Accent neutralisation, "splooting" and Beyonce changes her lyrics

It’s the end of summer, and you know what that means here in the UK - free from the tyranny of Love Island. That’s a lot of evenings we lost. But the winning couple provided a linguistic coup - searches for “learn Turkish” and “learn Italian” skyrocketed after the duo left the villa.

Speaking of love, it’s been ten years since Tinder was created. Ten years! You might fondly recall our edition on the language of dating but, this being the ever-evolving world of language, more terms have cropped up since. Wokefishing (portraying your political beliefs to be more progressive than they actually are in a bid to impress), groundhogging (going for the same person again and again) and benching (feeding you just enough attention and communication to keep you around as an option – gross) are just some examples of the new dating vernacular.

American kids are digging the word “satisfying” to describe pleasant sounds, Mandarin has overtaken Cantonese as the second most common first language in Toronto and Algerians are ditching French in favour of English. Meanwhile in New York, people started noticing something strange recently: the squirrels that normally jump from tree to tree in the city’s parks could instead be found lying flat on the ground, face down, with their limbs outstretched. But it turned out it was nothing to worry about. In a tweet that went viral, NYC Parks explained that the furry animals were just “splooting”.

French dictionaries have gained some new words in the past couple of years– 514 to be exact. Social issues, the climate crisis and its impact on human activity provided the most neologisms, such as plasticroûte (a blue crust of plastic formed on coastal rocks), écoblanchiment (an alternative to verdissement for greenwashing), surcyclage (upcycling) and – much used in France in recent months – mégafeux (megafires). Scientists have also discovered that the dozens of new words that entered our lexicon during the pandemic are actually having an impact on how we hear language around us.

But if you’re going to read just one story from this newsletter this week, we recommend this one about a startup offering voice-altering technology to make people sound more western. In countries like the Philippines and India, an entire “accent neutralisation” industry tries to train call centre workers to sound more like the clients they are calling in the US. Glottophobia on a whole other level! But these efforts will no longer be necessary with the new technology, which will modify their pronunciation artificially. You may be reminded of a scene in the film BlacKkKlansman, based on a true story, where the protagonist Ron Stallworth poses as a white man on the phone with members of the Ku Klux Klan, in an effort to expose them. 

Finally, a heated linguistic debate broke out a few weeks ago when pop superstars Lizzo and Beyonce were called out for appropriating the word “spaz”. Disability advocates critiqued the use of the word as derogatory against those with spastic diplegia, a common form of cerebral palsy. The controversial term can be received very differently by different communities of English speakers. In Great Britain and Australia, “spaz” is evidently seen as more derogatory than it is by many Americans, where it went from medical term to playground taunt. Both singers ended up changing their lyrics.

What we’ve been up to:

• Reading: This book by the artist collective understructures is a collection of stories about the war in Ukraine. Each contributor was asked to choose an oberih (a talisman or object that offers protection) and send a short text or voice message describing its importance. The result is a compilation of heart-wrenching stories of what people were forced to leave behind, and the items they chose to hold on to.

• Writing: For Konfekt, Julia interviewed Swiss artist Vendredi sur Mer (whose music she was dancing to a couple of issues ago). Charline Mignot gave up her career as a photographer to record her debut album, Premiers Émois, which won accolades for her poems spoken over electronic beats. Her second album, Métamorphose, marks her transition from poet to singer.

• Listening: To Sentimental Garbage, specifically the episode where the writer Sloane Crosley discusses her adolescent obsession with the Irish singer Enya. Apart from discussing music and conflicting nationalities, it transpires that Crosley is one of the inner circle who keeps Zadie Smith - who shuns social media - in the loop about internet trends at large.

• Watching: Aisling has just binged the latest season of Never Have I Ever and found that the series is still as charming and sharp. To fill the hole, she has since started Sharon Horgan’s new series Bad Sisters. Think In Bruges meets Big Little Lies but set in Ireland. Gorgeous aerial shots of the coast and some Nancy Meyers drool-worthy property. It’s darkly funny, not a word is spare.

• Singing: Along to this song by our friends Do Good, an indie rock band from the south-west of France. Titled “The Heat”, it was composed during the devastating fires that devoured almost 25,000 hectares of forest north of Bordeaux this summer. But despite the sad story behind it, the result provides the perfect dose of summer nostalgia to go with that back-to-school feeling.

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Aisling O'Leary is an Irish journalist based in London, where she works at The Telegraph. You can follow her on Twitter at @JournoAsho

Julia Webster Ayuso is a Spanish-British freelance journalist based in Paris. Her writing has appeared in Time, The Guardian, The New York Times and Monocle. You can follow her on Twitter at @jwebsterayuso