Grammar Girl here, I'm in Yon Fog, your friendly guide to the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff.

This week I have a really cool language story

about the way phrases get translated into other languages.

And then, as a follow-up to last week's segment about the Tortured Poets Department,

I have a piece about why it's a gumball machine and not a gumballs machine.

But first, if you teach college students, check out my LinkedIn learning courses. They are

very likely free through your university library, and I have bite-sized lessons on almost any writing advice you'd want to give to your students.

Have someone who has trouble with semi-colons, commas, passive voice?

I have short videos you can assign for that and much more.

Just search for Grammar Girl at LinkedIn Learning.

If you're a long time listener,

you've heard me talk about some of the ways other languages influence English and vice versa.

In episode 892, we looked at how Spanish influences English, primarily through loanwords, which one language

borrows from another.

And back in episode 883, we talked about code switching, which is when bilingual or multilingual speakers switch between two or more

languages in the same phrase or sentence. Well, today we're going to look at another fascinating

linguistic phenomenon that happens when there's

close contact between two languages, English and Spanish in the US for example. Calx, also known as

loan translations.

Calc comes from a French word that means to trace or copy.

And what makes Calx distinct is that they're literal translations from one language to another.

...