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Category: etymology (page 1 of 4)
What words do you constantly misspell? Are there any that make you stop and think every time you type them? We put out the call to our listeners for spelling bugbears, and we were inundated with responses. So we turned …
The mail keeps coming, and we keep answering.
- Is English really a dialect of Chinese?
- Why do people say “uncomfortableness”, when we already have “discomfort”?
- Are “ankh” and “anchor” related?
- How does learning traditional languages help communities?
- Is there a
Take a tornado. Add some sharks. You’ve got a sharknado.
But it’s not just sharks that can leap out of their normal context. It looks like –nado is jumping free and becoming a combining form — a part …
Names are what they are, and as long as they work, they work.
But sometimes in the history of naming, people name things in a manner inapt to their nature or origin. So what’s the story behind words like atom…
Even if we’re trying not to be the grammar police, we all have that internal voice that notices linguistic difference, and categorises people thereby.
How do we deal with that inner prescriptivist? How can we have linguistic discussions with grammar …
Akimbo. Throes. Tizzy.
Some words only appear in limited contexts. But what do they mean? The fascinating histories of these words can tell us more about how English works — and language in general.
We’re in tatters — or …
The questions never stop, and neither do we.
- What’s the past tense of yeet, and why is English past tense so strange?
- Can etymology help you spell rhythm?
- Should French teachers have to speak with a Parisian accent?
People are biased. And computers learn from people.
That means our data is biased, and in a big data world, that can cause big problems.
But researchers are finding ways to turn down the bias in a dataset. We’re talking …
What do you call your family members? No, not like that.
We’re talking about kinship terms. How does your language handle family relations? Do you call your grandmothers on your mom and dad’s side the same thing? What’s a second …
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- CBAA Awards 2018: Best Radio Program — Talk
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- Talkley Award 2018
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