Arika Okrent is an author and linguist.
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In the late 1800s, a constructed language spread across Europe and the United States before internal conflicts and the rise of Esperanto led to its decline.
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Arika Okrent was born in Chicago and became fascinated with languages at an early age. She flitted from language to language in school, wondering why she could not just settle down and commit to one, until she finally discovered a field that would support and encourage her scandalous behavior: linguistics. After some lengthy affairs with Hungarian (she taught in Hungary after college) and American Sign Language (Okrent earned a master’s degree in linguistics from Gallaudet, the world’s only university for the deaf), she began a PhD program at the University of Chicago, where she fell hard for psycholinguistics. She first worked in a gesture research lab, and later took up with a brain research lab, where she conducted the experiments that would earn her a degree in 2004. By that time, Okrent had begun to spend long afternoons with the languages that even linguists think they are too good for—the artificial languages, losers like Esperanto and Klingon. Initial feelings of pity and revulsion gave way to fascination and affection, and Okrent embarked on a whirlwind romance with the history of invented languages. The love child of this passion is her 2009 book, In the Land of Invented Languages: Adventures in Linguistic Creativity, Madness, and Genius.
Okrent began writing about language for a popular audience and worked as a contributing editor at Mental Floss, where she developed her style of smart, shareable language content. In 2016, she won the Linguistic Journalism Award from the Linguistic Society of America. She also began collaborating with illustrator Sean O’Neill on a series of whiteboard videos about language. That collaboration led to Okrent’s 2021 book, Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don’t Rhyme—and Other Oddities of the English, an illustrated history of English as told through the question of why it is so weird.
Okrent’s Erdős-Bacon number is 11. A paper she co-authored with Howard Nusbaum gets an Erdős 8 (>Strogatz (3)> Arbesman>Vitevitch>Pisoni>Nusbaum), and a film she appeared in about conlanging with Jason Momoa gets her to Bacon 3. She did not actually meet Jason Momoa, but one time, her urban planner dad gave Kevin Bacon’s urban planner dad a ride, so she also has a “personally met” Bacon number 3.
In 2013, Okrent won the American Copy Editors Society’s National Grammar Day contest for best-Tweeted haiku, where she tapped into a universal feeling of realization and dread:
I am an error
And I will reveal myself
After you press send
Soon after, she tweeted an amendment:
Make that “send”
“It became a self-fulfilling haiku,” Okrent said. “I wish I could say I planned it that way.”External
The Grammar Rules of 3 Commonly Disparaged Dialects
The Week | January | 2015
Arika Okrent’s analysis dismantles the myth that non-standard dialects are merely “broken” versions of English, arguing instead that they are governed by sophisticated, internal logic. By examining African American Vernacular English (AAVE), Southern American English, and Appalachian English, she reveals how these systems often provide more grammatical precision than Standard English. For instance, the habitual “be” in AAVE and the “double modals” of Southern English allow for nuances in time and intent that standard grammar lacks, while the “a-prefixing” in Appalachian English follows strict phonological rules.
Smithsonian Magazine | March | 2014
In this article, Arika Okrent explores a fascinating global linguistic phenomenon: The word “Huh?” appears to be a universal human term, functioning nearly identically across unrelated languages. Drawing on cross-linguistic research, she explains that “Huh?” is not a mere involuntary grunt, but a sophisticated tool for “conversational repair.” It serves a critical evolutionary purpose by signaling a breakdown in communication that requires immediate correction. Unlike most words, which vary wildly between cultures, “Huh?” has converged on a similar form—a simple, monosyllabic questioning sound—because it is the most efficient way to interrupt a speaker without derailing the flow of the conversation.
Mental Floss | September | 2020
One of her most viral pieces for Mental Floss, Arika Okrent uncovers the “hidden” grammar of English by highlighting rules that native speakers follow instinctively without ever being formally taught. A primary example is ablaut reduplication, the internal logic that dictates the order of vowel sounds in rhyming compounds; we say “tick-tock” or “ding-dong” because the “i” sound almost always precedes the “o” or “a” sound to satisfy a subconscious linguistic preference. Similarly, she details the strict order of adjectives, which requires speakers to arrange descriptors by size, age, and color in a specific sequence (e.g., “the big old red house” feels natural, whereas “the red old big house” sounds bizarre). By surfacing these invisible constraints—from the placement of “um” and “uh” to the specific way we insert expletives into the middle of words—Okrent demonstrates that our daily speech is governed by a complex, rigid architecture that we understand perfectly, even if we cannot explain why.
Aeon | July | 2017
In this deeper long-form essay for Aeon, Arika Okrent tackles the identity of her own field, examining the long-standing tension between linguistics as a rigorous science and as a branch of the humanities. Ultimately, she argues that language should be viewed as a natural phenomenon by exploreing how early linguists sought to bring scientific order to the “messiness” of speech by uncovering universal laws and structures, much like physicists study the laws of nature. However, the study is complicated by the fact that language is inextricably tied to human culture, history, and individual agency, which do not always follow predictable, laboratory-controlled patterns. Okrent suggests that while linguistics employs empirical methods—such as data collection and phonetic analysis—it occupies a unique middle ground; it is a “human science” that must account for both the biological evolution of our vocal tracts and the creative, shifting ways we use words to build social worlds.
UChicago Magazine | January | 2014
Arika Okrent defends the “listicle” as a legitimate and historically grounded literary structure, tracing its lineage far beyond modern internet clickbait to the classical tradition of the “catalogue” and the Renaissance-era “commonplace book.” She argues that the human impulse to organize information into discrete, numbered units is a fundamental cognitive tool that predates digital media, serving as a way to impose order on a chaotic influx of information. Far from being a sign of intellectual decline, the listicle functions as a versatile “container” for knowledge, allowing writers to present complex ideas in a modular, accessible format that mirrors the way the human brain naturally categorizes the world. By framing the list as a structural descendant of the epic inventories in Homer’s Iliad or the scientific taxonomies of the Enlightenment, Okrent suggests that this form is a resilient and essential part of the literary toolkit.
Publications by this author
Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme―and Other Oddities of the English Language
Oxford University Press | July | 2021
Maybe you have been speaking English all your life, or maybe you learned it later on. But whether you use it just well enough to get your daily business done, or you are an expert with a red pen who never omits a comma or misplaces a modifier, you must have noticed that there are some things about this language that are just weird.
Perhaps you are reading a book and stop to puzzle over absurd spelling rules (Why are there so many ways to say ‘-gh’?), or you hear someone talking and get stuck on an expression (Why do we say, “How dare you,” but not “How try you?”), or your kid quizzes you on homework (Why is it “eleven and twelve” instead of “oneteen and twoteen”?). Suddenly you ask yourself, “Wait, why do we do it this way?” You think about it, try to explain it, and keep running into walls. It does not conform to logic. It does not work the way you would expect it to. There does not seem to be any rule at all.
There might not be a logical explanation, but there will be an explanation, and this book is here to help.
In Highly Irregular, Arika Okrent answers these questions and many more. Along the way she tells the story of the many influences—from invading French armies to stubborn Flemish printers—that made our language the way it is today. Both an entertaining send-up of linguistic oddities and a deeply researched history of English, Highly Irregular is essential reading for anyone who has paused to wonder about our marvelous mess of a language.Adventures in Linguistic Creativity, Madness, and Genius
Random House | May | 2010
Just about everyone has heard of Esperanto, which was nothing less than one man’s attempt to bring about world peace by means of linguistic solidarity. And every Star Trek fan knows about Klingon, which was nothing more than a television show’s attempt to create a tough-sounding language befitting a warrior race with ridged foreheads. But few people have heard of Babm, Blissymbolics, and the nearly 900 other invented languages that represent the hard work, high hopes, and full-blown delusions of so many misguided souls over the centuries.
In In The Land of Invented Languages, author Arika Okrent tells the fascinating and highly entertaining history of man’s enduring quest to build a better language. Peopled with charming eccentrics and exasperating megalomaniacs, the land of invented languages is a place where you can recite the Lord’s Prayer in John Wilkins’s Philosophical Language, say your wedding vows in Loglan, and read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in Lojban.
A truly original new addition to the booming category of language books, In The Land of Invented Languages will be a must-have on the shelves of all word freaks, grammar geeks, and plain old language lovers.Media by this author
January | 2018
Arika Okrent explains that a foreign accent is caused by the “targets” and “magnets” of our native language, which shape how we produce sounds. When speaking a foreign language, we often substitute missing sounds with the closest similar ones from our own “bag” of native phonemes. Furthermore, because the tongue and lips move differently depending on a sound’s position in a word, achieving a native-like accent requires mastering a vast field of moving targets and overcoming the powerful force of habit from our primary language.
January | 2016
Arika Okrent explains that while animals themselves make the same sounds worldwide, different languages categorize these noises based on their own unique phonemic systems and grammatical rules. Because humans are not perfectly mimicking the animals but rather “giving names” to their sounds using the specific building blocks of their own language, a duck’s sound is filtered as “quack” in English and “ga-ga” in Japanese. This process, known as “onomatopoeia,” is constrained by what a language’s sound inventory allows. For example, Japanese ducks cannot “quack” because the Japanese language does not have a “qu-” sound, leading to a different linguistic interpretation of the same physical noise.
February | 2016
Arika Okrent explains that the “umlaut” is technically a historical sound-change process, not just the two dots above a letter. Coined by Jacob Grimm, the term describes a “vowel mutation,” in which a vowel’s sound was pulled forward in the mouth because of a following vowel—a process that explains irregular English plurals like mouse/mice and foot/feet.
Over time, the visual representation evolved from a tiny “e” placed above a vowel to the modern two dots we recognize today. While these marks are often associated with German or Scandinavian “coolness” (and famously utilized as “rock dots” by bands like Mötley Crüe), Okrent notes that in their native languages, they often convey a “softer” or more “adorable” feel due to their frequent appearance in diminutive word endings.
April | 2017
Arika Okrent explains that determining whether languages are related requires looking for systematic correspondences in sound and meaning rather than just simple similarities. She distinguishes true linguistic “siblings” from cases of “borrowing”—like the word “chocolate” spreading across unrelated cultures—or pure chance coincidences. By applying the comparative method to identify consistent sound change rules, linguists can reconstruct ancient ancestor languages like Proto-Indo-European, tracing the shared history of languages spanning entire continents.
June | 2015
Arika Okrent traces the word “dude” from its 1880s origins as a term of ridicule for shallow, fashion-obsessed “dandies” who imitated British mannerisms. The term evolved through the “city slickers” of 20th-century dude ranches and 1960s African-American slang before the “surfer dude” persona of the 1980s solidified its association with a laid-back attitude. Today, “dude” has become a versatile, gender-neutral linguistic tool that can convey a wide range of emotions—from excitement to disappointment—based entirely on its intonation.
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