Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics

Gestures: every known language has them, and there's a growing body of research on how they fit into communication. But academic literature can be hard to dig into on your own. So Lauren has spent the past 5 years diving into the gesture literature and boiling it down into a tight 147 page book. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about Lauren's new book, Gesture: A Slim Guide from Oxford University Press. Is it a general audience book? An academic book? A bit of both. (Please enjoy our highlights version in this episode, a slim guide to the Slim Guide, if you will.) We talk about the wacky hijinks gesture researchers have gotten up to with the aim of preventing people from gesturing without tipping them off that the study is about gesture, including a tricked-out "coloured garden relax chair" that makes people "um" more, as well as crosslinguistic gestural connections between signed and spoken languages, and how Gretchen's gestures in English have been changing after a year of ASL classes. Plus, a few behind-the-scenes moments: Lauren putting a line drawing of her very first gesture study on the cover, and how the emoji connection from Because Internet made its way into Gesture (and also into the emoji on your phone right now). There were also many other gesture stories that we couldn't fit in this episode, so keep an eye out for Lauren doing guest interviews on other podcasts! We'll add them to the crossovers page and the Lingthusiasm hosts elsewhere playlist as they come up. And if there are any other shows you'd like to hear a gesture episode on, feel free to tell them to chat to Lauren! Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: https://episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMjA4MDgzMjc2MA Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/781132632536793088/transcript-episode-103-a-slim-guide-to-a-slim Announcements: We've made a special jazzed-up version of the Lingthusiasm logo to put on stickers, featuring fun little drawings from the past 8.5 years of enthusiasm about linguistics by our artist Lucy Maddox. There's a leaping Gavagai rabbit, bouba and kiki shapes, and more...see how many items you can recognize! This sticker (or possibly a subtle variation...stay tuned for an all-patron vote!) will go out to everyone who's a patron at the Lingthusiast level or higher as of July 1st, 2025. We're also hoping that this sticker special offer encourages people to join and stick around as we need to do an inflation-related price increase at the Lingthusiast level. As we mentioned on the last bonus episode, our coffee hasn't cost us five bucks in a while now, and we need to keep paying the team who enables us to keep making the show amid our other linguistics prof-ing and writing jobs. In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about linguist celebrities! We talk about start with the historically famous Brothers Grimm and quickly move onto modern people of varying levels of fame, including a curiously large number of linguistics figure skaters. We also talk about a few people who are famous within linguistics, including a recent memoir by Noam Chomsky's assistant Bev Stohl about what it was like keeping him fueled with coffee. And finally, we reflect on running into authors of papers we've read at conferences, when people started recognizing us sometimes, and our tips and scripts for navigating celebrity encounters from both sides. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds: https://patreon.com/posts/125728510 For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/781132385944322048/103-a-hand-y-guide-to-gesture

Transcribed - Published: 18 April 2025

It's a fun science fiction trope: learn a mysterious alien language and acquire superpowers, just like if you'd been zapped by a cosmic ray or bitten by a radioactive spider. But what's the linguistics behind this idea found in books like Babel-17, Embassytown, or the movie Arrival? In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about the science and fiction of linguistic relativity, popularly known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. We talk about a range of different things that people mean when they refer to this hypothesis: a sciencey-sounding way to introduce obviously fictional concepts like time travel or mind control, a reflection that we add new words all the time as convenient handles to talk about new concepts, a note that grammatical categories can encourage us to pay attention to specific areas in the world (but aren't the only way of doing so), a social reflection that we feel like different people in different environments (which can sometimes align with different languages, though not always). We also talk about several genuine areas of human difference that linguistic relativity misses: different perceptive experiences like synesthesia and aphantasia, as well as how we lump sounds into categories based on what's relevant to a given language. Finally, we talk about the history of where the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis comes from, why Benjamin Lee Whorf would have been great on TikTok, and why versions of this idea keep bouncing back in different guises as a form of curiosity about the human condition no matter how many specific instances get disproven. Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice here: https://episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMjA1OTQ5MDMwOA Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/778588696756846592/transcript-episode-102-the-science-and-fiction-of Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about two sets of updates! We talk about the results from the 2024 listener survey (we learned which one of us you think is more kiki and more bouba!), and our years in review (book related news for both Lauren and Gretchen), plus exciting news for the coming year. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. https://patreon.com/posts/123498164 For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/778588215614603264/lingthusiasm-episode-102-the-science-and-fiction

Transcribed - Published: 21 March 2025

When we first learn about nature, we generally start with the solid mid-sized animals: cats, dogs, elephants, tigers, horses, birds, turtles, and so on. Only later on do we zoom in and out from these charismatic megafauna to the tinier levels, like cells and bacteria, or the larger levels, like ecosystems and the water cycle. With language, words are the easily graspable charismatic megafauna (charismatic megaverba?), from which there are both micro levels (like sounds, handshapes, and morphemes) and macro levels (like sentences, conversations, and narratives). In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch take advantage of the aptly numbered 101th episode to get enthusiastic about linguistics from the micro to macro perspective often found in Linguistics 101 classes. We start with sounds and handshapes, moving onto accents and sound changes, fitting affixes into words, words into sentences, and sentences into discourse. We also talk about areas of linguistics that involve language at all these levels at once, including historical linguistics, child language acquisition, linguistic fieldwork, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. Plus: why we don't follow this order for Lingthusiasm episodes or Crash Course Linguistics and how you can give yourself a DIY intro linguistics course. Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: https://episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMjAzOTAyNTM3Ng Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/776045991069728768/transcript-episode-101-ling-101 Announcements: To celebrate Lingthusiasm now having more than 100 episodes, we have compiled a list of 101 places where you can get even more linguistics enthusiasm! This is your one-stop-shop if you want suggestions for other podcasts, books, videos, blogs, and other places online and offline to feed your interest in linguistics. Even with a hundred and one options, we're sure there's still a few that we've missed, so also feel free to tag us @ lingthusiasm on social media about your favourites! In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about what psycholinguistics can tell us about creative writing, with Julie Sedivy, psycholinguist and the author of Memory Speaks and Linguaphile! We talk about moving from the style of scientific writing to literary writing by writing a lot of unpublished poetry to develop her aesthetic sense, how studying linguistics for a writer is like studying anatomy for a sculptor or colour theory for a painter, and how you could set up an eyetracking study to help writers figure out which sentences make their readers slow down. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/776045579375640576/lingthusiasm-episode-101-micro-to-macro-the

Transcribed - Published: 21 February 2025

This is our hundredth episode that's enthusiastic about linguistics! To celebrate, we've put together 100 of our favourite fun facts about linguistics, featuring contributions from previous guests and Lingthusiasm team members, fan favourites that resonated with you from the previous 99 episodes, and new facts that haven't been on the show before but might star in one of the next 100 episodes in greater detail. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne talk about brains, gesture, etymology, famous example sentences, languages by the numbers, a few special facts about the word "hundred" and way more! This episode is both a fun overview of the vibe of Lingthusiam if you've never listened before, and a bonus bingo card game for diehard fans to see how many facts you can recognize. We also invite you to share this episode alongside one of your favourite fun facts about linguistics and help more people find Lingthusiasm in honour of our 100th episodiversary! Whether you pick something new that resonates from this episode, or share the fact you were sitting on the edge of your seat hoping we'd mention, we look forward to staying Lingthusiastic with you for the next 100 episodes. Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMjAxMDg1Njk3MQ Read the transcript here: lingthusiasm.com/post/772874564563845120/transcript-episode-100 Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about some of our favourite deleted bits from recent interviews that we didn't quite have space to share with you! First, we go back to our interview with phonetician Jacq Jones, previously seen talking about how binary and non-binary people talk. Then, we return to computational linguist Emily M. Bender to talk about how Emily's students made a computational model of Lauren's grammar of Lamjung Yolmo and how linguistics is a team sport. Finally, we return to our group interview with the team behind Tom Scott's Language Files to talk about sneaky Icelandic jokes and the unedited behind-the-scenes version of the gif/gif joke. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds: patreon.com/posts/118982443 For links to things mentioned in this episode: lingthusiasm.com/post/772874257193730048/lingthusiasm-episode-100-a-hundred-reasons-to-be

Transcribed - Published: 17 January 2025

If it wouldn't be too much trouble, if you have a spare half hour, could we possibly suggest that you might enjoy listening to this episode on politeness? Or, if you'd prefer a less polite version, "Listen! Now!" In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about what politeness and rudeness are made up of at a linguistic level. We talk about existing cultural notions of "saving face" and "losing face", aka the push and pull between our desire for help vs our desire for independence, and how they've been formalized in a classic linguistics paper. We also talk about being less polite to show intimacy, addressing God in English and French, which forms of politeness are and aren't overtly taught, different uses of "please" in UK vs US English, levels of indirectness, email etiquette across generations and subcultures, rudeness and pointing, nodding norms in Japanese and English, smiling at strangers in the US vs Europe, and how a small number of politeness ingredients can combine in so many different ways that are culturally different. Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMTk5MDMyNTM3MQ Read the transcript here: lingthusiasm.com/post/770341829256364032/transcript-episode-99 Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about science metaphors and learning everything with Tom Lum and Caroline Roper, cohosts of Let's Learn Everything! We talk about whether programming languages should count as a language credit, numbers and ritual stock phrases like seventeen and "once upon a time", as well as etymology and metaphor in ecology, chemistry, and linguistics. We also talk about turning the "constantly trying to figure things out" part of your brain off, attending the word of the year vote, and how linguists have a tendency to be curious about language all the time, which... sometimes gets us into trouble. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes, plus access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. Find it all right here: patreon.com/lingthusiasm Looking for a last minute gift for the language nerd in your life? Or are you trying to get someone in your life to love linguistics as much as you do? Patreon have newly added a gift memberships feature! So if you'd be excited to receive a patreon membership to Lingthusiasm, forward this link to your friends and/or family with a little wink wink nudge nudge patreon.com/lingthusiasm/gift For links to things mentioned in this episode: lingthusiasm.com/post/770341545981444096/lingthusiasm-episode-99-a-politeness-episode-if

Transcribed - Published: 20 December 2024

When a human learns a new word, we're learning to attach that word to a set of concepts in the real world. When a computer "learns" a new word, it is creating some associations between that word and other words it has seen before, which can sometimes give it the appearance of understanding, but it doesn't have that real-world grounding, which can sometimes lead to spectacular failures: hilariously implausible from a human perspective, just as plausible from the computer's. In this episode, your host Lauren Gawne gets enthusiastic about how computers process language with Dr. Emily M. Bender, who is a linguistics professor at the University of Washington, USA, and cohost of the podcast Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000. We talk about Emily's work trying to formulate a list of rules that a computer can use to generate grammatical sentences in a language, the differences between that and training a computer to generate sentences using the statistical likelihood of what comes next based on all the other sentences, and the further differences between both those things and how humans map language onto the real world. We also talk about paying attention to communities not just data, the labour practices behind large language models, and how Emily's persistent questions led to the creation of the Bender Rule (always state the language you're working on, even if it's English). Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMTk2NDIxOTY5OQ Read the transcript here: lingthusiasm.com/post/767803835730231296/transcript-episode-98 Announcements: The 2024 Lingthusiasm Listener Survey is here! It’s a mix of questions about who you are as our listener, as well as some fun linguistics experiments for you to participate in. If you have taken the survey in previous years, there are new questions, so you can participate again this year. Take the survey here: bit.ly/lingthusiasmsurvey24 In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about three places where we can learn things about linguistics!! We talk about two linguistically interesting museums that Gretchen recently visited: the Estonian National Museum, as well as Mundolingua, a general linguistics museum in Paris. We also talk about Lauren's dream linguistics travel destination: Martha's Vineyard. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. Sign up here: patreon.com/posts/115117867 Also, Patreon now has gift memberships! If you'd like to get a gift subscription to Lingthusiasm bonus episodes for someone you know, or if you want to suggest them as a gift for yourself, here's how to gift a membership: patreon.com/lingthusiasm/gift For links to things mentioned in this episode: lingthusiasm.com/post/767803572750581760/lingthusiasm-episode-98-helping-computers-decode

Transcribed - Published: 22 November 2024

Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog... In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic and ~spooky~ about possession! We talk about how the haunting type of possession and the linguistic type of possession do share an etymological origin, but how the term "possession" itself is misleading, because possessive constructions are used to express all sorts of relationships between nouns, including part-whole (eye of newt), material (a cauldron of silver), interpersonal (the wizard's apprentice), and general association (the school of magic). We also talk about the three big ways possession is expressed in English (of, 's, and have) and how languages can require some concepts to be possessed (like kinship terms and body parts) or consider others too significant or too trivial for possession (like the moon or a pen). Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMTkzNjk2NzMzOQ Read the transcript here: lingthusiasm.com/post/764631688689172480/transcript-episode-97-ooooooh-our-possession Announcements: The 2024 Lingthusiasm Listener Survey is here! bit.ly/lingthusiasmsurvey24 It's a mix of questions about who you are as our listener, as well as some fun linguistics experiments for you to participate in. If you have taken the survey in previous years, there are new questions, so you can participate again this year. There's also a spot for asking us your linguistics advice questions, since our first linguistics advice bonus episode was so popular! You can listen that one here: patreon.com/posts/92128507 In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about how linguists might go about communicating with aliens! Drawing on highlights of the academic book "Xenolinguistics: Towards a Science of Extraterrestrial Language", we talk about how we'd actually go about trying to communicate with aliens. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes, including the episodes where we discuss the results of our past two surveys: patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: lingthusiasm.com/post/764631220667695104/ooooooh-our-possession-episode-oooooooohh

Transcribed - Published: 17 October 2024

We're taking you on a journey to new linguistic destinations, so come along for the ride and don't forget to hold on! In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about metaphors! It's easy to think of literary comparisons like "my love is like a red, red rose" but metaphors are also far more common and almost unnoticed in regular conversation as well. For example, English speakers often talk about ideas as a journey (the metaphor train) or as if they're visual - clear or murky or heavy or maybe fuzzy, but not as fluffy or feathery or metallic or polka-dotted, but other languages can use different metaphors. We also talk about the process of metaphor design, and how metaphors can help us understand - or misunderstand - abstract concepts like electricity or language learning. Note that this episode originally aired as Bonus 30: Welcome aboard the metaphor train! We've added a few new things about metaphors and an updated announcements section to the top. We're excited to share one of our favourite bonus episodes from Patreon with a broader audience, while at the same time giving everyone who works on the show a bit of a break. Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMTkxOTg5MTAzMw Read the transcript here: lingthusiasm.com/post/762097363842220032/transcript-episode-96 Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode we get Tom Scott's Language Files team together on one call for the first and last time! We talk with host/writer Tom Scott, as well as researcher/writer Molly Ruhl and animator Will Marler, about their roles putting the videos togehter, Gretchen's role in the brainstorming and fact-checking process, and what it's like working on a big, multi-faceted project like the Language Files videos. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. Listen now at patreon.com/posts/111056163 For links to things mentioned in this episode: lingthusiasm.com/post/762097255628029952/lingthusiasm-episode-96-welcome-back-aboard-the

Transcribed - Published: 20 September 2024

Imagine you're in a field with someone whose language you don't speak. A rabbit scurries by. The other person says "Gavagai!" You probably assumed they meant "rabbit" but they could have meant something else, like "scurrying" or even "lo! an undetached rabbit-part!" In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about how we manage to understand each other when we're learning new words, inspired by the famous "Gavagai" thought experiment from the philosopher of language VWO Quine. We talk about how children have a whole object assumption when learning language, and how linguists go about learning languages that are new to them through either translating standardized cross-linguistic wordlists known as Swadesh lists or staying monolingual and acting out concepts. We also talk about when our baseline assumptions are challenged, such as in categorizing kangaroos and wallabies by their hopping rather than their shape, and when useful folk categories, like "trees" and "fish" don't line up with evolutionary taxonomies. Click here to listen to this episode in your podcast player of choice: episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMTg5ODA2MjI5MA== Read the transcript here: lingthusiasm.com/post/758924587635441664/transcript-episode-95-lo-an-undetached Announcements: We have new Lingthusiasm merch! Imagine you're in a field with someone whose language you don't speak. A rabbit scurries by. The other person says "Gavagai!" You probably assumed they meant "rabbit" but they could have meant something else, like "scurrying" or even "lo! an undetached rabbit-part!" Inspired by the famous Gavagai thought experiment, these items feature a running rabbit and the caption "lo, an undetached rabbit-part!" in a woodblock engraving crossed with vaporwave style in magenta, indigo, teal, cream, and black/white on shirts, scarves, and more! "More people have been to Russia than I have" is a sentence that at first seems fine, but then gets weirder and weirder the more you read it. Inspired by these Escher sentences, we've made self-referential shirts saying "More people have read the text on this shirt than I have" (also available on tote bags, mugs, and hats), so you can wear them in old-time typewriter font and see who does a double take. Finally, we've made a design that simply says "Ask me about linguistics" in a style that looks like a classic "Hello, my name is..." sticker, and you can put it on stickers and buttons and shirts and assorted other portable items for when you want to skip the small talk and go right to a topic you're excited about. You can find all these designs and more at redbubble.com/people/lingthusiasm/shop In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about the word "do"! We talk about the various functions of "do" as illustrated by lyrics from ABBA and other pop songs, what makes the word "do" so unique in English compared to other languages, and the drama of how "do" caught on and then almost got driven out again Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 80+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. Find us as patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/758923731979698176/95-lo-an-undetached-collection-of-meaning-parts

Transcribed - Published: 15 August 2024

When we're talking about an activity -- say, throwing teacups in a lake -- we often want to know not just when the action takes place, but also what shape that action looks like. Is this a one-time teacup throwing event (I threw the teacup in the lake) or a repeated or ongoing situation (I was throwing the teacup in the lake)? Both of these actions might have happened at the same time (they're both in the past tense), but this different in shape between them is known as aspect. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about aspect. We talk about the important aspects of aspect: the most common aspectual meaning across languages (whether an action is completed or not) and the most common ways of forming aspects (repeating some or all of the word, or else grabbing something from somewhere else in the grammar), as well as why English aspect in the present tense went weird a couple centuries ago (Shakespeare could say "I go, my lord" but these days we're far more likely to say "I'm going"). We also talk about our favourite fun aspects of aspect: why there isn't a Thursdititive aspect even though it would be super useful for a certain linguistics podcast (ahem!), the secret etymological frequentative aspect that's hiding in plain sight in English, and the real historical teacup-lake-throwing controversy that could have been solved with more precise use of aspect. Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about ways of comparing things to each other! We talk about why comparisons get weird when the groups are too large or too small, the hidden etymological connection between more and most, how we choose between er/est and more/most (and why "funner" is really more logical), and how English has more ways of making comparatives than many other languages. We also talk about strategies that other languages use for making comparatives, and why some words are harder to make comparative. Listen to the episode here: patreon.com/posts/107428007 Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 80+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. All this and more at patreon.com/lingthusiasm Read the transcript here: lingthusiasm.com/post/756390436883546112/transcript-episode-94-aspect For links to things mentioned in this episode: lingthusiasm.com/post/756390309859098624/lingthusiasm-episode-94-the-perfectly-imperfect

Transcribed - Published: 19 July 2024

There are many ways that people perform gender, from clothing and hairstyle to how we talk or carry ourselves. When doing linguistic analysis of one aspect, such as someone's voice, it's useful to also consider the fuller picture such as what they're wearing and who they're talking with. In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch gets enthusiastic about how nonbinary people talk with Jacq Jones, who's a lecturer at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa / Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand. We talk about their research on how nonbinary and binary people make choices about how to perform gender using their voices and other variables like clothing, and later collaborating with one of their research participants to reflect on how it feels to have your personal voice and gender expression plotted on a chart. We also talk about linguistic geography, Canadian and New Zealand Englishes, and the secret plurality of R sounds in English and how you can figure out which one you have by poking yourself (gently!) with a toothpick. Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMTg1MzMwODQxMA== Or read the transcript here: lingthusiasm.com/post/753857624894849024/transcript-episode-83 Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about three of our favourite kinds of linguistic mixups: spoonerisms, mondegreens, and eggcorns! We talk about William Spooner, the Oxford prof from the 1800s that many spoonerisms are (falsely) attributed to, Lauren's very Australian 90s picture book of spoonerisms, the Scottish song "The Bonny Earl of Moray" which gave rise to the term mondegreen, why there are so many more mondegreens in older pop songs and folk songs than there are now, and how eggcorn is a double eggcorn (a mis-parsing of acorn, which itself is an eggcorn of oak-corn for akern). Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 80+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds about your favourite linguistic mixups: patreon.com/posts/105461156 For links to things mentioned in this episode: lingthusiasm.com/post/753857305290915840/episode-93-how-nonbinary-and-binary-people-talk

Transcribed - Published: 21 June 2024

Sometimes two words are smooshed together in a single act of creativity to fill a lexical gap, like making "brunch" from breakfast+lunch. Other times, words are smooshed together gradually, over a long period of speakers or signers discovering more efficient ways to position their mouth or hands, such as pronouncing "handbag" being pronounced more like "hambag". In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about smooshing words together. We talk about the history of portmanteau words like motel and chortle, the poem Jabberwocky, and why some portmanteaus, like Kenergy from Ken + energy, sound really satisfying, while others (wonut??) just don't catch on at all. We also talk about words becoming more efficient to produce over time, like how a path can be gradually created through many people choosing the same route through a field, such as "going to" becoming "gonna" or the historical forms of ASL "remember" and French "aujourd'hui". Read the transcript here: lingthusiasm.com/post/750684727053352960/transcript-episode-92-smooshing Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about secret codes and the word games we create based on them!! We talk about using alternate symbols to encode messages like in semaphore, Morse code, as well as repurposing existing symbols like the Caesar cipher, ROT13, and cryptoquote puzzles. We also talk about cryptic crosswords, which aren't technically a kind of cryptography but were used to recruit codebreakers for Bletchley Park in World War II, as well as Navajo, Choctaw, and other Native American code talkers who used their language skills to transmit messages in both world wars that were much harder to crack than a mere cipher. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 80+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. Find us here: www.patreon.com/posts/103457404 For links to things mentioned in this episode: lingthusiasm.com/post/750684590310555648/lingthusiasm-episode-92-brunch-gonna-and-fozzle

Transcribed - Published: 17 May 2024

When you order a kebab and they ask you if you want everything on it, you might say yes. But you'd probably still be surprised if it came with say, chocolate, let alone a bicycle...even though chocolate and bicycles are technically part of "everything". That's because words like "everything" and "all" really mean something more like "everything typical in this situation". Or in linguistic terms, we say that their scope is ambiguous without context. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about how we can think about ambiguity of meaning in terms of scope. We talk about how humour often relies on scope ambiguity, such as a cake with "Happy Birthday in red text" written on it (quotation scope ambiguity) and the viral bench plaque "In Memory of Nicole Campbell, who never saw a dog and didn't smile" (negation scope ambiguity). We also talk about how linguists collect fun examples of ambiguity going about their everyday lives, how gesture and intonation allow us to disambiguate most of the time, and using several scopes in one sentence for double plus ambiguity fun. Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/748141442230272000/transcript-episode-91-scope Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about the forms that our thoughts take inside our heads! We talk about an academic paper from 2008 called "The phenomena of inner experience", and how their results differ from the 2023 Lingthusiasm listener survey questions on your mental pictures and inner voices. We also talk about more unnerving methodologies, like temporarily paralyzing people and then scanning their brains to see if the inner voice sections still light up (they do!). Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 80+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. You can find us at patreon.com/lingthusiasm Also: Join at the Ling-phabet tier and you'll get an exclusive “Lingthusiast – a person who’s enthusiastic about linguistics,” sticker! You can stick it on your laptop or your water bottle to encourage people to talk about linguistics with you. Members at the Ling-phabet tier also get their very own, hand-selected character of the International Phonetic Alphabet – or if you love another symbol from somewhere in Unicode, you can request that instead – and we put that with your name or username on our supporter Wall of Fame! Check out our Supporter Wall of Fame and become a Ling-phabet patron here: patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/748139974576275456/lingthusiasm-episode-91-scoping-out-the-scope-of

Transcribed - Published: 18 April 2024

On Lingthusiasm, we've sometimes compared the human vocal tract to a giant meat clarinet, like the vocal folds are the reed and the rest of the throat and mouth is the body of the instrument that shapes the sound in various ways. However, when it comes to talking more precisely about vowels, we need an instrument with a greater degree of flexibility, one that can produce several sounds at the same time which combine into what we perceive as a vowel. Behold, our latest, greatest metaphor (we're so sorry)... the meat bagpipe! In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about what visualizing our vowels tells us about who we are. We commissioned Dr. Bethany Gardner to make custom vowel plots for us (which you can see below!) based on how we say certain words during Lingthusiasm episodes, and we talk about how our personal vowel plots let us easily see differences between our Canadian and Australian accents and between when we're carefully reading a wordlist versus more casually talking on the show. We also talk about where the two numbers per vowel that we graph come from (hint: that's where the bagpipe comes in), the delightfully wacky keywords used to compare vowels across English varieties (leading us to silly names for real phenomena, like "goose fronting"), and how vowel spaces are linked to other aspects of our identities including regional variation as well as gender and sexuality. Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/745605876867629056/transcript-episode-90-vowel-plots Announcements: We’ve created a new and Highly Scientific™ ’Which Lingthusiasm episode are you?’ quiz! Answer some very fun and fanciful questions and find out which Lingthusiasm episode most closely corresponds with your personality. If you’re not sure where to start with our back catalogue, or you want to get a friend started on Lingthusiasm, this is the perfect place to start. Take the quiz here: bit.ly/lingthusiasmquiz In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about the process of making visual maps of our own vowel spaces with Dr. Bethany Gardner. We talk about Bethany’s PhD research on how people learn how to produce and comprehend singular “they”, how putting pronouns in bios or nametags makes it easier for people to use them consistently, and how the massive amounts of data they were wrangling as a result of this led them to make nifty vowel plots for us! If you think you might want to map your own vowels or you just like deep dives into the making-of process, this is the bonus episode for you. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 80+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. Find us here: patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode:https://lingthusiasm.com/post/745605428371701760/lingthusiasm-episode-90-what-visualizing-our

Transcribed - Published: 21 March 2024

For tens of thousands of years, humans have transmitted long and intricate stories to each other, which we learned directly from witnessing other people telling them. Many of these collaboratively composed stories were among the earliest things written down when a culture encountered writing, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Mwindo Epic, and Beowulf. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about how writing things down changes how we feel about them. We talk about a Ted Chiang short story comparing the spread of literacy to the spread of video recording, how oral cultures around the world have preserved astronomical information about the Seven Sisters constellation for over 10,000 years, and how the field of nuclear semiotics looks to the past to try and communicate with the far future. We also talk about how "oral" vs " written" culture should perhaps be referred to as "embodied" vs "recorded" culture because signed languages are very much part of this conversation, where areas of residual orality have remained in our own lives, from proverbs to gossip to guided tours, and why memes are an extreme example of literate culture rather than extreme oral culture. Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/742445104511500288/transcript-episode-89-connecting-with-oral Announcements: We've created a new and Highly Scientific™ 'Which Lingthusiasm episode are you?' quiz! Answer some very fun and fanciful questions and find out which Lingthusiasm episode most closely corresponds with your personality. If you're not sure where to start with our back catalogue, or you want to get a friend started on Lingthusiasm, this is the perfect place to start. Take the quiz here: https://bit.ly/lingthusiasmquiz For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/742444321413939200/lingthusiasm-episode-89-connecting-with-oral

Transcribed - Published: 16 February 2024

It's easy to find claims that certain languages are old or even the oldest, but which one is actually true? Fortunately, there's an easy (though unsatisfying) answer: none of them! Like how humans are all descended from other humans, even though some of us may have longer or shorter family trees found in written records, all human languages are shaped by contact with other languages. We don't even know whether the oldest language(s) was/were spoken or signed, or even whether there was a singular common ancestor language or several. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about what people mean when we talk about a language as being old. We talk about how classifying languages as old or classical is often a political or cultural decision, how the materials that are used to write a language influence whether it gets preserved (from clay to bark), and how people talk about creoles and signed languages in terms of oldness and newness. And finally, how a language doesn't need to be justified in terms of its age for whether it's interesting or worthy of respect. Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/739896819002277888/transcript-episode-88-every-language-is-an-old For links to things mentioned in this episode:https://lingthusiasm.com/post/739896689822990336/lingthusiasm-episode-88-no-such-thing-as-the

Transcribed - Published: 18 January 2024

Language lets us talk about things that aren't, strictly speaking, entirely real. Sometimes that's an imaginative object (is a toy sword a real sword? how about Excalibur?). Other times, it's a hypothetical situation (such as "if it rains, we'll cancel the picnic" - but neither the picnic nor the rain have happened yet. And they might never happen. But also they might!). Languages have lots of different ways of talking about different kinds of speculative events, and together they're called the irrealis. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about some of our favourite examples under the irrealis umbrella. We talk about various things that we can mean by "reality", such as how existing fictional concepts, like goblins playing Macbeth, differ from newly-constructed fictions, like our new creature the Frenumblinger. We also talk about hypothetical statements using "if" (including the delightfully-named "biscuit conditionals), and using the "if I were a rich man" (Fiddler on the Roof) to "if I was a rich girl" (Gwen Stefani) continuum to track the evolution of the English subjunctive. Finally, a few of our favourite additional types of irrealis categories: the hortative, used to urge or exhort (let's go!), the optative, to express wishes and hopes (if only...), the dubitative, for when you doubt something, and the desiderative (I wish...). Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/737362573359464448/transcript-episode-87-irrealis Announcements: Thank you to everyone who shared Lingthusiasm with a friend or on social media for our seventh anniversary! It was great to see what you love about Lingthusiasm and which episodes you chose to share. We hope you enjoyed the warm fuzzies! In this month’s bonus episode, Gretchen gets enthusiastic about swearing (including rude gestures) in fiction with science fiction and fantasy authors Jo Walton and Ada Palmer, authors of the Thessaly books and Terra Ignota series, both super interesting series we've ling-nerded out about before on the show. We talk about invented swear words like "frak" and "frell", sweary lexical gaps (why don't we swear with "toe jam!"), and interpreting the nuances of regional swear words like "bloody" in fiction. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 80+ other bonus episodes! You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. Find us here: https://patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/737362321491591169/lingthusiasm-episode-87-if-i-were-an-irrealis

Transcribed - Published: 21 December 2023

Basque is a language of Europe which is unrelated to the Indo-European languages around it or any other recorded language. As a minority language, Basque has faced considerable pressure from Spanish and French, leading to waves of language revitalization movements from the 1960s and 1980s to the present day. Which means that some of the kids who grew up among language revitalization activities are now adults, and the project of Basque language revival has taken on further dimensions. In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch gets enthusiastic about new speakers and multiple generations of language revitalization in the Basque country with Dr. Itxaso Rodríguez-Ordóñez, who's an Assistant Professor at California State University, Long Beach, USA, and a native speaker of Basque and Spanish. We talk about how Itxaso grew up learning Basque at school and from her parents, who'd learned it as adults as part of the Basque language revitalization movement, and how studying linguistics gave her names for her linguistic experiences and made her realize she wasn't alone. We also talk about a paper Itxaso wrote with several other multilingual linguists about how academia needs to stop searching for "unicorn language users", aka users of minoritized languages who perfectly match a monolingual majority control group. Plus: Basque language revitalization through punk rock, reggaeton, and more music recs! (Links to songs in shownotes.) Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/734191628928106496/transcript-episode-86-itxaso-interview Announcements: Thank you to everyone who helped share Lingthusiasm with a friend or on social media for our seventh anniversary! We appreciate your support so much, and it was great to see what you love about Lingthusiasm and which episodes you chose to share. If you'd like to share more of your thoughts on Lingthusiasm, take our 2023 Listener Survey! This is our chance to learn about your linguistic interests, and for you to have fun doing a new set of linguistic experiments. If you did the survey last year, the experiment questions are different this year, so feel free to take it again! You can hear about the results of last year’s survey in a bonus episode (https://www.patreon.com/posts/bonus-75-2022-82426500) and we’ll be sharing the results of the new experiments next year. Take the survey here until December 15th 2023: https://bit.ly/lingthusiasmsurvey23 In this month’s bonus episode, Gretchen and Lauren get enthusiastic about giving advice by answering your linguistics questions! Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 80 other bonus episodes, including our 2022 survey results episode, and an eventual future episode discussing the results of our 2023 survey. Listen to our latest bonus here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/bonus-81-advice-92128507 For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/734191359532122112/episode-86-revival-reggaeton-and-rejecting

Transcribed - Published: 16 November 2023

When you have a sentence like "I visit them", the word order and the shape of the words tell you that it means something different from "they visit me". However, in a sentence like "I laugh", you don't actually need those signals -- since there's only one person in the sentence, the meaning would be just as clear if the sentence read "Me laugh" or "Laugh me". And indeed, there are languages that do just this, where the single entity with an intransitive verb like "laugh" patterns with the object (me) rather than the subject (I) of a transitive verb like "visit". This pattern is known as ergativity. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about ergativity! We talk about how ergativity first brought us together as collaborators (true facts: Lingthusiasm might never have existed without it), some classic examples of ergatives from Basque and Arrente, and cool downstream effects that ergativity makes possible, including languages that have ergatives sometimes but not other times (aka split ergativity) and the gloriously-named antipassive (the opposite of the passive). We also introduce a handy mnemonic gesture for remembering what ergativity looks like, as part of our ongoing quest to encourage you to make fun gestures in public! Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/731654643533447168/transcript-episode-85 November is Lingthusiasm's anniversary month and it's been 7 years! To help us celebrate we’re asking you to help connect us with people who would be totally into a linguistics podcast, if only they knew it existed. Most people still find podcasts through word of mouth, so we're asking you to share a link to your favourite episode, or just share Lingthusiasm in general. Tag us on on social media so we can thank you, or if you share in private enjoy the warm fuzzies of our gratitude. We’re doing our second listener survey! Right here: https://bit.ly/lingthusiasmsurvey23 This is our chance to learn about your linguistic interests, and for you to have fun doing a new set of linguistic experiments. If you did the survey last year, the experiment questions are different this year, so feel free to take it again! You can hear about the results of last year's survey in a bonus episode (https://www.patreon.com/posts/bonus-75-2022-82426500) and we’ll be sharing the results of the new experiments next year. Take the survey here: https://bit.ly/lingthusiasmsurvey23 In this month’s bonus episode, Gretchen and Lauren get enthusiastic about linguistic summer camps for grownups aka linguistics institutes! Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 80 other bonus episodes, including our 2022 survey results episode, and an eventual future episode discussing the results of our 2023 survey. Listen here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/bonus-80-from-87062497 For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/731654340611293184/episode-85-ergativity-delights-us

Transcribed - Published: 19 October 2023

Pointing creates an invisible line between a part of your body and the thing you're pointing at. Humans are really good at producing and understanding pointing, and it seems to be something that helps babies learn to talk, but only a few animals manage it: domestic dogs can follow a point but wolves can't. (Cats? Look, who knows.) There are lots of ways of pointing, and their relative prominence varies across cultures: you can point to something with a finger or two, with your whole hand, with your elbow, your head, your eyes and eyebrows, your lips, and even your words. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about pointing, aka deixis. We talk about how pointing varies across cultures and species: English speakers tend to have a taboo against pointing with the middle finger and to some extent at people, but don't have the very common cross-cultural taboo against pointing at rainbows. We also talk about the technical term for pointing in a linguistic context, deixis, and how deictic meanings bring together a whole bunch of categories: pronouns in signed and spoken languages, words like here, this, go, and today, and the eternal confusion about which Tuesday is next Tuesday. Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/729129984955990016/transcript-episode-84-pointing Announcements: This episode is brought to you by all of the fantastic people who have supported the podcast by becoming patrons or buying merch over the years! We say this a lot but it really is very much the case that we would have had to give up making the show a long time ago without your financial support. If you would like to help keep the show running ad-free into the future, listen to bonus episodes, and connect with other language nerds on our Discord, join us on Patreon. In this month’s bonus episode, Lauren gets enthusiastic about the process of doing linguistic fieldwork with Dr. Martha Tsutsui Billins, an Adjunct Teaching Fellow at California State University Fresno and creator of the podcast Field Notes (https://fieldnotespod.com/), whose name you may recognize from the credits at the end of the show! Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 70+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/729129330001805312/episode-84-look-its-deixis-a-word-for

Transcribed - Published: 22 September 2023

Young kids growing up in Guatemala often learn Q’anjob’al, Kaq’chikel, or another Mayan language from their families and communities. But they don’t live next to the kinds of major research universities that do most of the academic studies about how kids learn languages. Figuring out what these kids are doing is part of a bigger push to learn more about language learning in a broader variety of sociocultural settings. In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch gets enthusiastic about how kids learn Q’anjob’al and other Mayan languages with Dr. Pedro Mateo Pedro, who’s an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, Canada, a native speaker of Q'anjob'al and a learner of Kaq'chikel. We talk about Pedro’s background teaching school in Q’anjob’al and Spanish, which sounds kids acquire later in Q’anjob’al (hint: it’s the ejectives like q’ and b’), and gender differences in how kids speak Q’anjob’al. We also talk more broadly about why this work is important, both in terms of understanding how language acquisition works as a whole and in terms of using the knowledge of how children acquire Indigenous languages to create teaching materials specific to those languages. Finally, we talk about Pedro’s newer revitalization work with a community of Itza’ speakers and the process of building a relationship with a community that you’re not already part of. Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/725990865999462400/transcript-episode-83-how-kids-learn-qanjobal Announcements: We love reading up on an interesting etymology, but the history of a word doesn’t have to define how it’s used now - and to celebrate that we have new merch with the motto ‘Etymology isn’t Destiny’. Our artist, Lucy Maddox has brought these words to life in a beautiful design in black, white, and rainbow gradient. The etymology isn't destiny design is available on lots of different colours and styles of shirts, hoodies, tank tops, t-shirts: classic fit, relaxed fit, curved fit. Plus mugs, notebooks, stickers, water bottles, zippered pouches, and more. Get yours here! https://www.redbubble.com/people/lingthusiasm/shop?artistUserName=Lingthusiasm&collections=3651094&iaCode=all-departments&sortOrder=relevant We also have tons of other Lingthusiastic merch available, it makes a great gift to give to a linguistics enthusiast in your life or to request as a gift from someone. Special shoutout to our aesthetic IPA chart redesign, which now comes in rectangle (looks great as a poster if you have an office or corridor that needs to be jazzed up), and with a transparent background for t-shirt purposes! Or get it on a tote bag or notebook so you can bring it to conferences! https://www.redbubble.com/people/lingthusiasm/shop?artistUserName=lingthusiasm&collections=3154890&iaCode=all-departments&sortOrder=relevant In this month’s behind the scenes bonus episode, Gretchen gets enthusiastic about the linguistic process of transcribing podcast episodes with Sarah Dopierala, whose name you may recognize from the credits at the end of the show! We talk about how Sarah's background in linguistics helps her with the technical words and phonetic transcriptions in Lingthusiasm episodes, her own research into converbs, and the linguistic tendencies that she's noticed from years of transcribing Lauren and Gretchen (guess which of us uses more quotative speech!) Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 70+ other bonus episodes, including our upcoming linguistics advice episode where we answer your questions! You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/725956192085671936/lingthusiasm-83-how-kids-learn-qanjobal-and

Transcribed - Published: 18 August 2023

Linguists are often interested in comparing several languages or dialects. To make this easier, it’s useful to have data that’s relatively similar across varieties, so that the differences really pop out. But what exactly needs to be similar or different varies depending on what we’re investigating. For example, to compare varieties of English, we might have everyone read the same passage that contains all of the sounds of English, whereas to compare the way people gesture when telling a story, we might have them all watch the same silent film and re-tell it back. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about linguistics examples that have been re-used in lots of studies to get large groups of people to produce comparable language data. These sentences are supposed to be pretty unremarkable so we can focus on doing linguistics on them, but they end up having a sort of charmingly banal vibe that makes them much beloved by people who have spent tons of time poring over recorded files. We talk about The North Wind and the Sun, the Stella passage, the Rainbow passage, the Harvard Sentences, the Frog story, the Pear story, and the Tweety Bird video. We also talk about what goes into creating different genres of reusable example sentences, from phonetic balancing to what makes a concept culturally specific, as well as our experience learning about and coming up with various examples. Have a favourite recurring example that we didn’t have space for here? Let us know! Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/723543648527122432/transcript-episode-82-frogs-pears-and-more Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode we present: LingthusiASMR, a very special bonus episode, in which your hosts Gretchen and Lauren get enthusiastic about linguistics in a very relaxed manner by reading one very large classic set of charmingly banal linguistics example sentences. Several people have told us that this has helped put them to sleep, which isn’t usually our goal but it sure is for this episode! Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 70+ other bonus episodes, including our upcoming linguistics advice episode where we answer your questions, which you can ask here: https://forms.gle/s6MeeVAGWD3oaDoM6 (until September 1st 2023). You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/723422789301829632/episode-82-frogs-pears-and-more-staples-from

Transcribed - Published: 21 July 2023

In the sentence “the horse has eaten an apple”, what is the word “has” doing? It’s not expressing ownership of something, like in “the horse has an apple”. (After all, the horse could have very sneakily eaten the apple.) Rather, it’s helping out the main verb, eat. Many languages use some of their verbs to help other verbs express grammatical information, and the technical name for these helping verbs is auxiliary verbs. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about auxiliaries! We talk about what we can learn about auxiliaries across 2000+ languages using a new linguistic mapping website called GramBank, why auxiliaries get pronounced subtly differently from the words they’re derived from, and how “be” and “have” are the major players of the auxiliary world (but there are other options too, like “do”, “let”, and “go”). We also put a whole bunch of farm animals in our example sentences this episode just so we have an excuse to make a very good wordplay at the end of the episode. Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/720244703378964480/transcript-episode-81-the-verbs-had-been-being Announcements: Are there linguistics things you want advice about? Both serious or somewhat silly? We’re going to doing a linguistics advice bonus episode for our 7th anniversary in November 2023, where we’ll answer your linguistics questions! Go here (https://forms.gle/s6MeeVAGWD3oaDoM6) to ask us your questions by September 1st 2023, and join us on Patreon to hear the answers! In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about the jobs that people go on to do after a linguistics degree! We talk about Lauren's new academic article in a fancy linguistics journal about a blog post series she's been running for 8 years, interviewing 80 people who studied linguistics, from a minor to a doctorate level, and their experience and advice for non-academic jobs. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 70+ other bonus episodes, including our upcoming linguistics advice episode where we answer your questions! You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/720244621612138496/lingthusiasm-81-the-verbs-had-been-being-helped

Transcribed - Published: 16 June 2023

The magical kind of spell and the written kind of spell are historically linked. This reflects how saying a word can change the state of the world, both in terms of fictional magic spells that set things on fire or make them invisible, and in terms of the real-world linguistic concept of performative utterances, which let us agree to contracts, place bets, establish names, and otherwise alter the fabric of our relationships. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about word magic! We talk about how the word magic systems are set up differently in three recent fantasy books we like: Babel by R.F. Kuang, Carry On by Rainbow Rowell, and the Scholomance series by Naomi Novik. We also talk about linguistic performatives: why saying “I do” in a movie doesn’t make you married, aka Felicity Conditions, aka an excellent drag name; performativity as applied to gender (yup, Judith Butler got it from linguistics); the “hereby” test; and how technology changes what counts as a performative. Read the transcript here - https://lingthusiasm.com/post/718799528026882048/transcript-episode-80-word-magic Announcements: People often ask us to recommend interesting books about linguistics that don't assume prior knowledge of linguistics, so we've come up with a list of 12 books that we personally recommend, including both nonfiction and fiction books with linguistically interesting elements! Get this list of our top 12 linguistics books by signing up for our free email list. Email subscribers get an email once a month when there's a new episode of Lingthusiasm, and this month existing subscribers will see a link to our linguistics books list! If you find this any time in the future, you'll get the books list in the confirmation email after you sign up. https://lingthusiasm.com In this month’s bonus episode, we get excited about the results of the 2022 Lingthusiasm Survey. We talk about synesthesia fomo, whether people respond differently to kiki/bouba depending on whether they're aware of them as a meme, complicating the "where is a frown?" map, the plural of emoji, and more! Plus, we mentioned swearing in this episode? Yeah, we’ve got bonus episodes about that too. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 70+ other bonus episodes, as well as access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds! Our patrons let us keep making the main episodes free for everyone and we really appreciate every level of support. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/717705460623491072/episode-80-word-magic

Transcribed - Published: 19 May 2023

Spoken languages can change the pitch or melody of words to convey several different kinds of information. When the pitch affects the meaning of the whole phrase, such as rising to indicate a question in English, linguists call it intonation. When the pitch affects the meaning of an individual word, such as the difference between mother (high mā) and horse (low rising mǎ) in Mandarin, linguists call it tone. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about tone, intonation, and the combination of the two. We talk about various meanings of intonation, such as question, list, floor-holding, emphasis, enthusiasm, and sarcasm, and how different languages use different shapes of intonation contours for functions like these. We also talk about things languages do with tones, from changing meanings of individual words to indicating grammatical information like negation. Finally, we talk about the many, many options for writing tone and intonation (from highly technical proposals to fun internet creations), how tone interacts with lyrics/melody in songs, and how “high” versus “low” tone is actually a culturally-specific metaphor -- could we start calling tones “thin” and “thick” or “big” and “small” instead? Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/715162109812637696/transcript-episode-79-tone-and-intonation-tone Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode, originally recorded as a liveshow on the Lingthusiasm patron Discord server, your host Gretchen gets enthusiastic about how languages do gender with special guest Dr. Kirby Conrod. We answer your questions about lots of things related to language and gender, including: gender-neutral versions of sir/ma'am and dude/bro, why linguistic gender even exists, how people are doing gender-neutral and nonbinary things across related languages, and how neopronouns are often made by recycling bits from a language's canonical pronouns. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 70+ other bonus episodes, as well as access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds! Our patrons let us keep making the main episodes free for everyone and we really appreciate every level of support. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/715161716945813504/episode-79-tone-and-intonation-tone-and

Transcribed - Published: 20 April 2023

Communicating is about more than the literal, dictionary-entry-style words that we say -- it’s also about the many subtle ingredients that go into a message, from how you keep your audience in mind to how you portray the actions of the people you’re talking about. In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch interviews Dr. Gabrielle Hodge, a deaf researcher and writer based in Melbourne, Australia. She specialises in research relating to d/Deaf people, signed languages, and communication, and has worked with Auslan and British Sign Language (BSL) in Australia and the UK. We talk about Gab’s work analysing how people tell stories using a mixture of conventional signs (such as “book”) and enactment, aka showing what another person or character did using your body, such as depicting how someone is carrying a heavy book. We also talk about collaborations in multiple countries and assessing what makes a translation accessible to deaf people. We’re excited to bring you this bilingual episode in Auslan and English! For the full experience, make sure to watch the captioned video version of this episode at youtube.com/lingthusiasm (and check out our previous bilingual episode in ASL and English with Dr. Lynn Hou while you’re there). Read the transcript here - https://lingthusiasm.com/post/711999152213590016/transcript-episode-78-bringing-stories-to-life-in Announcements: Since we filmed this interview, Gab has accepted a position as Senior Lecturer in Sign Language Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. We’re excited to see more great work from her there! In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about four science fiction books/series we're read recently that project interesting future versions of English. We also talk about reading books set in the future but written in the past, and how several of these books now exist in a future that's in some ways more similar to their imagined futures than the time when they were being written. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 70+ other bonus episodes, as well as access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. It’s thanks to our patrons that we’re able to occasionally bring all of you bilingual video episodes like this one. Find us at patreon.com/lingthusiasm For the links mentioned in the episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/711999142266912768/episode-78-bringing-stories-to-life-in-auslan

Transcribed - Published: 17 March 2023

Singapore is a small city-state nation with four official languages: English, Mandarin, Tamil, and Malay. Most Singaporeans can also speak a local hybrid variety known as Singlish, which arose from this highly multilingual environment to create something unique to the island. An important part of growing up in Singapore is learning which of your language skills to use in which situation. In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch gets enthusiastic about how kids learn language in Singapore with Woon Fei Ting, who’s a Research Associate and the Lab Manager at the Brain, Language & Intersensory Perception Lab at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. We talk about how the rich multilingual environment in Singapore led Fei Ting and the lab to do language documentation while trying to figure out how kids learn to talk in Singapore, creating a dictionary of Red Dot Baby Talk (named after how Singapore looks like a red dot on the world map). We also talk about Singlish more generally, some words that Gretchen has learned on her trip, doing research with kids and parents via Zoom, and the role of a lab manager and other lab members in doing linguistic research. Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/709464013986217984/transcript-episode-77-how-kids-learn-language-in Announcements: Our liveshow is in just a few days!! Gretchen will be chatting to Dr Kirby Conrod (from our episode about the grammar of singular they lingthusiasm.com/post/615600862742609920/lingthusiasm-episode-43-the-grammar-of-singular) about language and gender on February 18th (Canada) slash 19th (Australia)! You can find out what time that is for you here (www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Lingthusiasm+Liveshow&iso=20230218T16&p1=179&ah=1). This liveshow is for Lingthusiam patrons and will take place on the Lingthusiasm Discord server. Become a patron before the event to ask us questions in advance or live-react in the text chat. This episode will also be available as an edited-for-legibility recording in your usual Patreon live feed if you prefer to listen at a later date. In the meantime: ask us questions about gender or tell us about your favourite examples of gender in various languages and we might include them in the show! Join us at www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about what we've been up to in 2022 and what's coming up for 2023. We also talk about our favourite linguistics paper that we read in 2022 slash possibly ever: okay, yes, academic papers don’t typically do this, but this paper has spoilers, so we STRONGLY recommend reading it yourself here before listening to this episode, or check out the sample paragraph on the Patreon post. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 70+ other bonus episodes, as well as access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds, and get access to this weekends liveshow at www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For the links mentioned in the episode:https://lingthusiasm.com/post/709463972446879744/singapore-is-a-small-city-state-nation-with-four

Transcribed - Published: 17 February 2023

Language names come from many sources. Sometimes they’re related to a geographical feature or name of a group of people. Sometimes they’re related to the word for “talk” or “language” in the language itself; other times the name that outsiders call the language is completely different from the insider name. Sometimes they come from mistakes: a name that got mis-applied or even a pejorative description from a neighbouring group.  In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about how languages are named! We talk about how naming a language makes it more legible to broader organizations like governments and academics, similar to how birth certificates and passports make humans legible to institutions. And like how individual people can change their names, sometimes groups of people decide to change the name that their language is known by, a process that in both cases can take a lot of paperwork.  Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/707010521186107392/transcript-episode-76-where-language-names-come Announcements:  We’re doing another Lingthusiasm liveshow! February 18th (Canada) slash 19th (Australia)! (What time is that for me?) We'll be returning to one of our fan-favourite topics and answering your questions about language and gender with returning special guest Dr. Kirby Conrod! (See Kirby’s previous interview with us about the grammar of singular they.) This liveshow is for Lingthusiam patrons and will take place on the Lingthusiasm Discord server. Become a patron before the event to ask us questions in advance or live-react in the text chat. This episode will also be available as an edited-for-legibility recording in your usual Patreon live feed if you prefer to listen at a later date. In the meantime: tell us about your favourite examples of gender in various languages and we might include them in the show! www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about some of our favourite deleted bits from previous interviews that we didn't quite have space to share with you. Think of it as a special bonus edition DVD from the past two years of Lingthusiasm with director's commentary and deleted scenes from interviews with Kat Gupta, Lucy Maddox, and Randall Munroe. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 70+ other bonus episodes, as well as access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds, and get access to our upcoming liveshow! www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For the links mentioned in the episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/706926160206086144/episode-76-where-language-names-come-from-and-why

Transcribed - Published: 20 January 2023

Emotions are a universal part of the human experience, but the specific ways we express them are mediated through language. For example, English uses the one word “love” for several distinct feelings: familial love, romantic love, platonic love, and loving things (I love this ice cream!), whereas Spanish distinguishes lexically between the less intense querer and the stronger amar. Conversely, many Austronesian languages use the same word for the concepts that English would split as “fear” and “surprise”, while many Nakh-Daghestani (Northeast Caucasian) languages use the same word for the cluster that English splits into “fear”, “anxiety”, and “grief”.  In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about the layers of language that are involved in emotions, from how emotion words form different clusters of related meaning in different language families to how the way your face shape changes when you smile affects the pitch of your voice. We also talk about how our understanding of how to talk about emotion changes throughout history and our lifespan, and how bilingual people feel differently about emotional words in their different languages. Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/703741238379151360/transcript-episode-75-emotions Announcements:  Thank you so much for celebrating our 6th anniversary with us! We appreciated all the love and support on social media, and it was great to see you recommending us to other language fans. Thank you to anyone who made an irl recommendation of the podcast, we appreciate you too!  In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about stylized Oldey Timey English! We talk about contexts in which pseudo-archaic forms get used, from Gretchen's recent experience with names and titles in a 1492 papal election roleplaying game, to how the language handbook of the Society of Creative Anachronism balances modern-day desires for gender-neutral language with creating historic-feeling titles, and a 1949 academic article cataloguing business names in the New York City phonebook that began with "ye".  Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 60+ other bonus episodes, as well as access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm Here are the links mentioned in the episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/703740969788522496/episode-75-love-and-fury-at-the-linguistics-of

Transcribed - Published: 15 December 2022

We use questions to ask people for information (who’s there?), but we can also use them to make a polite request (could you pass me that?), to confirm social understanding (what a game, eh), and for stylistic effect, such as ironic or rhetorical questions (who knows!).  In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about questions! We talk about question intonations from the classic rising pitch? to the British downstep (not a dance move...yet), and their written correlates, such as omitting a question mark in order to show that a question is rhetorical or intensified. We also talk about grammatical strategies for forming questions, from the common (like question particles and tag questions in so many languages), to the labyrinthine history that brings us English’s very uncommon use of “do” in questions. Plus: the English-centrically-named wh-word questions (like who, what, where), why we could maybe call them kw-word questions instead (at least for Indo-European), and why we don’t need to stress out as much about asking “open” questions.  Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/701222250525949952/episode-74-transcript-who-questions-the Announcements: Lingthusiasm turns 6 this month! We invite you to celebrate six years of linguistics enthusiasm with us by sharing the show - you can share a link to an episode you liked or just share your lingthusiasm generally. Most people still find podcasts through word of mouth, and lots of them don’t yet realise that they could have a fun linguistics chat in their ears every month (or eyes, all Lingthusiasm episodes have transcripts!). If you share Lingthusiasm on social media, tag us so we can reply, and if you share in private, we won’t know but you can feel a warm glow of satisfaction - or feel free to tell us about it on social media if you want to be thanked! We’re also doing a listener survey for the first time! This is your chance to tell us about what you’re enjoying about Lingthusiasm so far, and what else we could be doing in the future - and your chance to suggest topics! It’s open until December 15, 2022. And we couldn’t resist the opportunity to add a few linguistic experiments in there as well, which we’ll be sharing the results of next year. We might even write up a paper about the survey one day, so we have ethics board approval from La Trobe University for this survey. Take the survey here! https://bit.ly/lingthusiasmsurvey22 In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about a project that Gretchen did to read one paper for each of the 103 languages recorded in a recent paper by Evan Kidd and Rowena Garcia about child language acquisition. We talk about some of the specific papers that stood out to us, and what Gretchen hoped to achieve with her reading project. https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 60+ other bonus episodes, as well as access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/701222097876369408/episode-74-who-questions-the-questions-we-use

Transcribed - Published: 18 November 2022

Maps of languages of the world are fun to look at, but they’re also often suspiciously precise: a suspiciously round number of languages, like 7000, mapped to dots or coloured zones with suspiciously exact and un-overlapping locations. And yet, if you’ve ever eavesdropped on people on public transit, you know that any given location often plays host to many linguistic varieties at once. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about the complications that come with trying to map languages and dialects. We talk about the history of how people have tried to map out linguistic varieties, and how geopolitical factors like war, colonialism, migration, education, and nationalism influence which languages are considered to exist and where, in the context of Inuktitut, French, BANZSL (British, Australian, and New Zealand Sign Languages), and the Faroe Islands. We also talk about sprachbunds, aka how languages and dialects are more like gradients of colour rather than patchwork pieces. This episode was updated with a corrected definition of sprachbund [14:54 - 16:08] on 23/10/2022. Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/698676202821566464/transcript-lingthusiasm-episode-73-the-linguistic Announcements: November is our anniversary month and this year we’re celebrating 6 months of Lingthusiasm! We invite you to celebrate with us by sharing your favourite Lingthusiasm episode by sharing a link to your favourite episode, or just sharing your lingthusiasm. Most people still find podcasts through word of mouth, and lots of them don’t yet realise that they could have a fun linguistics chat in their ears every month (or eyes, all Lingthusiasm episodes have transcripts!). If you share Lingthusiasm on social media, tag us so we can reply, and if you share in private, we won’t know but you can feel a warm glow of satisfaction - or feel free to tell us about it on social media if you want to be thanked! We're also doing a listener survey for the first time! This is your chance to tell us about what you're enjoying about Lingthusiasm so far, and what else we could be doing in the future - and your chance to suggest topics! And we couldn’t resist the opportunity to add a few linguistic experiments in there as well, which we’ll be sharing the results of next year. We might even write up a paper about the survey one day, so we have ethics board approval from La Trobe University for this survey. Take the survey here! http://bit.ly/lingthusiasmsurvey22 In this month’s bonus episode we interview Liz McCullough (no relation), of Lingthusiasm production manager fame, about linguistics and science communication. We talk about how Liz got interested in linguistics through science and music, her varied career path going back and forth between museums and universities, and how she's worked with us on the intersection between linguistics and science communication. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 60+ other bonus episodes, access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. For all the links mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/698675918395277313/episode-73-the-linguistic-map-is-not-the

Transcribed - Published: 20 October 2022

What’s the “it’s” in “it’s three pm and hot”? How do you write a cough in the International Phonetic Alphabet? Who is the person most likely to speak similarly to a randomly-selected North American English speaker? In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about absurd hypothetical linguistic questions with special guest Randall Munroe, creator of the webcomic xkcd and author of What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. We only wish that there was a little more linguistics in the book. So Randall came on to fill the gap with all his most ridiculous linguistics questions! One of our unresolved questions that we can merely speculate about is our predictions for what the future of English might be like. Are you listening to this episode from more than two decades in the future? Please write in from 2042 or later and let us know how accurate we’ve been! Read the transcript here: Announcements: We’ve teamed up with linguist/artist Lucy Maddox to create a fun, minimalist version of the classic International Phonetic Alphabet chart, which you can see here (plus more info about how we put together the design). It looks really cool, and it’s also a practical reference tool that you can carry around with you in a convenient multi-purpose format: lens cloths! We’re going to place ONE (1) massive order for aesthetic IPA chart lens cloths on October 6, 2022. If you want one, be a patron at the Lingthusiast tier or higher on October 5th, 2022, timezone: anywhere in the world. If you’re already a patron at that tier, then you’re set! (That’s the tier where you also get bonus episodes and the Discord access, we’ve never run a special offer at this tier before but we think this time it’ll be worth it!). www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm In this month’s bonus episode we chat with Lucy about redesigning the IPA! We talk about how Lucy got interested in linguistics, how she got into art, how we started working with her, and the many design considerations that went into making a redesigned IPA chart. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 60+ other bonus episodes, access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds, as well your exclusive IPA chart lens cloth! www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm Click here for the full show notes, which includes links to things mentioned in this episode:

Transcribed - Published: 16 September 2022

Partway down your throat are two flaps of muscle. When you breathe normally, you pull the flaps away to the sides, and air comes out silently. But if you stretch the flaps across the opening of your throat while pushing air up through, you can make them vibrate in the breeze and produce all sorts of sounds -- sort of like the mucousy reed of a giant meat clarinet. (You’re welcome.) In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about the vocal folds! They’re often called vocal cords, but as they’re attached along the long side rather than just the two ends like a guitar string, we’re using the more precise “folds” (just be thankful they’re not called “vocal flaps”!) We talk about the many cool types of vibrations you can make with your vocal folds: pushing out an extra puff of air (aspiration), turning off your vocal folds while still talking (whisper), making them high and tight (falsetto), low and airy (breathy voice), and low and crackly (creaky voice, aka vocal fry). We also talk about the ways that various languages draw on different configurations of these vibrations to distinguish between words (such as “sip” and “zip”; Thai, Tai, and Dai; and more) or for stylistic effect (such as newscaster voice). Transcript: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/lingthusiasm/692978486586048512 Announcements We’ve teamed up with linguist/artist Lucy Maddox to create a fun, minimalist version of the classic International Phonetic Alphabet chart, which you can see here (plus more info about how we put together the design). It looks really cool, and it’s also a practical reference tool that you can carry around with you in a convenient multi-purpose format: lens cloths! We're going to place ONE (1) massive order for aesthetic IPA chart lens cloths on October 6, 2022. If you want one, be a patron at the Lingthusiast tier or higher on October 5th, 2022, timezone: anywhere in the world. If you’re already a patron at that tier, then you’re set! (That's the tier where you also get bonus episodes and the Discord access, we've never run a special offer at this tier before but we think this time it'll be worth it!). https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about a forgotten gem of a linguistics paper about a rabbit! We talk about how Linguistics Twitter got excited about tracking down this paper based on a vague rumour, Labov's history of coming up with unique ways to record language in more natural environments, and useful takeaways about how to talk with children. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 60+ other bonus episodes, including an upcoming episode where we interview the artist and linguist Lucy Maddox about the process of designing our new IPA chart. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds, as well your exclusive IPA chart lense cloth! https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/lingthusiasm/692978069598814208

Transcribed - Published: 19 August 2022

Your brain is where language - and all of your other thinking - happens. In order to figure out how language fits in among all of the other things you do with your brain, we can put people in fancy brain scanning machines and then create very controlled setups where exactly one thing is different. For example, comparing looking at words versus nonwords (of the same length, on the same background) or listening to audio clips of a language you do speak vs a language you don’t speak. In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch talks with Dr Evelina Fedorenko, an associate professor of neuroscience at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, USA about figuring out which parts of the brain do language things! We talk about how we can use brain scans to compare language with other things your brain can do, such as solving visual puzzles, math problems, music, and inferring things about other people’s mental states, as well as comparing how the brains of multilingual people process their various languages. We also talk about the results of the fMRI language experiments that Gretchen got to be a participant in: which side is doing most of her language processing and how active her brain is for French compared to English. For links to things mentioned in this episode, including an image of Gretchen's brain:

Transcribed - Published: 21 July 2022

Sometimes, we use language to make definite statements about how the world is. Other times, we get more hypothetical, and talk about how things could be. What can happen. What may occur. What might be the case. What will happen (or would, if only we should have known!) What we must and shall end up with. In other words, we use a part of language known as modals and modality! In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about modals! We talk about the nine common modals in English, the gloriously-named quasimodals (no relation to the bellringer but I would absolutely read the Quasimodo/Quasimodal crossover, I’m just saying), and how people use the ambiguity between permission and believability in English modals for comic effect. We also talk about neat things modals do in various languages: in Nsyilxcen, the modal is a separate word, whereas in Nez Perce, it’s an affix on the verb, and in German, there are also modal adverbs. In Italian Sign Language and American Sign Language the forcefulness of the modal (such as the difference between “should” and “must”) is indicated through having modals that are performed faster or larger or have a more intensive expression in how they’re signed. Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about the word "like"! We talk about why "like" falls prey to the frequency and recency illusions, why linguists get excited about "like" and other function words, and other important dispatches from the world of "like" (apparently people who use "like" are perceived as more attractive!). Join us on Patreon to listen to this and 60+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds! For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/687253856615350272/episode-69-what-we-can-must-and-should-say

Transcribed - Published: 16 June 2022

When societies of humans come into contact, they’ll often pick up words from each other. When this is happening actively in the minds of multilingual people, it gets called codeswitching; when it happened long before anyone alive can remember, it’s more likely to get called etymology. But either way, this whole spectrum is a kind of borrowing. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about borrowing and loanwords. There are lots of different trajectories that words take when we move them around from language to language, including words that are associated with particular domains, like tea and books, words that shift meaning when they language hop, like “gymnasium” and “babyfoot”, words that get translated piece by piece, like “gratte-ciel” (skyscraper) and “fernseher” (television), and words that end up duplicating the same meaning (or is it...?) in multiple languages, like “naan bread” and “Pendle hill”. We also talk about the tricky question of how closely to adapt or preserve a borrowed word, depending on your goals and the circumstances. Announcements: The LingComm grants have been announced! Thank you so much to everyone who made this possible, and congratulations to all our grantees. Go check out their projects as they keep rolling out over the rest of this year for a little more fun linguistics content in your life. https://lingcomm.org/grants/ In this month’s bonus episode, originally recorded live through the Lingthusiasm Discord, we get enthusiastic about your sweary questions! We talk about why it's so hard to translate swears in a way that feels satisfying, how swears and other taboo words participate in the Euphemism Cycle, a very ambitious idea for cataloging swear words in various languages, and more. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm Join us on Patreon to listen to this and 60+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can play and discuss word games and puzzles with other language nerds! www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/684727483493384192/episode-68-tea-and-skyscrapers-when-words-get

Transcribed - Published: 20 May 2022

The Rosetta Stone is famous as an inscription that let us read Egyptian hieroglyphs again, but it was created in the first place as part of a long history of signage as performative multilingualism in public places. Choosing between languages is both very personal but it’s not only personal -- it’s also a reflection of the way that the societies we live in constrain our choices. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about language policy and how organizations and nation-states make language decisions that affect people’s everyday lives. We also talk about the excellent recent lingcomm book Memory Speaks by Julie Sedivy, the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (currently ongoing!), and many ways of unpacking the classic quote about a language being a dialect with an army and a navy. Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/682191718408388608/transcript-episode-67-what-it-means-for-a Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode we’re getting enthusiastic about word games and puzzles with Nicole Holliday and Ben Zimmer of Spectacular Vernacular! We talk about patron questions, including lots of Wordle content: what Ben and Nicole learned from interviewing the creator of Wordle, our favourite Wordle variants such as IPA Wordle and Semantle, and comparing our Wordle solving strategies with a demo game on air. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm Join us on Patreon to listen to this and 60+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can play and discuss word games and puzzles with other language nerds! www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to all the things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/682191350734667776/episode-67-what-it-means-for-a-language-to-be

Transcribed - Published: 22 April 2022

Let’s say we have the set of words “Lauren”, “Gretchen”, and “visits” and we want to make them into a sentence. The way that we combine these words is going to have a big effect on who’s packing their bags and who’s sitting at home with the kettle on. In English, our two sentences look like “Gretchen visits Lauren” and “Lauren visits Gretchen” -- but that’s not the only word order that’s possible. In theory, we could also use other orders, like “Lauren Gretchen visits” or “Visits Gretchen Lauren”, and in fact, many languages do. The only thing that really matters is that for any given language, we all agree on which order means what. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about how languages put words in a particular order. There are many possibilities, but a few of them show up a lot more than others: “I <3 linguistics” (as in English and Indonesian) and “I linguistics <3″ (as in Turkish and Japanese) are the most common word orders for conveying who did what to who. Another common strategy is using some other way of marking the actor and the acted-upon, which frees up word order for other functions, like indicating the topic of the sentence first (and what you want to comment about it afterwards) -- in English, this might be akin to “Linguistics, I <3 it”. We also look at how Yoda maintains his unique approach to word order across a variety of languages, including Hungarian, Japanese, Romanian, and Czech. Announcements: We’re doing another online Lingthusiasm liveshow on April 9th (Canada) slash 10th (Australia)! (What time is that for me?) It will be a live Q&A for patrons about a fan fave topic: swearing! We’ll be hosting this session on the Lingthusiasm patron Discord server. Become a patron before the event to live-react in the text chat, and it will also be available as an edited-for-legibility recording in your usual Patreon live feed if you prefer to listen at a later date. In the meantime: tell us about your favourite examples of swearing in various languages and we might include them in the show! https://www.patreon.com/posts/62707367 LingComm Grants are back in 2022! These are small grants to help kickstart new projects to communicate linguistics to broader audiences. There will be a $500 Project Grant, and ten Startup Grants of $100 each. Apply here by March 31, 2022 or forward this page to anyone you think might be interested, and if you’d like to help us offer more grants, you can support Lingthusiasm on Patreon or contribute directly. We started these grants because a small amount of seed money would have made a huge difference to us when we were starting out, and we want to help there be more interesting linguistics communication in the world. https://lingcomm.org/grants/ If you want to help keep our ongoing lingthusiastic activities going, from the LingComm Grants to regular episodes to fun things like liveshows and Q&As, join us on Patreon! As a reward, you will get over 50 bonus episodes to listen to and access to our Discord server to chat with other linguistics nerds. In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about how linguistic research topics come together! We talk about where our own research came from, figuring out spaces for new questions in the existing literature, and bridging gaps between multiple subject areas and communities. Listen here! https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/679022541013155840/episode-66-word-order-we-love-lets-say-we-have

Transcribed - Published: 18 March 2022

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The pen is mightier than the sword. Knowledge is power, France is bacon. These, ahem, classic quotes all have something linguistically interesting in common: they’re all formed around a particular use of the verb “be” known as a copula. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about copulas! This is a special name for a way of grammatically linking two concepts together that’s linguistically special in a lot of different languages: sometimes it’s a verb that’s super irregular (like be/is/was in English, Latin, and many other languages), sometimes it’s several verbs (like ser and estar in Iberian and Celtic languages), sometimes it’s a form of marking other words (like in Nahuatl, Auslan, and ASL), and sometimes it’s not even visible or audible at all (like zero copula in Arabic, African American English, and Russian). We also talk about some of the fun things you can do with copulas in English, such as the lexical gap that’s filled by “ain’t”, the news headline null copula, and the oddball philosophical experiment known as E-Prime. Announcements: We're doing another online Lingthusiasm liveshow on April 9th (Canada) slash 10th (Australia)! (What time is that for me?) It will be a live Q&A for patrons about a fan fave topic: swearing! We'll be hosting this session on the Lingthusiasm patron Discord server. Become a patron before the event, and it will also be available as an edited-for-legibility recording in your usual Patreon live feed if you prefer to listen at a later date. In the meantime: tell us about your favourite examples of swearing in various languages and we might include them in the show! https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm LingComm Grants are back in 2022! These are small grants to help kickstart new projects to communicate linguistics to broader audiences. There will be a $500 Project Grant, and ten Startup Grants of $100 each. Apply here by March 31, 2022 or forward this page to anyone you think might be interested, and if you’d like to help us offer more grants, you can support Lingthusiasm on Patreon or contribute directly. We started these grants because a small amount of seed money would have made a huge difference to us when we were starting out, and we want to help there be more interesting linguistics communication in the world. https://lingcomm.org/grants/ For links to things mentioned in this episode:

Transcribed - Published: 17 February 2022

If you hear someone saying /sss/ and /fff/, it’s hard to hear those as anything other than, well, S and F. This is very convenient for understanding language, but it’s less convenient for analyzing it -- if you’re trying to figure out exactly what makes two s-like sounds different, it would be helpful if you could kinda sorta turn the language processing part of your brain off for a sec and just process them as sounds. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about linguistic visualizations that let us examine sounds in more detail. One kind of visual is a wave form (which is found in many podcast apps!) and consists of longer lines for louder parts and shorter lines for quieter parts. Another kind of visual is a spectrogram, which shows a massive range of possible pitches and shades in which pitches have stuff going on during them at each time, sort of like a giant musical staff with thousands of potential notes. Spectrograms are especially popular in linguistics (there are even spectrogram reading competitions at conferences sometimes), although they’re also used for things like recording bird calls and making weird music videos, and there’s much-beloved free program called Praat which has been used to make them for over 30 years. If you don’t want to download a program, there are also free websites which let you speak into a live running spectrogram and see what it looks like, and we’ve produced a sample for you! We’ve created a dedicated video clip of the five minutes we spent using the real-time spectrogram maker, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/ztctdMcK_1A Thanks to ScienceMusic.org for the handy real-time spectrogram maker, and go check it out yourself if you want to see what you sound like making various sounds. https://spectrogram.sciencemusic.org/ Announcements: LingComm Grants are back in 2022! These are small grants to help kickstart new projects to communicate linguistics to broader audiences. There will be a $500 Project Grant, and ten Startup Grants of $100 each. Apply here by March 31, 2022 or forward this page to anyone you think might be interested, and if you’d like to help us offer more grants, you can support Lingthusiasm on Patreon or contribute directly. We started these grants because a small amount of seed money would have made a huge difference to us when we were starting out, and we want to help there be more interesting linguistics communication in the world. https://lingcomm.org/grants/ If you want to help keep our ongoing lingthusiastic activities going, from the LingComm Grants to regular episodes to fun things like liveshows and Q&As, join us on Patreon! As a reward, you will get over 50 bonus episodes to listen to and access to our Discord server to chat with other language nerds. In this month's bonus episode we interview each other! We chat about what we were up to in 2021, what's coming in 2022, what we've been reading, our most mind blowing moments of linguistics undergrad, and more. Listen here! https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to everything mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/673943123952549888/episode-64-making-speech-visible-with Transcript: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/673943123952549888/episode-64-making-speech-visible-with

Transcribed - Published: 20 January 2022

When you look at a series of words that sorta sound like each other, such as pesto, paste, and pasta, it’s easy to start wondering if they might have originated with a common root word. Etymologists take these hunches and painstakingly track them down through the historical record to find out which ones are true and which ones aren’t -- in this case, that paste and pasta have a common ancestor, but pesto comes from somewhere else. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about English etymology! We talk about where the etymological parts of dictionaries come from, the gaps in our knowledge based on the biases of historical sources, how you can become the Etymology Friend (with help from Etymonline), and which kinds of etymologies should immediately make you put your debunking hat on (spoiler: anything containing an acronym or formatted like an image meme. Just saying.). Now you too can have etymology x-ray vision! (Aka, where to quickly look up etymologies on your phone!). Read the transcript here. Announcements: Thanks for celebrating our 5 year anniversary with us! We loved seeing you share all your favourite Lingthusiasm episodes and moments. We’re looking forward to another year of sharing linguistic joy with you. This month’s bonus episode is about linguistics olympiads! These involve a series of fun linguistic puzzles, sort of like sudoku for linguistics. Since linguistics isn't commonly taught in high schools, the puzzles can't assume any prior linguistics knowledge, so they're either logic puzzles as applied to language or they teach you basic linguistics concepts in the preamble to the question, making them great for ling fans as well. Alas, we were not in high school recently enough to participate in any olympiads ourselves, so we also talk about how people can get involved if you're not a high school student, from helping to host a session at a local high school or university to just doing puzzles for fun and interest (they're available for free with answer keys on the olympiad websites, plus there was a recent book that came out compiling some of them). Plus: how Lauren has made a few olympiad puzzles herself! Get access to this and over 50 more bonus Lingthusiasm episodes (and help keep the show ad-free) by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to everything in this episode visit the shownotes page: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/670767938518827008/episode-63-where-to-get-your-english-etymologies

Transcribed - Published: 16 December 2021

We can plot the words we use to describe temperature on a scale: cold, cool, warm, hot. It’s not as precise as a temperature scale like Celsius or Fahrenheit, but we all generally agree on where these words sit in relation to each other. We can also do the same with other sets of words that don’t necessarily have an equivalent scientific scale, such as the relationship between “some", "a few" and “many“ or even words like "suppose”, “believe” and “know”. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about the things that get implied when we use words that involve scales, aka scalar implicature. Why can we revise our description of a warm coffee by saying “actually, it’s hot” but not “actually, it’s cold”? What happens when your language breaks up the scale differently to another language (spoiler: everyone can still agree that a warm spring day is different to a scorching hot one in the height of summer). And how can implied scales be used for humorous purposes, as in the Whale Fact™ that many whales were never taught how to drive manual stick shift? Announcements: It’s our 5 year anniversary! We’ve loved sharing the Lingthusiasm with you all these year, and as we do every year for our anniversary celebrations, we’re asking you to share it too! Share your favourite episode or moment on social media (and don’t forget to tag us!), or just tell a friend who you think could use a little more linguistics in their life. Then go forth and enjoy the warm fuzzies of having spread the linguistic joy! In this month’s bonus episode we’re getting enthusiastic about linguistic illusions! We talk about the where the Yanny/Laurel illusion that became popular on social media a while back came from, the McGurk Effect, using the Stroop Test to find spies, hallucinating words from musical instruments, the Comparative Illusion (aka "More people have been to Russia than I have"), and making our own speech to song illusion to infect you with (sorry) (no but seriously). Join us on Patreon to listen to this and 56 other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can discuss your favourite linguistically interesting fiction with other language nerds! https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to everything in this episode:

Transcribed - Published: 18 November 2021

If you want to know what a particular person, era, or society thinks about a given topic, you might want to read what that person or people have written about it. Which would be fine if your topic and people are very specific, but what if you’ve got, say, “everything published in English between 1800 and 2000″ and you’re trying to figure out how the use of a particular word (say, “the”) has been changing? In that case, you might want to turn to some of the text analysis tools of corpus linguistics -- the area of linguistics that makes and analyzes corpora, aka collections of texts. In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch gets enthusiastic about corpus linguistics with Dr Kat Gupta, a lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Roehampton in London, UK. We talk about how Kat’s interests changed along their path in linguistics, what to think about when pulling together a bunch of texts to analyze, and two of Kat’s cool research projects -- one using a corpus of newspaper articles to analyze how people perceived the various groups within the suffrage movement, and one about what we can learn about consent from their 1.4 billion-word corpus of online erotica. Announcements: There's just under two weeks left to sign up for the Lingthusiastic Sticker Pack! Become a Ling-phabet patron or higher by November 3, 2021 (anywhere on earth) and we'll send you a pack of four fun Lingthusiasm-related stickers! Plus, if we hit our stretch goal, that'll also include the two bouba and kiki stickers below for all sticker packs. Tea and scarf, sadly, not included, but the usual tier rewards of IPA wall of fame tile and Lingthusiast sticker are. (That could be seven stickers!) https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm In this month’s patron bonus episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about improving linguistics content on Wikipedia! We talk about gaps and biases that still exist for linguistics-related articles, getting started with Wikipedia edit-a-thons for linguists (#lingwiki) in 2015, how Wikipedia can fit into academia (from wiki journals to classroom editing assignments), and the part that Wikipedia played in the Lingthusiasm origin story. To access this and 55 other bonus episodes, join the Lingthusiasm patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/665693903339536384/episode-61-corpus-linguistics-and-consent

Transcribed - Published: 21 October 2021

Here’s a completely normal and unremarkable sentence. Let’s imagine we have two different coloured pens, and we’re going to circle the words in red and the affixes, that’s prefixes and suffixes, in blue. “Later today, I’ll know if I hafta get some prizes for Helen of Troy’s competition, or if it isn’t necessary.” Some of these are pretty straightforward. “Some”? Word. The -s on “prizes”? Affix. But some of them, “I’ll”, “hafta”, “Helen of Troy’s”, “isn’t”....hmmm. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about a small bit of language that’s sort of a halfway point between a standalone word and a fully glommed-on affix: the clitic! We talk about why sentences like “That’s the kind of linguist I’m” feel so strange and how on the one hand clitics are a sign of increased efficiency in terms of saying more common words more quickly, but on the other hand they kind of add complication because there are some contexts where the full forms of the words would be fine and yet the clitic doesn’t work, giving you one more thing to keep track of. We also talk about clitics and reduced forms of words in Yolmo, Old English, and Dutch, and how clitic pronouns might be evolving into affixes in French and Spanish. Announcements: We’re excited to announce a special offer that we’re running on Patreon that brings you fun things in the mail! Join the Ling-phabet tier or higher by November 3, 2021 (anywhere on earth) and get a sticker pack of FOUR stickers: - Two round “Schwa never stressed” stickers (one floral, one geometric) - One classic square Lingthusiasm logo sticker - One BECAUSE INTERNET bookplate sticker signed by Gretchen, for you to stick inside your copy or anywhere else you like Plus, if we reach a total of 1400 patrons at any level before November 3, then the sticker pack will also include: - Two mini Lingthusiasm green cutout stickers, one of which is called “bouba” and the other “kiki” — which is which? That’s an experiment you get to run on your friends when you stick them on your phone case, water bottle, laptop, etc. This special offer is part of the Ling-phabet tier, which also has the ordinary perk of letting patrons sponsor an IPA symbol or other special character and be recognized on the Lingthusiasm website on our “Supporter Wall of Fame” page. You can get your symbol through our ~*~super scientific~*~ Which IPA Character Are You Quiz, or just tell us what your favourite character or other Unicode symbol is. Then you get an image with your name and favourite symbol on it (see samples here!) recognizing you as a supporter, which you can share on social media/print off and use as a bookmark/gaze at in warm satisfaction/etc. Plus, after 3 months at this tier, you get its regular “Lingthusiast” sticker in the mail, so that could be a total of 5 (or 7) stickers and 2 joyous mail occasions for you! www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm In this month’s bonus episode, we talk with Emily Gref, a linguist who’s been working at a new language museum called Planet Word since 2018, first on creating content for the museum and, now that it’s open, on analyzing how visitors interact with the exhibits. We talk about what’s in Planet Word (including a library room with secret passage!), Emily’s career journey from academia to publishing to the museum world, and Emily’s passionate defence of pigeons. Join us on Patreon to listen to this and 53 other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can discuss your favourite linguistically interesting fiction with other language nerds! For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/662535562508517376/lingthusiasm-episode-60-thats-the-kind-of

Transcribed - Published: 17 September 2021

Let's say I show you and our friend Gavagai a box of chocolates, and then Gav leaves the room, and I show you that the box actually contains coloured pencils. (Big letdown, sorry.) When Gav comes back in the room a minute later, and we've closed the box again, what are they going to think is in the box? In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about Theory of Mind -- our ability to keep track of what other people are thinking, even when it's different from what we know ourselves. We talk about the highly important role of gossip in the development of language, reframing how we introduce people to something they haven't heard of yet, and ways of synchronizing mental states across groups of people, from conferences to movie voiceovers. Announcements: This month’s bonus episode is about some of the linguistically interesting fiction we've been reading lately! We talk about the challenges of communicating with sentient plants (from the plant's perspective) in Semiosis by Sue Burke, communicating with aliens by putting babies in pods (look, it was the 1980s) in Suzette Haden Elgin's classic Native Tongue, communicating with humans on a sailing ship using a sorta 19th century proto-internet in Courtney Milan's The Devil Comes Courting, and taking advantage of the difficulty of translation in communicating poetry across cultures in A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm Join us on Patreon to listen to this and 53 other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can discuss your favourite linguistically interesting fiction with other language nerds! https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to all the things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/659993200644308992/01-speaking-a-single-language-wont-bring-about

Transcribed - Published: 19 August 2021

What do the sounds fffff, vvvv, ssss, and zzzz all have in common? They're all produced by creating a sort of friction in your mouth when you constrict two parts against each other, whether that's your lips, your teeth, your tongue, the roof of your mouth, or in your throat. This whole class of sounds that are produced using friction are known as fricatives! In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about fricatives! We take you on a tour from the front of your mouth to the back (sadly, you’ll have to imagine the tiny cartoon schoolbus for yourself), and tell some of our favourite fricative-related stories along the way, including how the printing press is responsible for Ye Olde Teashoppe signs, the Extremely Welsh clothing chain LL Bean, and Gretchen’s erstwhile student days playing IPA Scrabble. If you have fricative stories of your own to add, feel free to talk about them in the Lingthusiasm Discord, or tag us in them on social media @lingthusiasm and we might share them! Announcements: We have new merch! Have you always wanted to recreate the classic psycholinguistics experiment of cross-modal perception wherever you go? With our bold coloured kiki/bouba merch you can! https://www.redbubble.com/people/lingthusiasm/ Kiki Bouba If I give you a rounded, lumpy shape and a sharp, spiky one, and tell you that one is called kiki and the other bouba, which name would you attach to which shape? It turns out that people's responses are surprisingly consistent! This classic experiment in cross-modal perception featured in Lingthusiasm episode 21: What words sound spiky across languages?, has become a favourite subject of linguistics memes, and is now available as Lingthusiasm merch! https://www.redbubble.com/people/lingthusiasm/ What the fricative Whether you're having a fricative hard day or you're just fricative surprised, now you can confuse people by not actually swearing and secretly give yourself an excuse to chat linguistics with them, thanks to our What the Fricative items in black or white text! Check out our cheeky ‘What The Fricative’ merch for all your almost-sweary needs! https://www.redbubble.com/people/lingthusiasm/ As ever, we love seeing photos of any Lingthusiasm merch in your lives! Tag us in them @lingthusiasm on social media! Announcements: In fiction, we can often tell when a character is drunk or high by their way of speaking: when someone's slurring sounds together or jumping erratically from topic to topic, the audience is meant to assume that they're under the influence. But how accurate are these fictional portrayals? In this episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about two fun studies of how people talk differently when under the influence of alcohol or cannabis: the German Alcohol Language Corpus and the delightfully named "Dude, What Was I Talking About? A New Sociolinguistic Framework for Marijuana-Intoxicated Speech". We also talk about the logistical complications of setting out to study intoxicated speech, from setting up fake pubs and recording in a "vehicular environment" to the ethical issues around how to make sure that impaired people are giving informed consent to participate (tip: ask them when they're still sober). Join us on Patreon to learn more, and get access to 52 other bonus episodes! You’ll also get access to our Discord server, where you can chat about your favourite Pokémon names with other language nerds! https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/656826674919440384/lingthusiasm-episode-58-a-fun-filled-fricative

Transcribed - Published: 16 July 2021

When you see something on social media in a language you don’t read, it’s really handy to have a quick and good-enough “click to translate” option. But despite the fact that 2000 of the world’s languages are African, machine translation and other language tech tools don’t yet exist for most of them. In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch interviews Jade Abbott and Bonaventure Dossou of Masakhane, a grassroots organisation whose mission is to strengthen and spur Natural Language Processing research in African languages, for Africans, by Africans. We talk about how they started working on language tech, Bona’s machine translator in Fon, and alternative models of participatory research and collective co-authorship. Announcements: This month’s bonus episode is about the linguistics of Pokémon names! Which sounds cuter, a Pikachu or a Charmander? Which sounds like it would be more likely to win in a fight, a Squirtle or a Blastoise? Even if you're not familiar with these pocket monsters, or if you're encountering new Pokémon you haven't heard of before, you might still have a vague sense of which names sound big or small, cuddly or powerful. This has lead to the creation of the delightful and entirely real linguistic subfield of Pokémonastics. https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm Join us on Patreon to learn more, and get access to 51 other bonus episodes! You’ll also get access to our Discord server, where you can chat about your favourite Pokémon names with other language nerds! https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm Here are the links mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/654293595359182848/lingthusiasm-episode-57-making-machines-learn-fon

Transcribed - Published: 18 June 2021

“I don’t have a pet dinosaur.” This sentence is, we assume, true for everyone listening to this episode (if it isn’t, uh, tell us your ways?). And yet it has a different feel to it than a more ordinary sentence like “I don’t have a cat”, the type of negated sentence that’s true for some people and not others. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about negation! We talk about how languages make sentences negative, how negation fits into the social side of conversation, and two ways you can make things super extra negative: negative concord (aka “French toast negation”) and negative polarity items (aka “Mean Girls negation”). Plus, a few sneak peeks from the upcoming book Highly Irregular by Arika Okrent, which is coming out on July 1, 2021 and which we are delighted to recommend. Announcements: This month’s bonus episode is a recording of our live show! When someone else is telling a story, you might encourage them to keep talking or to elaborate on a particular point by making various words, sounds, phrases, or gestures, such as "oh really?" and "mhm-hm" and nodding. This linguistic behaviour is known as backchannelling. Join us on Patreon to learn more, and to get access to 50 other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to our Discord server to chat with other lingthusiasts! www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to everything mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/651742548840398848/lingthusiasm-episode-56-not-not-a-negation

Transcribed - Published: 20 May 2021

The letter R is just one symbol, but it can represent a whole family of sounds. In various languages, R can be made in various places, from the tip of your tongue to the back of your throat, and in various ways, from repeatedly trilling a small fleshy part against the rest of your mouth to an almost fully open mouth that’s practically a vowel. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about R and R-like sounds, technically known as rhotics, including English r, French r, Spanish r and rr, and more. We also talk about how the presence or absence of R is a feature that distinguishes certain accents: think Canadian vs Australian English, northern vs southern varieties of English in the UK and US, and northern vs southern varieties of Mandarin. Announcements: We’re doing a virtual live show! It’s on April 24, 2021 and you can get access to it by becoming a patron of Lingthusiasm at any level. The Lingthusiasm liveshow is part of LingFest, a fringe-festival-like programme of independently organized online linguistics events for the week of April 24 to May 2. See the LingFest website for details on other events. https://lingcomm.org/lingfest/ The week before LingFest is LingComm21, the International Conference on Linguistics Communication. LingComm21 is a small, highly interactive, virtual conference that brings together lingcommers from a variety of levels and backgrounds, including linguists communicating with public audiences and communicators with a “beat” related to language. Find out more about LingComm21. https://lingcomm.org/conference/ This month’s bonus episode is about talking to babies and small children! We talk about how the way babies are addressed differs across cultures, how people sometimes alter their speech subtly for babies even when they think they don't, and how infant-directed speech differs from similar genres like pet-directed speech. Join us on Patreon to get access to this, as well as 49 other bonus episodes - as well as a ticket for you and a friend to our upcoming liveshow! https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to everything mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/648571714904670208/lingthusiasm-episode-55-r-and-r-like-sounds

Transcribed - Published: 15 April 2021

If you go to the linguistics section of a big library, you may find some shelves containing thick, dusty grammars of various languages. But grammars, like dictionaries, don’t just appear out of nowhere -- they’re made by people, and those people bring their own interests and priorities to the process. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about the process of figuring out the structure of a language and writing it down -- making a kind of book called a descriptive grammar. We also talk about differences in grammar-writing traditions in the history of India, Europe, and China, and how the structures of Sanskrit, Latin, and Old Chinese influenced the kinds of things that their early grammarians noticed about language. Announcements: We’re doing a virtual live show! It’s on April 24, 2021 and you can get access to it by becoming a patron of Lingthusiasm at any level. The Lingthusiasm liveshow is part of LingFest, a fringe-festival-like programme of independently organized online linguistics events for the week of April 24 to May 2. See the LingFest website for details as more events trickle in. https://lingcomm.org/lingfest/ The week before LingFest is LingComm21, the International Conference on Linguistics Communication. LingComm21 is a small, highly interactive, virtual conference that brings together lingcommers from a variety of levels and backgrounds, including linguists communicating with public audiences and communicators with a “beat” related to language. Find out more about LingComm21. https://lingcomm.org/conference/ This month’s bonus episode is about reduplication! Have you eaten salad-salad, drunk milk-milk, or read a book-book lately? Or are you thinking something more along the lines of "salad, schmalad! milk, schmilk! books, schmooks!"? In either case, you're producing reduplication! We look at different forms and meanings of reduplication across various languages through the World Atlas of Linguistic Structures, why it's not called just "duplication", and delve into English reduplication via a classic among entertaining linguistics papers, the Salad-Salad Paper. Join us on Patreon to get access to this and 48 other bonus episodes - as well as the upcoming liveshow! https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm Here are the links mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/646033422056292352/lingthusiasm-episode-54-how-linguists-figure-out

Transcribed - Published: 18 March 2021