Jan, Feb, & Mar 2024: Crossword puzzles and vowel charts

In the first three months of 2024, I attended the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in New York City — home, as always, of the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year vote. (The winner? Enshittification!) 

I also started taking classes in American Sign Language through a local community ASL 101 class offered at the Lethbridge Layton Mackay Rehabilitation Centre, with Deaf instructor Marc Gervais. It’s my first time back in a language class since my university days and it...