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You're listening to Away with Words? I'm Grant Barrett.

And I'm Martha Barnett. And you know, Grant, I've been reading this new book about language

by Elizabeth Little. And as you know, she's not a linguist, but she is obsessed with words and pop culture.

And her idea of a great weekend is to sit around reading Navajo and Tibetan grammars, just the

kind of thing that gets people like you and me hot and bothered, you know?

Yes, I'm married though, to a linguist so I get my satisfaction. I think that gets people like you and me hot and bothered, you know?

Yes, I'm married though, to a linguist, so I get my satisfaction both ways.

Well, speaking of satisfaction, the title is pretty irresistible.

It's called Biting the Wax Tadpole of a language fanatic and Grant I know you know where that expression comes from

There's a myth out there that says that when Coca-Cola showed up in China

Supposedly they mistranslated their slogan as bite the waxed tadpole.

That's a very long story made short. But the truth is, Coca-Cola actually never did that.

When Coca-Cola showed up in the late 1920s in China, they found that some local vendors actually

had done their best to translate the company's name into Chinese and hadn't quite pulled it off.

But it was only one small local vendor who called it biting the wax tadpole and actually

it had no effect on sales because any Chinese person would have immediately recognized

that they were using the characters phonetically and not for their meeting because basically

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