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Author Chi Luu in black and white

Chi Luu

Chi Luu is JSTOR Daily’s resident linguist. She is a computational linguist and NLP researcher who tinkers with tiny models and machines to uncover curious mysteries in human language. She has degrees in Theoretical Linguistics and Literature, with a morbid focus on dead and dying languages. She has worked on dictionaries, multi-language search engines, and question answering applications.

Double exposure image of woman, imagination concept
Lingua Obscura

Synesthetic Adjectives Will Make You Eat Your Words

Fragrant. Sweet. Tangy. Certain synesthetic adjectives actually trigger cognitive simulations of eating.
Nasty Woman Mug
Lingua Obscura

Bad Language for Nasty Women (and Other Gendered Insults)

Is it true that "nasty" is more likely to be applied to describe women than men?
Fresh vegetables salad on wooden table
Lingua Obscura

The Nitty-Gritty on Reduplication: So Good, You Have to Say it Twice.

Reduplication is a widespread linguistic process in which a part or an exact copy of a word is repeated, often for morphological or syntactic reasons (but not always).
Parrot
Lingua Obscura

What the Folk? The Charming Yet Totally Malappropriate Story of Folk Etymology

Etymology is a funny thing. Even if you're not a word nerd, you might have wondered why so many English idioms we use are Just. So. Weird.
imessage punctuation
Lingua Obscura

The Strange Life of Punctuation!

Punctuation is often a symbolically loaded. Is there anything else so heavily regulated, codified and coddled as the period, comma, or exclamation point?
Arrival film
Lingua Obscura

Is Writing a Technology or a Language? Let’s Ask Some Aliens

Are written and spoken language really two different things? 
Newspaper cutouts
Lingua Obscura

How Does the Language of Headlines Work? The Answer May Surprise You.

How headlines have changed as media has evolved -- and how they haven't.
Mister Splashy Pants
Lingua Obscura

The Linguistics of Other People’s Pants (and Other Dishonorific Epithets)

The linguistics behind "dishonorifics." In this kind of naming construction, clearly honorifics are added in an ironic, tongue-in-cheek way.
Mrs. Malaprop
Lingua Obscura

The Monstrous Words Lurking in Your Language

“You have hissed all my mystery lectures. I saw you fight a liar in the back quad; in ...
The Tornadoes
Lingua Obscura

The Linguistics of My Next Band Name

Why do certain combinations of words make good band names? Linguistic research points to "semantic space."
Portland, OR sign
Lingua Obscura

How to Navigate by Nostalgia: The Linguistics of Place Names

Place names are often intimately tied to nostalgia and history.
Three pairs of parentheses
Lingua Obscura

The Deafening (((Echoes))) of Marked Language

What is marked language, and what does it have to do with the online hate speech of anti-semitic "Echoes" on Twitter?
A donkey looking head-on
Lingua Obscura

In Which We Get to the Bottom of Some Crazy-Ass Language

Strong language has a unique place in linguistics. 
Commencement vocab visualization
Lingua Obscura

The Delightful Language of Commencement

Commencement speeches have inspired, motivated and captivated many. Just what makes the words found in them so wonderful and life-affirming? 
Mr. Bumble, full-length, standing, facing left, pointing with right hand. Illus. in: The Characters of Charles Dickens pourtrayed (sic) in a series of original water colour sketches by "Kyd", color lithograph, Raphael Tuck & Sons, London, ca. 1899.
Lingua Obscura

Charles Dickens and the Linguistic Art of the Minor Character

Charles Dickens' characters are famous for their elaborate, often hilarious names. Even for bit parts, Dickens' naming conventions were linguistically rich.
A tray of pigs in a blanket.
Lingua Obscura

Putting Words in Your Mouth: The Whimsical Language of Food

Many whimsically named regional foods focus instead on telling a story that often sounds neither delicious nor sophisticated. How do such odd names stick?
McCain giving an interview to the press on April 24, 1973, after his return from Vietnam. Photo by US News and World Report.
Lingua Obscura

Language Loss in a Time of War

War happens when words no longer work. Yet war is declared at the very point when words are at their most powerful. Chi Luu examines language loss in war.
Violette Personified NYPL Collections
Lingua Obscura

Personification Is Your Friend: The Language of Inanimate Objects

Studies have shown that anthropomorphizing not only helps us learn. It also serves a social function, helping us feel connected.
Falling lowercase letters
Lingua Obscura

Do You Even Language, Bro? Understanding Why Nouns Become Verbs

Understanding the phenomenon known as "verbing"--where nouns are turned into verbs. 
Reporters holding out recording devices and microphones to their subject
Lingua Obscura

The Linguistics of Mass Persuasion Part 2: Choose Your Own Adventure

How politicians use language to manipulate the public and sway them toward particular world-views. 
Stop trying to make fetch happen
Lingua Obscura

The Linguistics of Mass Persuasion: How Politicians Make “Fetch” Happen (Part I)

Inspired by the Gretchen famous line in the film Mean Girls, Chi Luu explores how politicians mobilize language to sway public opinion.
Flag of the Klingon Empire
Lingua Obscura

Why We Love to Learn Klingon: The Art of Constructed Languages

Constructed languages like Klingon excite us because they enable us to actively participate in foreign or "alien" cultures. 
The word of the year, face with tears of joy emoji.
Lingua Obscura

Can an Emoji Ever Be a Word?

You might be forgiven for thinking that the merry band of lexicographers at Oxford Dictionaries were trolling us ...
People enjoying their evening on a beach on Honolulu, Hawaii.
Lingua Obscura

Mele Kalikimaka! How To Say “Merry Christmas” In Hawaiian

Translating "Merry Christmas" into Hawaiian offers insight into the language's modest inventory of consonants.
Time is money.
Lingua Obscura

It Turns Out Ordinary Life is Full of Poetry (Metaphorically Speaking)

The metaphor isn't just a literary device; it informs our conceptual understanding of language and the world.

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