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

One Space or Two (rebroadcast) - 5 September 2011

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

A Way with Words

Education, Language Learning, Society & Culture

4.62.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 September 2011

⏱️ 52 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

SUMMARYIs typing two spaces after a period "totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong?" Martha and Grant disagree. Also, is the language of the movie "True Grit" historically accurate? Also, shut your pie-hole, Southern grammar, Oh my Lady Gaga, and a little town called Podunk.FULL DETAILSHow many spaces go after a period? Your schoolteacher may have taught you to use two, but others strongly disagree. http://www.slate.com/id/2281146/Shut your piehole! means "Shut your mouth!" Need more slang terms for the mouth? For starters, there's potato trap, tater trap, tatty trap, bun trap, gingerbread trap, kissing trap, fly trap, rattle trap, baconhole, and cakehole.Where is Podunk? Grant explains that a columnist in the 1800s used the name for his series called "Life in the Small Town of Podunk," referring to a generic backwoods American town.A listener shares a phrase he learned in Peru that translates as "more lost than a hard-boiled egg in ceviche." It describes someone who's lost or clueless.Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game worthy of the Saturday puzzle called "Cryptic Crosswords".Is the formal language in "True Grit" (2010) historically accurate? The hosts discuss why the Coen brothers would do away with contractions to set a tone for the movie.A transplant from Zimbabwe finds the word irregardless annoying and ungrammatical. Grant explains that regardless of its status, "irregardless" is needlessly redundant.The phrase oh, my goodness may be a dated way to express surprise or disbelief. A listener asks for a contemporary replacement.Multiple modals, as in the phrase "I thought y'all may would have some more of them," have their own logic and are well understood by many in the American South.The Database of Multiple Modals compiled by Paul Reed and Michael Montgomery is here.http://casdemo.cas.sc.edu/modals_d/If you call someone a card, it means they're funny or quick-witted. Grant and Martha discuss the metaphors inspired by the language of playing cards. What do you serve to a lawyer coming to dinner? A listener shares her riddle for the "What Would You Serve" game?Have you been asked to trip the light fantastic? This phrase, meaning "dance the night away", dates back to a poem by John Milton from 1640.Martha shares the German slang term niveaulimbo, meaning "a limbo of standards". Why is the word pound abbreviated lb.? A listener from Tijuana, Mex., learns that the answer relates to his native Spanish as well as the Latin term for "weighing."Martha reads a love sonnet by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Here's the text of the original Spanish, with an English translation by Mark Eisner.http://www.redpoppy.net/poem37.phpAnd here's a lovely audio rendering of the poem in Spanish.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJhxNhy3BVA--A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donateGet your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:Email: [email protected]: United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673London +44 20 7193 2113Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donateSite: http://waywordradio.org/Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/Skype: skype://waywordradio Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Spark your creativity with the Sims. Sometimes you might feel like you're not creative

0:06.7

and you have to go in search of your creative spark again. Maybe this is catching up with

0:11.3

creative friends, experimenting with a new look or trying out a new recipe.

0:15.7

And thanks to The Sims, inspiration is just one game and one spark away.

0:21.1

Ready to spark something? Download the Sims 4 and play for free.

0:27.0

Even though you're listening to this on podcast and not on the air, you can still call our toll-free

0:32.6

877929-9673 and you can still send us email to

0:37.8

words at wayward radio.org and you can still find us online a wayward radio.org.

0:44.0

You're listening to a way with words. I'm Martha Barnett.

0:52.0

And I'm Grant Barrett. Martha, if you ever want to start

0:55.8

a braw in a bookstore? I always do, yes. You know, get a fight maybe at a librarians

0:59.9

convention or something. I've got the phrase for you. Okay. Here it is.

1:03.0

Typing two spaces after a period is totally completely utterly and

1:06.8

inargably wrong. Put them up. Step outside. That's what Farhad Manju writing for Slate magazine did and the internet exploded, at least

1:18.2

our internet, the language internet.

1:19.8

Oh my heavens, I had to take cover under my desk.

1:23.0

So there's this one camp that thinks that you should put two spaces after a period when you're

1:28.2

writing something on a computer, right?

1:30.0

Right, me, me, me, me, me, me, me.

1:31.0

Okay. And there's the other camp that thinks you need one space after

1:33.8

period and two spaces is ridiculous and that's my camp right and the two sites

1:38.2

can't really meet and this is all these crazy arguments and most of them were

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