends, to what is becoming a recurring occasion where I just talk about silly Star Wars linguistics, apparently. Over the weekend, Lucasfilm story group member Matt Martin blew my mind with a shocking revelation: The Empire Strikes Back’s Tauntauns aren’t Tauntauns.
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I Hate ‘Hubby’
The internet is full of irksome words — “heckin,” “awesomesauce,” “updoot” — but the worst one by far is “hubby.” Hubby, if you’re not familiar, is short for “husband” and is primarily used in spaces where certain types of married women hang out online. On mummy forums, it pops up like measles on the skin…
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Why Are Some People Better At Learning Multiple Languages Than Others?
Some people pick up languages like colds, or sunburns—without effort, through simple immersion in the atmosphere. Others can’t hear the word ‘conjugate’ without flashing back, in shame, to the classrooms where they failed, so long ago, to shake the curse of monolingualism. What exactly is it that allows the first group to stride around making…