Episodes
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Minority languages are under threat everywhere, but Tibet represents a particularly difficult challenge. The Tibetan language family is under pressure from (no surprise) Mandarin, even as community support for Tibetan remains high. But where does that leave the many other minority languages of the area, like Manegacha? Language policy, community pressure, and individual language choice are coming together in a turbulent mix. Is there any place for hope in this setting? Dr Gerald Roche tells us about this unique situation, drawing from his new book The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet.
Daniel chats with Dr Sasha Wilmoth about a very surprising sentence, and how our brains process language in some surprising ways.
Timestamps
Cold open: 0:00
Intros: 0:55
News: 5:30
Chat with Sasha Wilmoth: 21:30
Related or Not: 39:40
Interview with Gerald Roche: 54:40
Words of the Week: 2:02:56
The Reads: 2:29:16
Outtakes: 2:32:56 -
We're joined for the first time by Douglas Harper, proprietor of the world-renowned Online Etymology Dictionary (etymonline.com). He's here to help us with our Mailbag questions, and even test us in a game of Related or Not.
In our Mailbag this time:
What's the difference between DEPENDENCE and DEPENDENCY? Why is TONGUE spelled that way? What does it mean if reciting a tongue twister in your mind is just as hard as saying it out loud? Why is STYGIAN the adjective form of the River Styx? Why are WHY and BECAUSE the same in some languages?Timestamps
Cold open: 0:00 Intros: 2:01 Questions for Douglas Harper: 9:16 Mailbag questions 1: 24:00 Related or Not: 41:24 Mailbag questions 2: 1:03:20 Comments: 1:14:18 The Reads: 1:18:00 Outtakes: 1:22:47 -
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Language is a lot like love. You can enjoyably lose yourself in both. They can both be dangerous. And they both entail a responsibility to keep each other safe. A new book Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love is both a language book and a memoir, connecting the strands of language learning, language love, and language loss. Daniel speaks with author Dr Julie Sedivy.
Also: Large language models have proven adept at duplicating patterns of language that humans find possible. But what about impossible language patterns? Can LLMs learn those? And what even is an impossible language? Dr Matt Spike explains.
Timestamps
Cold open: 0:00 Intros: 0:34 News: 5:49 Interview with Matt Spike: 32:01 Related or Not: 50:57 Interview with Julie Sedivy: 1:05:34 Words of the Week: 1:33:33 The Reads: 1:55:04 Outtakes: 2:01:21 -
For our 500th episode, we got together with our great listeners for their words, stories, and inspiration. It's a look back at the show, a look at language from our friends' point of view, and a celebration of our great community. Dr Kelly Wright joins us.
Big thanks to our friends who joined us, and to everyone who's listened over the years.
Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/Xc0S_O4KrhY
Timestamps
Cold open: 0:00
Intros: 1:17
News: 9:19
PharaohKatt tells us about Speech Pathology Week 2024: 27:00
Related or Not (with polls!): 40:23
Words of the Week: 56:52
Self-indulgent twaddle about the show and thank yous: 1:23:16
The Reads: 1:30:50
Outtake: 1:35:24 -
Can you hear them? Only if you're meant to. Political dogwhistles exploit lack of knowledge in one group to send a coded message to another group. But that's just the beginning. How are dogwhistles different from slurs? How do they licence behaviour? Do progressives dogwhistle? Dr Elin McCready is the author of Signaling Without Saying: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Dogwhistles.
We're also joined by Lizzy Hanks and Dr Jesse Egbert, who are working on the LANA-CASE corpus, a huge corpus of conversational English. It aims to bring representation to a diverse group of English speakers, and they're looking for contributors.
Dr Rikker Dockum is our special guest host.
Timestamps
Intros: 0:00 News: 3:01 Interview with Lizzy Hanks and Jesse Egbert: 16:47 Related or Not: 35:45 Interview with Elin McCready: 45:57 Words of the Week: 1:17:47 The Reads: 1:39:43 -
There are lots of Englishes out there, but the way we approach varieties of English sets learners up to fail. How do we combat language ideologies out there in the world — and in our own minds? Dr Ruanni Tupas is the editor of an important new book: Investigating Unequal Englishes: Understanding, Researching and Analysing Inequalities of the Englishes of the World.
We're joined by our special guest host Dr Nicole Holliday, and we are tackling a torrent of words — political and not — that the current news cycle has thrown at us.
Timestamps
Intros: 0:44 Words of the Week (coconut, weird, brat): 12:41 Related or Not: 55:25 Interview with Ruanni Tupas: 36:36 More Words of the Week (International Blue Screen Day / Crowdstrike, rawdogging, fedupedness, combining form -nomenon, fridgerton): 1:53:43 Comments: 2:11:15 The Reads: 2:13:47 -
What do signed languages have in common? How do oral languages influence signed languages? How do they influence each other? Here to answer these questions and many more, it's Dr Adam Schembri of the University of Birmingham.
You can watch our chat with Adam Schembri on video, with Christy Filipich doing Auslan interpretation.
That video is here:
https://youtu.be/GcV0218VJ2kAlso joining us as a special guest: Dr Mark Ellison.
Timestamps
Intros: 0:38 News: 3:33 Related or Not: 54:15 Interview with Adam Schembri: 1:05:31 Words of the Week: 2:08:27 Comments: 2:27:56 The Reads: 2:31:21 Listener comment: 2:39:33 -
Noam Chomsky is one of the world's foremost thinkers, and his impact on linguistics is incalculable. Yet many people are only familiar with his political activism. What are his linguistic ideas, and why have they been so tenacious?
To answer that question, Daniel had a delightful chat with generative syntactician and Chomsky fan Katie Martin.
We're honoured to have a chat with linguist and Uyghur language activist Abduweli Ayup, recipient of the 2024 Language Rights Defenders Award from the Global Coalition for Language Rights.
Timestamps
Intros: 0:41 News: 10:10 Interview with Abduweli Ayup: 37:36 Related or Not: 57:50 Interview with Katie Martin: 1:06:56 Words of the Week: 1:59:29 The Reads: 2:15:53 Outtakes: 2:22:21 -
What's going on in Germany? How are people talking about gender in the German language, and how is freedom of expression being handled? We have a couple of German experts — linguist Rob Tegethoff and Ciarán of the podcast Corner Späti — to tell us why other languages were banned at protests in Berlin, and what right-wing activists get from involving language in their plans.
Timestamps
Intros: 0:34
News: 5:16
Related or Not: 26:29
Interview with Rob and Ciarán: 44:37
Words of the Week: 1:46:42
The Reads: 2:02:50
Outtakes: 2:06:23 -
How much can we really know about the words we use? What are the facts behind some of the most tangled etymologies in English? And is our "Related or Not" game a good way of approaching word history?
We're talking to Dr Anatoly Liberman, perhaps the world's preëminent living etymologist and the author of Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology.
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What's the difference between a KINK and a FETISH? Does it matter if you ASSUME or PRESUME? English is full of these close groups of words, and author Eli Burnstein has untangled many of them in his delightful book The Dictionary of Fine Distinctions. Eli joins us for this episode.
Timestamps
Intros: 0:42
News: 9:54
Related or Not: 24:11
Interview with Eli Burnstein: 37:33
Words of the Week: 1:10:13
The Reads: 1:33:45 -
New York City is home to a lot of languages! Sometimes a sizeable language community can live on just a couple of floors of an apartment building. Dr Ross Perlin is working to find and promote minority languages in NYC. He's the co-founder of the Endangered Language Alliance, and author of Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York. Ross joins us for this episode.
Intro: 0:36
News: 8:13
Related or Not: 32:52
Interview with Ross Perlin: 43:12
Words of the Week: 1:24:13
The Reads: 1:39:54Show notes: http://becauselanguage.com/96-language-city/
Support the show: http://patreon.com/join/becauselangpod/ -
Language authorities. Right-wing politicians. White supremacists and feminists. What do they have in common? They're all working together to fight gender-inclusive language. But why bring language into this fight? What extra does this give them?
Dr Caitlin Green and Maureen Kosse join us to explain on this big episode.
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Dr Kelly Wright is helping us understand the link between public health and language maintenance. And she’s helping us with our voluminous Mailbag!
Why can you have a TRIFECTA, but not any other number -FECTA? Why does a SEXTILLION (with a prefix meaning six) have seven chunks of zeros? What do CHOPSTICKS have to do with chopping? And what’s the -ER in words like RUBBER, AFTER, and TEMPER? -
In honour of Grammar Day (4 March), we are joined live by special guest Ellen Jovin, who regularly dispenses grammar advice and wisdom from the Grammar Table. Now she's testing our grammatical mettle and answering our questions.
YouTube video of this episode:
https://youtu.be/C1l8Alk3Ptc?si=7pnGnuKcy9YY-mhR -
What are your eyes doing when you describe a scene? It may depend on your language.
New research from Dr Rachel Nordlinger and team shows that we do a lot of planning and scanning very quickly, and it follows the requirements of our language. She's studied Murrinhpatha, an Australian Aboriginal language, to see what its speakers do.
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We’re talking words, and no one has a way with words like Grant Barrett. He’s here to tell us what it’s like at Dictionary.com, and what went down at the annual American Dialect Society Words of the Year 2023 vote. And perhaps he can help forestall Hedvig’s planned mass human extinction.
Also: World Endangered Writing Day is upon us! It’s a fantastic initiative, and author Tim Brookes of Endangered Alphabets is here to lay out the case for preserving writing systems.
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