The following podcast contains explicit language.

From New York City, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.

I'm John McWater and in these times when so much is uncertain and surprising and novel,

I wanted to share with you today various things about English that are just unexpected.

I want to give you carefully chosen grab bag if there's such thing.

Things that have always tickled me as who to thunk it?

Just odd things in English, things that have origins that you would never expect,

things that show you what a randomness language is.

And of course all of this ends up going back to my endless lesson

that you can't say that some way that people are speaking

or something about some language is somehow bad or that it shouldn't have happened

because so much of the way the language is now is based on random changes

from a very long time ago.

And if we don't wish we were still speaking old English,

then what problem could we possibly have with this stage of English that we're speaking now,

which surely will be looked upon by some people and even the near future

are somehow better than the way English is than.

It's also arbitrary.

The reason that linguists feel that way is partly because of the kinds of things that I want to get us into.

Dad, I'm hungry!

Right, what do I cook for tea?

McCain chips, these will be good.

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