Hey, it's Mignon. Today's show is the second in a series of interviews called Grammar Girl

Conversations that I'm doing with my favorite people, authors, dictionary

editors, medievalists, and more. Today, linguist and Kursen tells us why Benjamin Franklin

didn't like the word colonize. How as a member of the American

Heritage Dictionary usage panel, she decided whether to accept that funner and funnest should

be acceptable or not. And how having a laser focus on language

hilariously accidentally led her to asking her students an inappropriate question.

Enjoy the show.

Grammar girl here. I'm in Yon Fog Fogoegredi and I'm so excited because today I have Ann Kurszan as a guest. Anne is a historian of the English

language, an English professor at the University of Michigan, a language radio

show host, a frequent public speaker on grammar peves, a copy editor and most important for us today,

the author of Says Who, a kinder, funer usage guide for everyone who cares about language.

Thanks so much for being here, Anne.

I'm delighted to be here.

Thank you for the invitation.

Yes, you're welcome.

And as I was reading the subtitle of your book, it suddenly hit me that we absolutely have to talk about the word funner first because it's in the title of your book.

And I'm going to start by asking how you feel about the word funner.

Oh interesting. Well I we've talked about funner and funest before on the show I call it the fun

continuum and but you say in your book that the fun

but you say in your book that for some reason funnest feels more acceptable than

funer and I agree.

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