974. How does aging affect our ability to understand language? From the challenges of processing complex sentences to the resilience you get from a rich vocabulary, we look at how our language skills change over time. Plus, looking into why people say "anyways" led me to some interesting historical tidbits.
Mar 26
17 min
973. "Oppenheimer" leads us to wonder about the "nucular" pronunciation of "nuclear." And why do people have that second capital letter in the middle of MySpace, OutKast, and PowerPoint (and is it grammatically correct)?
Mar 19
16 min
972. How did humans evolve from grunting ancestors to masters of language and poetry? This week, we explore fascinating theories on the origins of human language, including the laugh-inducing Bow-Wow and Pooh-Pooh theories. We also delve into Irish-English calques for St. Patrick's Day (and in response to a question from a Grammarpaloozian) and celebrate Leslie F. Miller's winning limerick from the National Grammar Day contest.
Mar 12
13 min
971. Linguists have traced modern languages like English and Sanskrit back thousands of years to a single Proto-Indo-European source. This week, we explore their detective work and the debates around the origins of the ancestral tongue.
Mar 5
21 min
970. We answer a listener question about the difference between "addictive" and "addicting," and then we look at how to write compound nouns: did you visit a coffeehouse or a coffee house?
Feb 27
14 min
969. From "wolkenkratzer" in German to "flea market" in English, direct translations called calques show how languages borrow from each other. This week, we look at how these translations are changing English in Miami and Spanish in Louisiana. Plus, we look at the difference between "gumball machine" and "gumballs machine" and how it might explain Joe Alwyn's Tortured Man Chat.
Feb 20
19 min
968. We explain why Taylor Swift's album title doesn't need an apostrophe and how the preposition "in" signals passion.
Feb 13
13 min
967. Should you say "a honor" or "an honor"? It's trickier than you think! We explore why articles depend on sounds and regional variations, the difference between "thee" and "thuh," and your stories about delicious phrasings.
Feb 6
12 min
966. We explore the rise and fall of the letter H: Debates over its name ("haitch" or "aitch"?) and why a once-prestigious pronunciation like "hwhat" now seems old-fashioned.
Jan 30
17 min
965. It's a listener question extravaganza! I answer your questions about "canceled," "another think/thing coming," zero plurals such as "fish," the way I reference verbs, episode numbers, "at about," mangos versus green peppers, and musgos.
Jan 23
19 min
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