Lexicalist shows the people behind the words on the internet:

Lexicalist reads through millions of words of chatter on the internet to analyze how certain demographics talk and what kinds of things they talk about. We currently break this information down into three kinds of demographics: age, gender, and geography.

Its goal:

[T]o develop a dictionary that depicts, in real time, the changing demographics of English in the United States, a dictionary that supplements the fundamental meaning of a word or phrase with the current cultural backdrop that’s informing its use today.

Be sure not to miss the mapping of language in use for fast food in America, the demographics of recent news stories, and even popular TV shows. Or perhaps it can shed some light on the telephone versus the SMS people. Either way, I’m spending this week in London, where every day I struggle to find the right words to have a proper coffee.

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Ingrid Fetell asks what’s so joyful about Bzzzpeek, a site where you can play recordings of what children think animals sound like in different parts of the globe:

The deeper question here is why we feel the need to imitate animal sounds when we have words to describe the animals. Before we had language, “Moo,” was a good way to alert neighbors to a food source. Now, when we can say, “There’s a herd of cows grazing just over the grassy knoll,” “Moo” seems terribly obsolete. Of course, there are still a few functional reasons to make animal sounds: birders do it to attract different species to look at, pet owners do it out of some empathic desire to connect with their pets. But why do children do it?

Try it out yourself.