Kite in a Phone Booth (Rebroadcast) - 9 November 2020

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers from all over

A Way with Words

Language Learning, Society & Culture, Education

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2020

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Stunt performers in movies have their own jargon for talking about their dangerous work. In New York City, the slang term brick means “cold,” and dumb brick means “really cold.” Plus: the East and Central African tradition that distinguishes between ancestors who remain alive in living memory and those who have receded into the vast ocean of history. In this sense, all of us are moving toward the past, not away from it. And, the Indiana town that was named incorrectly because of a bureaucratic mixup. The town’s name? Correct. Also, a brain game with words big and small, slushburger vs. sloppy joe, go fry ice, fracas, beat the band, sensational spelling, heavier than a dead minister, telling porkies, and lots more. Hear hundreds of free episodes and learn more on the A Way with Words website: ⁠https://waywordradio.org⁠. Be a part of the show: call or text ⁠1 (877) 929-9673⁠ toll-free in the United States and Canada; elsewhere in the world, call or text ⁠+1 619 800 4443⁠. Send voice notes or messages via ⁠WhatsApp 16198004443.⁠ Email ⁠words@waywordradio.org⁠. Copyright Wayword, Inc., a 501(c)(3) corporation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to A Way With Words, the show about language and how we use it.
0:03.6	I'm Grant Barrett. And I'm Martha Barnett. We asked you to send us your memories about food and
0:09.2	language and we heard from Sarah Trone in Moorhead, Minnesota. And she said that when she was a first-year high school English teacher, she taught in Williston, North Dakota, which is in the northwest corner of the state near Montana and the Canadian border.
0:25.0	And it was her first year and she said possibly the first or second week of her new career
0:31.0	and one of her duties was to read the day's announcements to her
0:35.5	homeroom students and she writes, I got to the lunch menu to read and then said this,
0:41.8	today for lunch slush burgers what's a slush burger and why would I
0:47.6	want to put it into my mouth and her students cracked up and had to explain to her that a slush burger is what she grew up calling a
0:58.0	Sloppy Joe.
0:59.0	Sloppy Joe of course.
1:00.0	Yeah.
1:01.0	That's what most people know it as, right?
1:03.0	A sloppy joe, but there are other terms for it around the country.
1:05.0	There are other terms around the country for it and in most of the Dakotas, you call it a slush burger.
1:11.0	Oh, interesting.
1:12.0	That's cool. Because we don't think of slush, we think of slush burger burger oh interesting that's cool because we don't think of slush we think of slush as being
1:14.9	dirty mushed ice yeah a humble dirty ice yeah exactly but I grew up calling it sloppy Joe's I
1:20.7	imagine you did too yeah but you can also call it a spoon burger or a tavern
1:26.0	sandwich. And these are all crumbled meat with sauce. It's not the ones that are
1:29.5	crumbled meat without sauce which have another whole list of names, right?
1:32.8	Yeah, yeah.
1:33.8	Like the made rights and the crumbly burgers.
	...

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