Dialects vs. Languages

Slate Debates

Slate Podcasts

News, Society & Culture

4.6 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 March 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today’s episode of Spectacular Vernacular, Nicole and Ben talk about the difference between a dialect and a language as they revisit a prior conversation about Ukraine. They also interview Will Shortz, crossword puzzle editor at the New York Times, about how he got into the world of puzzles. And finally, our hosts are in the hot seat for a wordplay quiz set by the puzzle master himself. You don’t want to miss this! You could win a year’s membership to Slate Plus. Do you have any language questions or fun facts to share? Email us at spectacular@slate.com. Produced by Jasmine Ellis. Here are some notes and references from this week’s show: Cambridge Language Surveys, “The Slavic Languages” (including Russian, Ukrainian, Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian) Phillip M. Carter, “Long before shots were fired, a linguistic power struggle was playing out in Ukraine” Information on the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (April 1-3) Register here for the ACPT’s non-competitive virtual event Ben’s article on how Stephen Sondheim popularized cryptic crosswords in the U.S. Ben, Nicole, and Will compete in Webster’s War of the Words, a fundraiser for the Noah Webster House Subscribe to Slate Plus. It’s only $1 for the first month. To learn more, go to slate.com/spectacularplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:59.0	Hello, I'm Nicole Holiday, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
1:06.9	And I'm Ben Zimmer, language columnist for the Wall Street Journal.
1:09.8	And this is spectacular vernacular, a podcast where we not only explore language.
1:14.1	We also play with it. This week, our guest is Will Shortz, crossword
1:17.2	puzzle editor at The New York Times, and later, Will Challenge us with his own wordplay
1:21.5	twist.
1:22.5	Well, Ben, it's been an exhausting few weeks in the news. Last month, we talked about
1:27.1	the pronunciation of Kiev, which unfortunately has become more and more relevant since
1:31.5	Russia invaded Ukraine at the end of February. And since we discussed it, several news outlets
1:36.7	have picked up on the Kiev-Kiev distinction as having political significance.
	...

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