Talk the Talk » Etymology
286 FOLLOWERS
Talk the Talk podcast is hosted by Daniel Midgley, Ben Ainslie, and Hedvig Skarsgard. This weekly show is about linguistics, the science of language.
Talk the Talk » Etymology
4y ago
Welcome to our mailbag, where all the really great questions come from.
Why do we say “You’re welcome”?
How can varelse mean ‘a being’ in Swedish, but ‘a room’ in Danish?
In sci-fi, what happens when the universal translator breaks ..read more
Talk the Talk » Etymology
4y ago
What words do you constantly misspell? Are there any that make you stop and think every time you type them? We put out the call to our listeners for spelling bugbears, and we were inundated with responses. So we turned ..read more
Talk the Talk » Etymology
4y ago
The mail keeps coming, and we keep answering.
Is English really a dialect of Chinese?
Why do people say “uncomfortableness”, when we already have “discomfort”?
Are “ankh” and “anchor” related?
How does learning traditional languages help communities?
Is there a ..read more
Talk the Talk » Etymology
4y ago
Take a tornado. Add some sharks. You’ve got a sharknado.
But it’s not just sharks that can leap out of their normal context. It looks like –nado is jumping free and becoming a combining form — a part ..read more
Talk the Talk » Etymology
4y ago
Names are what they are, and as long as they work, they work.
But sometimes in the history of naming, people name things in a manner inapt to their nature or origin. So what’s the story behind words like atom ..read more
Talk the Talk » Etymology
4y ago
Even if we’re trying not to be the grammar police, we all have that internal voice that notices linguistic difference, and categorises people thereby.
How do we deal with that inner prescriptivist? How can we have linguistic discussions with grammar ..read more
Talk the Talk » Etymology
4y ago
Akimbo. Throes. Tizzy.
Some words only appear in limited contexts. But what do they mean? The fascinating histories of these words can tell us more about how English works — and language in general.
We’re in tatters — or ..read more
Talk the Talk » Etymology
4y ago
The questions never stop, and neither do we.
What’s the past tense of yeet, and why is English past tense so strange?
Can etymology help you spell rhythm?
Should French teachers have to speak with a Parisian accent ..read more
Talk the Talk » Etymology
4y ago
People are biased. And computers learn from people.
That means our data is biased, and in a big data world, that can cause big problems.
But researchers are finding ways to turn down the bias in a dataset. We’re talking ..read more
Talk the Talk » Etymology
4y ago
What do you call your family members? No, I don’t mean like that.
We’re talking about kinship terms.
How does your language handle family relations?
Do you call your grandmothers on your mom and dad’s side the same thing?
What’s ..read more