How words from far-flung tribes reveal a 10,000-year-old connection

‘The verb,” says Edward Vajda, linguistic adventurer. “The key to all this is the verbs.”

“All this” is Mr. Vajda’s announcement of a linguistic link between Asia and the Americas, a discovery that has sent a wave of celebration – and controversy – throughout his field.

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I have one word for you glib, fluent people, you who sound smooth, scripted, and rehearsed, who execute each sentence with crisp precision, because your success may be at stake:

“Um.”

Here and there you can catch a new attitude about this and other hesitations to the ideal, uninterrupted flow of speaking. Barack Obama’s main [...]

Call of the Truck Stop: Gentlemen, Stop Your Engines

THOUGH Robert Jordan clocked three million miles in nearly 30 years hauling Wisconsin cheese around the United States, he never considered himself a typical trucker. On the road he listened to educational books on tape. He drove slower than almost everyone else, and he never saw [...]

I am sitting in a cubicle, talking into a telephone headset, asking rote questions of people who have applied for life insurance. Today it’s a woman, mid-20s, somewhere in New Hampshire.

“Occupation?”

“I’m self-employed.”

“What industry do you work in?”

“Entertainment.”

Her obliqueness is costing me money, because I get paid per interview. But I [...]

Ten years from now, jokey newspaper articles about corporate follies will mention why the Chevy Nova didn’t sell in Latin America, the hilarity that ensued when company names (e.g., Pen Island) became URLs, and how Google waded into the mighty river of language one day and drowned.

Google has launched an effort to keep people [...]

Austin-based Stratfor Attempts to Make Smart Money on Global Intelligence

On November 22, 1999, an Austin company called Stratfor sent a bold e-mail to 15,000 recipients around the globe. Its subject line: “Philippine President’s Days Are Numbered.” In the brisk prose that has become its trademark, Stratfor’s evaluation of the political situation in Manila contained [...]