The Story of P

Slate Debates

Slate Podcasts

Society & Culture, News

4.6 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 April 2018

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

John McWhorter on why the 16th letter of our alphabet is a fancy little thing. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at www.slate.com/podcastsplus. Twitter: @lexiconvalley Facebook: facebook.com/LexiconValley Email: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to meditation mindset. Time spent alone is the most important.
0:06.3	Sir, guys, are you still in the bath?
0:08.3	Yes, I'm listening to my podcast.
0:10.8	Can I come in?
0:12.0	Ah! No! No!
0:13.4	Just need to grab the core clippers. Don't worry, I'll cover my eyes.
0:16.6	What? Whoa!
0:18.8	Stop! Look at the falling!
0:22.6	I'm still not looking!
0:24.2	And I'm not listening to my podcast.
0:26.8	Don't want batting.
0:28.1	Meerkatting.
0:29.2	Simple!
0:30.1	The following podcast contains explicit language.
0:38.2	From New York City, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.
0:42.1	I'm John McWhorter, and you notice it's a podcast about language,
0:45.7	and if you've been listening, then you know that by language, really,
0:49.8	we linguists mean speech and not writing, but now and then, one can bend,
0:54.7	and just like I recently did on the topic of spelling,
0:58.0	today, I actually have been thinking about a particular letter,
1:03.8	or really in my head sound, but I know that for most of you, maybe,
1:07.2	you think of it as a letter, and you wonder which letter, well, of course,
	...

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