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This is the illusionist in which I, Helen Zoltzman rescue languages kite from a tree. Today's episode is something a bit different to usual.

A few months ago I was a guest on the podcast Oligis, a terrific show where the very funny and delightful and curious alley ward interviews anologist of some kind, such as a bisonologist andologist of bison, ludologist, video games.

A corvid fanatologist, anologist of crow funerals, alley interviewed me as an etymologist. And I'm not a professional etymologist, just an amateur. The etymology of amateur is lover, which is appropriate to.

We cover etymology words including boxing, mediocre, coccyx, lacuna and also some broader stuff about language and my attitude towards it. There are a couple of swears in it.

On with Zoltzology, and Ali's first question was about my last name.

Do people put an extra L in there a lot? No, actually that is not one of the regular spelling mistakes, but they see the Z's and they panic.

Do you say Z is in Z or Zebra? Well, I say Z when I'm in Z's and countries, but I'm on your turf, so I translated it.

Yeah, look at that. Do you say Zebra?

I do say Zebra. Is it zebra here? Yeah. So here's my rubric for when I'm in the States. If it's a different word like Z or Coriander, cilantro, I'll say the different word.

But it is hard of me to use the correct American pronunciation if it's the same word. So it's hard for me to say tomato because it sounds just wrong when I say it.

I can't do it properly. My mouth won't form a proper American shape to do the word properly.

Tomato, tomato, all let's call the whole thing off.

Tomato sounds so much fancier. I don't know. I think it does. It does. It does. It does. It's not even in English words. Got it from South America.

I think that's the only way to say that tomato comes from the Nauatal language of what's known historically as the Aztec Empire for the swelling fruit.

And thus a tomato is what people call the hot girl in the 1920s language experts think this is due to plump, juicy connotations.

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