Around the coastal Louisiana area, you’ll hear a distinctive accent and a unique dialect. When Mardi Gras happens each spring, the influences from this region spread across the country, and you’re likely to see the words “Creole” and “Cajun” on restaurant menus, to describe parties, and in many other contexts that might not be exactly correct. These two words have been used interchangeably for quite some time, but they define two distinct cultures — one that arose in New Orleans, and the other rural.

The French founded New Orleans in 1718, naming it for the Duke of Orleans. At that time, the term “Creole” referred to non-Indigenous people born in colonized countries of the Americas. This was the era of enslavement, so early on, the term was exclusively for white people. In New Orleans, that meant the children of the white French ruling class.

But the distinction didn’t stick. “Creole” gained a more general meaning, and people born in the colonies who had mixed ancestry or parents from Africa were also called “Creoles.”

Tracing Creole roots on a family tree can help explain why the adjective could be used by both an upscale French-inspired restaurant and a home-cooking-style diner with dishes such as red beans and rice. (Red beans and rice, in particular, can be traced to Haitian emigres.)

Today, a diner who sees “Creole” on a menu can reasonably assume that dish will be spicy, but that shorthand can be traced through generations of culinary traditions. A French remoulade (close to tartar sauce), given the Creole twist, would be made spicy with paprika and hot sauce added.

In the Americas, especially on plantations, new languages arose as people of different backgrounds tried to communicate by incorporating various European languages. The results were called “Creole languages.” Louisiana Creole is based on French, and is still spoken by some of the descendants of the enslaved people who worked on the sugarcane plantations in the area.

While “Creole” is geographically associated with “Cajun,” they are not the same. Everywhere around Louisiana, there is Cajun food and music, but this word derives from les Acadiens, the name for the French-speaking people who lived along the eastern coast of Canada, then a French colony. When the British conquered Acadia in the 1700s, renaming it Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the French (les Acadiens) were pushed out.

Some of les Acadiens went back to France, and others went to the French Caribbean. But the Spanish, who had just acquired French-speaking Louisiana, sent emissaries inviting them to come to Louisiana to help fend off the rival British colonists.

The new arrivals didn’t have the means to join the established class of French in New Orleans or the plantation owners. They settled with the Indigenous people and free Black folks and spread throughout the region, mainly near water, in swamplands, along levees and bayous, and on the coastal marshes. Les Acadiens turned into “Cajuns,” and as they made themselves at home, they retained a distinct culture from the New Orleans-based Creoles.

Food is, naturally, a major distinguishing factor in any culture. There are two simple ways to distinguish between a Cajun and Creole dish: Cajuns rarely use tomatoes and their food is spicier. A Cajun jambalaya (the Louisiana version of paella) is brown, not red, like the Creole style. Many Cajuns still speak a nonstandard form of French, but it is different from Louisiana Creole.

Visitors to Louisiana during the Mardi Gras season might decide to embrace the confusion. Cajuns and Creoles are both part of the American melting pot, so it’s hard to unravel what came from whom. In Louisiana and New Orleans, all that matters is to say, “Laissez les bons temps rouler,” a Cajun French phrase for “Let the good times roll!”

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. If this Latin-esque phrase looks familar, it’s because it’s the traditional placeholder or “dummy” text used in typesetting and graphic design for previewing layouts. You might be surprised to learn, though, that it doesn’t actually mean anything. It’s a passage of scrambled Latin text; the intended purpose is to draw the brain away from reading the text itself, and instead call focus to the design of the layout.

The use of classical-language placeholder text in web design is called “greeking,” from the expression, “It’s all Greek to me.” In other words, it’s incomprehensible. Here’s the text of a standard Lorem ipsum passage (when longer text is needed, it just repeats):

A Brief History of “Lorem Ipsum”

Using Latin text as a printing placeholder began long before web design. As early as the 1500s, printers would use sections of classical works to make type-specimen books to demonstrate different fonts. Latin was chosen for this task because it was considered a lingua franca (common tongue) across Europe — far from the dead language it is today.

The exact origination of the scrambled Lorem ipsum text is unknown, but it came into widespread use in the 1960s when the typeface manufacturing company Letraset chose the passage for preprinted transfer sheets for use in the advertising industry. These sheets allowed designers and typesetters to easily transfer the text in various fonts, sizes, and formats for advertisement prototypes.

Fast-forward to the 1980s and the dawn of the personal computer: The Aldus Corporation used Lorem ipsum as part of its word-processing software before Microsoft adopted it for its Word program, and it took off from there. Even today, most online content-management platforms, such as WordPress and Squarespace, use the Lorem ipsum passage for preview text.

But Where Did It Come From, Really?

It would seem that Lorem ipsum stumbled into fame (or at least universal graphic design usage) a bit haphazardly. Where did this mish-mash of Latin copy actually come from? Until the 1990s, it was thought to be a jumble of random words, but there are clues to the mystery. Latin scholar and professor Richard McClintock traced the text to a passage from De finibus bonorum et malorum (“On the Ends of Good and Evil”), an ethical treatise written by the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero, circa 45 BCE. McClintock was able to track the Lorem ipsum text by searching Latin texts for the word consectetur, which he ultimately found in the 1914 Loeb Classical Library edition of the Cicero text.

This version reads as follows, but the word dolorem is split between a page break (creating the word lorem), and the rest of the text was scrambled to make the Lorem ipsum dummy text.

The newest iteration of placeholder text is “copy pasta” — blocks of text that appear to have been copied and pasted across social media and online forums. Sometimes these serve the same purpose as Lorem ipsum, giving the brain something to gloss over. In its most benign form, copy pasta is a kind of internet joke form of the game Telephone, but versions of copy pasta have also appeared in misinformation campaigns. The nonsense text is just that — nonsense.

A dialect is a regional variety of a language. It features not only distinct pronunciations and accents but also a divergence in vocabulary and grammar, meaning that the same language will sound quite different in various dialects. English is a prime example of the vast differences displayed between dialects — it is the most-studied language in the world, with around 1.5 billion people speaking 150 dialects. And while mass media can bring down borders in some ways and expose people to all varieties of languages, research shows that English dialects are actually diverging more than ever before, with new ones evolving and emerging around the world.

Old English dates back to the fifth century in Britain, and it’s part of the Germanic language family (as opposed to the Romance language family, which includes French, Italian, and Spanish). It looks very different from modern English and changed even more thanks to the addition of the French and Latin words that the Normans brought to England during their 11th-century conquest. This transformed the language into Middle English, which continued to evolve until the 16th century, at which point the printing press was invented. Once printing technology was widespread, language and spelling became more standardized, resulting in the earliest modern English dialect: British English.

As the oldest modern English dialect still spoken today, British English remains hugely influential — around 70 million people use it currently. British colonization spread English around the globe beginning in the 16th century, and for this reason, all English dialects, including Jamaican, Canadian, Australian, and South African, are descendants of British English.

Key characteristics of British English:

• “R” is pronounced only when it is followed by a vowel (“bright” vs. “start”)
• Groups of people take a plural verb form (“The team are taking a time-out”)
• The letter “z” is called “zed”
• “U” is paired with “o” in the spelling of many words (“colour” and “flavour”)
• “T” is used to create some past-tense words (“learnt” and “dreamt”)

Today, more people study and speak American English than any other English dialect — around 350 million people can speak it, and around 250 million use it as their first language. American English took shape during the colonization of what is now the East Coast of the United States in the 17th century. It retained many words and grammar rules from British English but also adopted words and pronunciations from languages all over the world as new settlers moved to the continent. Many German, Yiddish, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, and Indigenous American words entered the American English lexicon because of this “melting pot” of languages.

In the U.S. alone, there are more than 30 distinct American English dialects, also known as “accents.” This is why someone who speaks Californian American English uses different pronunciations, slang, and grammar than someone who speaks Cajun (in Louisiana) or New England English. Other common American English dialects include Southern, Midwestern, Pacific Northwestern, Hawaiian, and various East Coast accents, including the notorious Boston American accent (“Tell yah fath-uh to go pahk the cah”), in which the “r” is dropped in most words.

Key characteristics of American English:

• American English is less formal than British English (“Can I…” vs. “Might I…”)
• A “t” sound in the middle of a word sounds more like “d” (“wadder” vs. “water”)
• Simple past tense is commonly used (“I ate dinner” vs. “I have just eaten dinner”)
• The “r” sound is usually pronounced (“car” and “start”)
• Many loanwords are adopted from other languages

While both come from the same origin in Old English, British English and American English dialects have diverged enough to merit plenty of linguistic attention.

Calling all folks with sesquipedalian tendencies (those who use overly long words) — this one’s for you. If you’ve ever wondered what the longest English word is, the answer is actually up for debate. Lexicographers (those who study words) consider a variety of parameters, and some disagree on which aspects are most important. Must the word be listed in the dictionary (and if so, which dictionary)? Does a technical or medical word count? Can it be the name of a place or a person, for that matter? These questions (and others) contribute to the lengthy discussion.

Some English words are still in use just because of their length — their original usages are long outdated. Consider, for example, the 28-letter word “antidisestablishmentarianism.” This noun originally meant “opposition to the disestablishment of the Church of England,” but today, it’s almost exclusively used as an example of one of the longest English words.

Other such examples include the 29-letter “floccinaucinihilipilification” (the estimation of something as worthless) and the 27-letter “honorificabilitudinitatibus” (a sesquipedalian synonym of “honorableness”). But while they might take up more than one line of text on a phone screen, none of these terms is in the running for the longest English word. Here are some words that are.

(Note: We hope this list doesn’t inspire any hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. This 36-letter term denotes a phobia of long words, and while it’s a newly coined term, it refers to a real social phobia that can arise while trying to pronounce or use very long words, especially in front of others.)

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
This 45-letter noun is currently the longest entry in the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s another word for silicosis, a lung disease caused by breathing in fine particles of silica, a mineral that is common in sand and concrete. The word was allegedly coined in jest in the 1930s by Everett M. Smith, president of the National Puzzlers’ League, as a jab at elaborate medical terms.

Methionylalanylthreonylserylarginylglycylalanylseryl…leucine
This word goes on and on, officially tallying up to 189,819 characters. Perhaps not surprisingly, it isn’t found in any common dictionaries — it would fill up 12 standard pages and it takes approximately three and a half hours to pronounce the entire term. It’s the technical title of a protein that contributes to the elasticity of our muscles, but the name can be neatly shortened to “titin,” derived from the word “Titan,” a reference to the enormous gods of Greek mythology. Why is the full name so long? Per international science-naming guidelines, every single amino acid found inside a protein must be listed in its moniker, and titin contains 34,350 amino acids, resulting in this monstrosity of a word.

Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu
If we’re considering proper nouns in this competition, the 85-letter name of this New Zealand summit might win for the longest word in an English-speaking country. Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu, a hill on North Island, is named after the local legend of Tamatea, a fabled warrior celebrated by the Māori. The name of the hill comes from a Māori expression that translates to “the place where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, who slid, climbed, and swallowed mountains, known as ‘landeater,’ played his flute to his loved one.” While the full name is written out on the sign to mark the hill near Hawke’s Bay, locals tend to call it Taumata Hill.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Coming in at 34 letters long, “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” isn’t nearly the longest English word, but because it’s far more recognizable than most of its competition, it deserves a spot on the list. Sometimes cited as the longest nontechnical English word, this term was popularized by the 1964 Disney film Mary Poppins, in which a song helps clarify the bewildering pronunciation of the word. While it’s still considered a rare, fanciful term, it’s popular enough that it earned an entry in the dictionary as an adjective meaning “extraordinarily good” or “wonderful.”

Oxyphenbutazone
This word might seem miniscule compared to some of the others on the list, but for gamers, it’s just as important. A Scrabble board is 15 by 15 blocks, so the maximum length of a word is 15 letters. Technically, any 15-letter word could be the longest Scrabble word, but “oxyphenbutazone” is noteworthy because it is also the highest-scoring Scrabble word possible when played on three triple-word squares with just the right preexisting tiles. The 1,778-point word is the name of an anti-inflammatory medication used to treat arthritis. The stars must align to use this word — it’s never actually been played in an official Scrabble tournament.

Welcome to Boonville, California, a tiny hamlet in Northern California’s Mendocino County. Settled in the mid-1800s, the remote town is sandwiched between two mountain ranges, with an estimated population of just over 1,000. While isolated, this town has a unique claim to fame: Residents developed their own English dialect, Boontling.

The name “Boontling” derives from a combination of “Boonter,” an adjectival demonym (a word used to describe people from a certain place) for the town, and “lingo.” There are fewer than 100 speakers of Boontling today, but when it developed more than a century ago, reportedly among women and children working in the fields, it thrived among the locals. In fact, it turned into a town pastime to coin a new word in Boontling and see if other Boonters could figure out the meaning.

Though Boontling includes more than 1,000 words and phrases, its syntax and grammar are distinctly English, so it isn’t considered its own language. Instead, it’s more of a jargon, or a specialized dialect. It combines loanwords and eponyms (words that come from the names of actual people) from English, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic, and Pomoan (the language spoken by the Indigenous Northern California Pomo tribe). And perhaps unsurprisingly, a large portion of the words are of a racy variety. (One of the milder ones: A Boonter named Barney was known to greet everyone with a kiss, so a “kiss” is called a “barney.”)

Here are a few words to cover the Boontling basics — try to sprinkle a few of these into your conversations.

In Boontling, “almittey” is a noun. It refers to a belch, particularly a loud one, or a person who burps loudly or frequently. This eponym is in honor of a local woman who was reportedly known for her habitual belching.

A “beljeek” is a rabbit — specifically a black-tailed jackrabbit. This word is a combination of “Belgian” (as in Belgian hare) and “jackrabbit.”

This eponym is for a pay phone. While “buckey” is the Boontling word for “nickel,” the “Walter” part refers to Walter Levi, a local man who owned the first phone in the town. As such, “walter levi” is the Boontling term for “telephone.”

“Doolsey” refers to any kind of candy, sweet, or sugar. It’s borrowed from the Spanish dulce (“sugar”), which may have been indirectly borrowed from Pomoan before it made it to Boontling.

“Golden eagles” can be any kind of women’s clothing, but in particular undergarments. During the development of this jargon, Golden Eagle was a popular brand of flour. Locals frequently used the sacks to make clothing and underwear, and while other brand-name flour sacks also were used, apparently none of them had the same staying power.

A “hedge” is a haircut — as one would trim a hedge, so must one keep their hair tidy with regular haircuts. Many recognizably English words in Boontling operate in this pattern. Words with similar usages, but perhaps in different fields (as in haircutting and lawn care), are swapped.

Linguistic swapping is also common in other English dialects, such as Cockney rhyming slang. “Bread and honey” translates to “money,” for example.

To “kiloppety” means “to travel by horse-drawn vehicle, or on horseback.” It’s an onomatopoeia, meaning it comes from the sound of shod hooves clopping on the ground.

To “wess” is “to fib, or exaggerate the truth.” This eponym is styled after a local man named Wes who was known to stretch the truth.

One of the most common culprits of mispronunciation must be brand names. When a brand is born outside of an English-speaking country, do we use the brand’s native language, an anglicized version, or something in between? Some brands anglicize their name right away to avoid any confusion, such as in the case of Italian chef Ettore Boiardi, who changed his name to Chef Boyardee so Americans would have an easier time with it phonetically. Of course, not every brand is that accommodating (nor should they have to be), so pronunciation pitfalls abound, from the aisles of the grocery store to fashion week runways and everywhere in between.

Nutella

This chocolatey hazelnut spread is beloved worldwide, and it has roots in multiple European countries, so the pronunciation is naturally debated. According to the Nutella brand, the pronunciation is something like “NOU-tella” with an emphasis on the “NOU” (which sounds like the vowel sound in “newt” in American English, using a hard “oo”). If you’ve been saying it incorrectly, don’t worry — in a recent poll conducted by the brand, 78% of British people were pronouncing it incorrectly as “NUT-ella.” Nutella was also adamant that it doesn’t care how consumers pronounce the product name, so long as they enjoy it.

Porsche

Let the German car brand end the debate — “Porsche” is a two-syllable word. While plenty of Americans drop the “e” at the end, the correct German pronunciation is “PORE-shuh.” It comes from the brand’s founder, Ferdinand Porsche. The German language has far fewer silent letters than English, a difference that resulted in the incorrect anglicized version. In a recent poll on brand-name pronunciations, “Porsche” was the second-most-mispronounced name — around 65% of participants were incorrect.

Givenchy

Beating out Porsche in the pronunciation poll was Givenchy — more than 70% of participants got the name of this French luxury fashion and perfume house wrong, making it the most-mispronounced common brand name. The first syllable causes American English speakers the most grief: The “zh” or “sz” sound is pronounced like the “s” in the word “vision”; there is no American “g” sound in this word. The ending is also softer than an Americanized version would be, ending in “shee” rather than a hard “ch” sound.

La Croix

This one might be counterintuitive. “La Croix” looks like a French word, so it must be pronounced like a French word, right? Actually, it’s a Midwestern company, and the sparkling water brand stayed true to its roots when picking a name. It was first produced out of a brewery in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in the 1980s, and the city name was combined with the name of the St. Croix River, resulting in a portmanteau of the two Midwestern locales: La Croix. The brand suggests remembering this by using a helpful saying: “La-CROY. It rhymes with ‘enjoy.’”

To add to the confusion, the French luxury fashion brand Christian Lacroix is pronounced “luh-KWAH.” It stays true to French phonetics, where “croi” produces a “kwa” sound, as heard in the word “croissant.”

IKEA

If you’ve been saying “Let’s go to eye-KEE-ah,” you’re not totally out of bounds. While the anglicized pronunciation of the furniture store’s name is technically OK to use — even American IKEA commercials use it — the traditional Swedish pronunciation features different vowel sounds. The first syllable is “ee,” as in “need”; the second is emphasized and pronounced as “KAY,” as in “OK”; and the third ends in an “uh” or “yuh” sound.

Ralph Lauren

This pronunciation mix-up comes from a classic case of trying to put a fancy spin on a word that doesn’t require it. Ralph Lauren is an American fashion brand, and as such, it uses the American pronunciation of the name “Lauren,” with an emphasis on the first syllable. Some people add a European-esque emphasis on the second syllable, but this is incorrect, as Ralph Lauren himself uses the American style of his name.

Fage

The Fage yogurt brand was founded in Athens, Greece, and its naming is twofold. First, the word “fage” (φαγε) is the verb for “to eat,” and second, the name “Fage” operates as an acronym. It stands for Filippou Adelphoi Galaktokomika Epicheiriseis (Filippou Brothers Dairy Company). With these Greek roots for the Greek yogurt brand, the pronunciation is “FAH-yeh.”

Moschino

Founded by Franco Moschino, this Italian fashion brand is on the long list of designer names that have been (incorrectly) Americanized. In English, we often naturally turn the “ch” grouping into a “shh” sound, but in Italian, it takes the form of a hard “c” or “k” sound, so the second syllable is pronounced “KEY” (not “SHEE”).

Hermès

“H” is a silent letter in French when it stands alone as a consonant, so for this French luxury brand, go ahead and drop the first letter altogether. Typically, the “s” at the end would also be silent in French pronunciation, but the accent mark on the second “e” (called an “accent grave”) changes the pronunciation of the “e,” and therefore the “s.” The accent calls for the “e” to be pronounced like the vowel sound in the English word “net.” Because of this, the “s” is also softly pronounced.

Sriracha

The trick to pronouncing this Thai chili sauce is to leave out the first “r.” As for the pronunciation of the first vowel, that’s up for debate. Some official sources, including Merriam-Webster and the Oxford Dictionary, say to pronounce the first syllable as the word “sir,” while in the Thai language, the first syllable is “see.” Both options seem to be acceptable for hot sauce fans, so long as that first “r” remains silent.

Versace

As confirmed by Donatella Versace herself, the correct pronunciation of this Italian fashion brand is “Ver-sach-EH,” with more of an “uh” or “eh” sound at the end (not an elongated “ee” as in “knee”). The fashion magnate explained the pronunciation of her family name in an interview with Vogue, putting an end to the discussion once and for all.