full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Archie Crowley: Language around gender and identity evolves (and always has)

Unscramble the Blue Letters

So do you remember how I said that for some of my friends and fmaliy learning how to use the singular they was really hard, and they said it was too confusing or too ungrammatical for them to pick up. Well, this binrgs us to the first belief about language that people have. Grammar rules don't change. As a linguist, I see this belief a lot out in the world. A lot of language users believe that grammar just is what it is. When it comes to laauggne, what's gatcrmaimal is what matters. You can't change it.

Open Cloze

So do you remember how I said that for some of my friends and ______ learning how to use the singular they was really hard, and they said it was too confusing or too ungrammatical for them to pick up. Well, this ______ us to the first belief about language that people have. Grammar rules don't change. As a linguist, I see this belief a lot out in the world. A lot of language users believe that grammar just is what it is. When it comes to ________, what's ___________ is what matters. You can't change it.

Solution

  1. language
  2. grammatical
  3. brings
  4. family

Original Text

So do you remember how I said that for some of my friends and family learning how to use the singular they was really hard, and they said it was too confusing or too ungrammatical for them to pick up. Well, this brings us to the first belief about language that people have. Grammar rules don't change. As a linguist, I see this belief a lot out in the world. A lot of language users believe that grammar just is what it is. When it comes to language, what's grammatical is what matters. You can't change it.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
trans people 9
linguists study 2
grammar rules 2
trans person 2
language works 2

Important Words

  1. belief
  2. brings
  3. change
  4. confusing
  5. family
  6. friends
  7. grammar
  8. grammatical
  9. hard
  10. language
  11. learning
  12. linguist
  13. lot
  14. matters
  15. people
  16. pick
  17. remember
  18. rules
  19. singular
  20. ungrammatical
  21. users
  22. world