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The following podcast contains explicit language.

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

I'm John McWater and this week I want to drag you into my mind as always.

Specifically, I want to give you a sense this time of what it feels like to be a linguist head.

I love the questions you all ask me day after day and I've noticed that

with so many of the questions my sense is yeah, that's what you expect and then I try to explain.

But the joy of a science which linguistics at least reports to be is that we find system

amidst the chaos. We want to find a single principle or two or three that explain lots of things

that seem separate and random. So what are some of the grand principles that a linguist has in

their heads that make us see language the way we do? The kinds of things where I think to myself,

yeah, that's what you'd expect. Well, I want you to expect it too because the truth is these

things usually aren't that complicated. It's just that nobody tells you these things.

Why don't some of my best friends tell me these things?

That was from a 1940 looney tune called a gander at Mother Goose. I wouldn't recommend it,

but that was an old joke about Listerine. But you get the point. I'm going to tell you,

you're in school, you learn about checks and balances and what an ester is and how co-signs

...