Is "R" a Vowel?

When linguists in Georgia published a study showing that young Georgians have different accents than their parents, headlines sprung up all over declaring that the drawls and y’alls of the Southern American dialect are on their way out. But is it really possible for an accent to vanish? And what’s causing younger southerners to change the way they speak?

Why do we use such unusual words for the people we love? From baby to bunny, two thirds of American adults refer to their romantic partners by a pet name. And we’ve been doing this for a long time—the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary traces terms of endearment over a thousand years. But where do all these pet names come from?

When you hear names like Gladys or Herbert or Doris, you probably automatically think of old people, but why is that? Linguists have been studying the science of first names for a long time, and though what's behind a particular parent's choice is deeply personal and often opaque, there are certain trends in baby naming that can reveal a lot about the values and direction of a society.