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

I'm John McWhorter, and as always, I get letters from you all.

And good Lord, lately so many of you seem to want to know about one thing.

And so we're going to do that one thing.

If I combine everything that makes me tick and putting one of these shows together,

then it's usually going to be one part what you all want to know and one part what I just like.

And the result, this week is going to be the story of tea, the sound tier, as you all might understandably think of it, the letter tea.

Although, as always, letters are just chicken scratches. I mean,

what we speak are sounds. That's one of my lessons that I probably push too much, but really

letters to sounds, to digress just a bit, letters to sounds are like written musical notes to this.

R, E, S, B, C, T, but not what it notes to this. See how the names of the letters?

See how the names of the letters are like some kind of confetti compared to how Aretha sounds them?

Or like how she sings it is so much more than just calling off the names of the letters.

It's a shaky but useful analogy.

Imagine, for example, you're trying to play respect on the piano.

And notice how that just wouldn't be useful.

It's more than the notes.

...