Poor Dan is in a droop. No lemons, no melon. Won’t lovers revolt now?
Is this some weird experimental novel? No, every one of those sentences is palindromic — they read the same forward and backward. Palindromes aren’t just fun; they have some surprising historical significance.
Linguist Daniel Midgley is too hot to hoot on this episode of Talk the Talk.
Listen to this episode
You can listen to all the episodes of Talk the Talk by pasting this URL into your podlistener.
http://danielmidgley.com/talkthetalk/talk_classic.xml
Promo
Show notes
Gender-neutral communication: how to do it
https://theconversation.com/gender-neutral-communication-how-to-do-it-38383
Faceoff: ‘he’, ‘he or she’, ‘he/she’, ‘s/he’ versus ‘they’
http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/06/he-or-she-versus-they/
How to use singular they
http://www.vocabulary.com/articles/dictionary/dos-and-donts-for-singular-they/
David Crystal: “The best texters are always the best spellers”
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/nation/inside.asp?section=nationgeneral&xfile=/data/nationgeneral/2015/March/nationgeneral_March42.xml
Palindromic song title from band with palindromic name? ABBA: SOS
http://www.everyhit.com/record7.html
Some palindromic sentences collected by Ralph Griswold.
http://www.cs.arizona.edu/icon/oddsends/palinsen.htm
Jim Kalb’s Palindrome Collection
http://students.mimuw.edu.pl/~js248325/zsyp/texty/palindromes.txt
Jim Kalb’s Palindrome Connection
http://jkalb.freeshell.org/palindromes/
A really big palindrome list
http://www.palindromelist.net/
List of 886 Palindromes
http://nowthatsnifty.blogspot.com.au/2009/10/giant-list-of-palindromes.html
Ancient Amulet Discovered with Palindrome Inscription
http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/ancient-amulet-discovered-with-palindrome-inscription-150105.htm
The SATOR square
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sator_Square
Required reading: The Palindrome Game of the Enigma Codebreakers
http://www.vocabulary.com/articles/wc/the-palindrome-game-of-the-enigma-codebreakers/
Professor Peter Hilton: Bletchley Park code-breaker who became one of the most influential mathematicians of his generation
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/professor-peter-hilton-bletchley-park-codebreaker-who-became-one-of-the-most-influential-mathematicians-of-his-generation-2154811.html
BLETCHLEY PARK: Could you do better than the 51-character palindrome which Peter Hilton came up with during the Second World War?
http://www.mkweb.co.uk/BLETCHLEY-PARK-better-51-character-palindrome/story-26106861-detail/story.html
AIM A TOYOTA TATAMI MAT AT A TOYOTA, MIA.
http://ken-jennings.com/messageboards/viewtopic.php?p=66828
Peter Norvig’s 17,826 word palindrome
http://norvig.com/pal17txt.html
Dammit I’m Mad – a poem by Demetri Martin
https://mixedlollies.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/dammit-im-mad-a-poem-by-demetri-martin/
‘Ride-share’ and ‘unboxing’ added to Oxford dictionary
http://www.itworld.com/article/2889875/rideshare-and-unboxing-added-to-oxford-dictionary.html
500 Australian English words added to Oxford Dictionaries
http://www.australiantimes.co.uk/500-australian-english-words-added-to-oxford-dictionaries/
Ernie, doing some vishing: “Heeeere fishy fishy FISHY FISHY FISHY!”
Palindromes aren’t that hard.
http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/011213/palindromes-are-hard.gif
Image credit: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/9a/d8/66/9ad866beb44613968f83ca3fb1647c9d.jpg