Grammar girl here, today guest writer Gretchen McCulloch is going to explain some cool

cocktail party tricks.

You can show people with linguistics.

Sometimes you go to a party and tell people you're a linguist.

And after asking how many languages you speak, someone asks you to explain linguistics.

Sometimes I use a biology analogy, but other times, if the person looks particularly interested,

I give them a real example of a language pattern that most people don't notice.

There are a few characteristics of good examples for non-linguists.

They involve English or another language the person speaks.

And the pattern is very straightforward once you explain it.

But it's something they wouldn't have noticed on their own.

One of my favorite examples is voicing distinctions in the English plural system.

Here's how I explain it.

Try it yourself while listening to get the full effect, but make sure you don't whisper

when you're doing it.

At the cocktail party, I'll say, how do you make something plural in English?

And the respondent will presumably say, you add an S.

Okay, so the plural of cat is cats, right?

I say, emphasizing the S part.

But the plural of dog is dogs, which sounds like dogs, not dogs.

When you can't say cats with the Z sound at the end, what about some other words?

On the one hand, we have cats and tops and bikes, which I'll have an S sound, but dogs

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