You have questions, and we have answers.

But in the process we find out more about how English works, and how it got to be the way it is.

Daniel and Ben empty out the mailbag on this episode of Talk the Talk.


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223: Mailbag

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Promo

Promo with Jane Hebiton, 2015-10-27: Halloween

Show notes

This map shows the weird names Americans have given the night before Halloween
http://qz.com/289469/this-map-shows-the-weird-names-americans-have-given-the-night-before-halloween/

What do you call the night before Halloween?
http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_110.html

Gate night: Kids used to unhinge farmers’ gates
http://www.livescience.com/5149-devil-night-history-pre-halloween-pranks.html

Goosey Night
https://offeringstone.wordpress.com/2012/10/30/whats-goosey-night/

Dialect Blog: Halloween!
http://dialectblog.com/2011/10/31/halloween/

RationalWiki: Jesusween
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jesusween

The Pitfalls of Using Google Ngram to Study Language
http://www.wired.com/2015/10/pitfalls-of-studying-language-with-google-ngram/

Characterizing the Google Books Corpus: Strong Limits to Inferences of Socio-Cultural and Linguistic Evolution
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0137041

When OCR Goes Bad: Google’s Ngram Viewer & The F-Word
http://searchengineland.com/when-ocr-goes-bad-googles-ngram-viewer-the-f-word-59181

Syntax in Cambridge History of the English Language
https://books.google.com/books?id=NxHuNOvwt7wC&lpg=PP1&dq=cambridge%20history%20of%20the%20english%20language%20volume%203&pg=PA248#v=onepage&q=%22am%20not%20I%22&f=false

Etymology: mucho
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mucho#Spanish

Etymology: much
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=much

Etymology: good
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=good

Etymology: god
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=god

15 Pairs of Words That Seem Etymologically Related, But Aren’t
http://mentalfloss.com/article/61678/15-pairs-words-seem-etymologically-related-arent

Arika Okrent announced as winner of LSA Linguistics Journalism Award
http://www.linguisticsociety.org/news/2015/10/22/arika-okrent-announced-winner-lsa-linguistics-journalism-award

New guidelines aimed at reducing gender stereotyping in schools
http://www.itv.com/news/2015-10-18/schools-to-be-sent-guidelines-on-reducing-use-of-sexist-terms/

This is where the expression ‘throw shade’ comes from
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/where-the-expression-throw-shade-comes-from-2015-3

Urban Dictionary: throw shade
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=throw+shade

Go Ahead and Throw All the Shade You Want, Straight People
http://gawker.com/5980303/go-ahead-and-throw-all-the-shade-you-want-straight-people

How to Throw Shade
http://www.stuffmomnevertoldyou.com/blog/how-to-throw-shade/

Grant Barrett: throw shade
http://www.waywordradio.org/throw_shade/

Norwegians Are Literally Using ‘Texas’ As Slang for ‘Crazy’ Now
http://www.alternet.org/culture/norwegians-are-literally-using-texas-slang-crazy-now

How ‘Texas’ became Norwegian for ‘crazy’
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/10/26/how-texas-became-norwegian-for-crazy/

Norwegians use “Texas” as a synonym for “crazy”
http://qz.com/531921/norwegians-use-texas-as-a-synonym-for-crazy/

Why do Norwegians use ‘texas’ to mean ‘crazy’?
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34622478

Vegard Vigerust: “The Boy Who Wanted to Buy Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation”
“Would he make it even more texas in the village?”.
“Ville han laga enda meir texas i bygda?”
https://books.google.com/books?id=_f9EAAAAIAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=Texas

Etymonline: Ass
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ass

Etymonline: Arse
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=arse


Image credit: http://www.pcj-t.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Question-People.jpg


Transcript

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