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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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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