Category: words of the year (page 2 of 3)

191: Ape Accents

Do apes have accents?

A recent news story claims that chimps learn a “new language” when they move in with other chimps. What’s behind the story? And what exactly are our fellow primates capable of, language wise?

Linguist Daniel Midgley

189: Words of the Year 2014

It’s a new year, and that means it’s time for our Word of the Year round-up.

What words tripped on our tongues, tickled our ears, and zeited our geist in 2014?

Linguist Daniel Midgley can’t even on this episode of …

186: No Puns in China

China’s media office is cracking down on puns.

And not because they’re terrible — they claim that wordplay is confusing, and damaging to cultural heritage. But is this just an attempt to control dissent?

By the way, how many characters …

185: Listener Questions

We get questions from our many listeners. And we have answers.

Do the languages of the world form a continuous chain? And isn’t it possible that language influences thought by the words we use?

Linguist Daniel Midgley tells all on …

147: Words of the Year 2013 (featuring Ben Zimmer)

It’s time to look at the words that made the news last year.

Forget twerking, and stop taking selfies, because this year’s winner was truly momentous.

There’s even someone special to take us through it: Ben Zimmer of the American …

145: Esperanto

Esperanto was designed to be simple to learn, and to unite the world.

It has a lot of competition from other artificial languages, but it still tops them all. What is Esperanto like? Will it take over the world, or …

101: Words of the Year 2012

Time for our yearly round-up of words that made the news.

Which vocabulary items captured the essence of our time, and which will survive?

Linguist Daniel Midgley brings you the useful, the outrageous, and the awful on this episode of …

53: Words of the Year 2011

The year 2011 brought many words and phrases to prominence.

Occupy captured a lot of attention, but there are so many more.

Linguist Daniel Midgley brings the words that captured the essence of our year on this episode of Talk

24: Planking

Do you plank?

Have you ever taken part in a flash mob, or been rickrolled?

Even if you haven’t, you may have wondered how the names for these and other Internet-related crazes got started.

Well, linguist Daniel Midgley is going …

18: App

Apple has apps. It even has an App Store.

But now Microsoft has challenged Apple’s attempt to trademark “App Store”, and Amazon wants to have its own Appstore. Is that allowed? Companies get to trademark words and terms they invent, …

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