19 - Mailbag, Schmailbag

941 turns

linkDaniel Midgley - All right.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Go, go, go!
linkDaniel Midgley - Hello, and welcome to this episode…
linkHedvig Skirgård - INTERRUPTS WITH SINGING♫ Go, go, Power Ra…!♫
linkDaniel Midgley - …LAUGHS
linkBen Ainslie - Ruined it already.On sentence one.
linkDaniel Midgley - First take!I could edit you out, but I'm gonna start again.
linkDaniel Midgley - INTRO MUSIC
linkDaniel Midgley - Hello, and welcome to this episode of Because Language, a podcast about linguistics, the science of language.I'm Daniel Midgley.Let's meet the team!The one with all the answers…it's Ben Ainslie.
linkBen Ainslie - Hello, everyone.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yesss!
linkDaniel Midgley - And the one with all the answers…Hedvig Skirgård.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Different answers, but also all of them.
linkBen Ainslie - I would like to think that there's a…there's a…like, a B-intersect-H Venn-diagram with, like, considerable overlap in terms of our answers.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're Marxists in a similar way!LAUGHTER
linkBen Ainslie - I would…I would like to throw an apology out to all of our listeners.If you are listening to my voice and thinking:he sounds a little bit more Tom Waits-y than normal, that is because I had my Year 12 Ball last night.And so I was deep on the D floor throwin' out a lot of “wooo!woo!”s and my voice has suffered.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Hasn’t suffered that much.
linkBen Ainslie - So if you like this voice, bad news:you will not get it again.
linkDaniel Midgley - You don't sound like I do after a cold.I always get very~smoky~.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
linkHedvig Skirgård - You sound all right.
linkBen Ainslie - It might— maybe it's mostly in my head —but I sound substantially different than normal to me.Anyway!
linkHedvig Skirgård - It's mostly in your head.You don't sound that different.
linkBen Ainslie - Excellente.Edit that out.Carry on.
linkDaniel Midgley - This is a Mailbag for our patrons.Hello, patrons.Thank you for being patrons.
linkHedvig Skirgård - HIGH, AIRY VOICEHello, hello.
linkBen Ainslie - And for people listening to this months down the line:hello, general population.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.What this means is you give us the questions, you get to listen to our answers.So thank you for making the show possible.But before that, let's get to the news.We're going to start with a story on Spotify.
linkBen Ainslie - Excellent.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yep.
linkDaniel Midgley - You know how Spotify tries to figure out what you like?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
linkBen Ainslie - I have found it's very bad at it, but yes, I do know how they do that.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Ohh, I found it really good at it.
linkDaniel Midgley - Are you able to get a sense of how they're grouping things?Are you able to figure out, sort of reverse engineer, how they do it?
linkHedvig Skirgård - So you know how if you use Spotify a lot, and you build up a sort of catalog, it makes these daily mixes, but it makes more than one.And the daily mixes are actually for me sorted by genre, which is good because I listen to so much lo-fi when I'm working that, if it didn't differentiate, I would have like six playlists of only lo-fi.But thankfully, it understands that that's a genre.And it puts that in Daily Mix One, and then in Daily Mix Two, it puts other stuff.So it's sort of grouping things by genre, which I like.
linkBen Ainslie - Maybe…maybe I have to dive a little deeper because I've honestly found that it's recommendation algorithm is as mediocre as YouTube's, which for me is the notoriously most mediocre of things, which is basically like:I saw that you liked this thing, so I'm going to give you a thing that I have just, like, heat-mapped to be approximately the most similar thing.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Really?
linkBen Ainslie - Like, very rarely has YouTube ever given me a thing, which is what I would describe as a delightful surprise.Right?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Really?That’s interesting.
linkBen Ainslie - I’m like:Oh, look at this thing that is functionally indistinguishable, say, for like one speaking voice from the thing that I have consumed recently.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Right.No, YouTube is really good for me.Recently, it was like:You would like to watch two hours of this professional groomer grooming a dog who has a very bad coat.And I was like:Yep, this is me.
linkBen AinslieDaniel Midgley - Wow.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Never watched grooming videos before.
linkBen Ainslie - That was an insight I was not expecting to get.
linkDaniel Midgley - Who wouldn't like that?Come on!
linkBen Ainslie - I would absolutely not like that!I don’t want to watch two hours of a dog being groomed.
linkHedvig Skirgård - It’s really fun.This type of video…the comments section is very, very often filled with people saying, you know, a little dialog template saying:YouTube:Would you like to watch a grooming video for two hours?A million people:Yes.And I'm like, Yes, that is me.
linkBen Ainslie - Wow.
linkDaniel Midgley - Well, Spotify has a patentpeɪ-tənt— or a patent [pæ-tənt] —to do it slightly differently.To do this job of figuring out what it is that you want.
linkHedvig Skirgård - pæ-TENT.
linkBen Ainslie - How it do.How it do dis.
linkDaniel Midgley - Here it is.It will use recordings of users’ speech.
linkHedvig Skirgård - AHHHH.
linkBen Ainslie - Isn't that…
linkHedvig Skirgård - …like, illegal?
linkBen Ainslie - When I…when I speak into my phone and say:YouTube, play me some banging EDM dance music, isn't that…
linkHedvig Skirgård - THAT is what you listen to?I doubt that.
linkBen Ainslie - I absolutely listen to…excuuuuuuu - hah hah hoh hoh hohhhhhh?!
linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, absolutely.Do we not know Ben?Have we met?Hedvig, I’d like to introduce you to Ben.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Have we talked about EDM before?
linkBen Ainslie - Hedvig, Hedvig.Me and…oh…you should have seen me last night.Like, in the ballroom, there was…because you know how balls work?You got a bunch of tables, but then you got a D floor in the middle, right?And so there would be just like shitty Bon Jovi song, shitty pop song, and then like either a thumping EDM banger…
linkHedvig Skirgård - Did they play Should I Stay or Should I Go?
linkBen Ainslie - Yes.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Why is that a staple on all, like, school functions in all countries?
linkDaniel Midgley - Has been ever sonce.
linkBen Ainslie - Don’t even…don’t even get me started.Anyway, right?So all that trash is playing.And I'm just like chin-stroking up the back.And then like…
linkHedvig Skirgård - WHISPERSChin-stroking…oh…
linkBen Ainslie - And then like an absolute banger hip-hop or EDM track comes on.And I am just like, pushing well-dressed teenagers out of the way!Because I am just like, I'm in the middle.I'm jumping up and down.I'm whipping my head around to the point where it is very sore today!
linkDaniel Midgley - There goes Mr Ainslie.
linkBen Ainslie - Me and EDM very much…to my question, though:When I bust open my phone, I'm like:Hey, YouTube, play me like something by Boys Noise or whatever.Isn't that what…Isn't that what's happening?Isn't that it using my voice to like, give music?
linkDaniel Midgley - What if it took a look at this:What if it took a gander at gender?
linkBen Ainslie - GASP
linkDaniel Midgley - Age?
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, meta analysis?
linkDaniel Midgley - Emotional state.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, it does a lot of, like, morning mood for me and stuff and I'm like, yeah.
linkDaniel Midgley - And accent?
linkBen Ainslie - That's…okay…that's…
linkHedvig Skirgård - Wait, what?Wait, how does it know what an accent is?
linkBen Ainslie - That's creepy.
linkDaniel Midgley - Well, that's a good question.
linkBen Ainslie - I mean, to be fair, they've had a lot of time to figure it out now!
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, that's a task, accent detection.I mean, yeah.Yeah, totally.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I didn’t know they were good at that yet.
linkDaniel Midgley - Well, maybe they're not.Here's another thing that Spotify has a patent to look at.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, what are they doing?
linkDaniel Midgley - By the way, I'm not saying that they're including this in the software now.
linkBen Ainslie - But they've patented it, so they have a protective space for it.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.
linkDaniel Midgley - Background noise.Whether somebody is on their own, or there are people around."Ooh, you have other people?It might be a party playlist time."
linkHedvig Skirgård - That's…that's not bad.
linkBen Ainslie - Does anyone else find the accent thing to be a little bit creepy?
linkDaniel Midgley - Mhm, intrusive and weird.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, because I want to know what they're doing with it, because…
linkBen Ainslie - Because basically my brain basically goes:Ah, that sounds like a trashy…like, that sounds like a white trash person, so I'm gonna give them lots of…I don't know what's that…who's that?A kid?Kid Rock.I'm gonna suggest a bunch of Kid Rock.
linkDaniel Midgley - Hey, you sound Latinx, would you like to listen to what you're already listening to?
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
linkHedvig Skirgård - But the scary thing about all of this is how often…Okay, this isn't your experience, but it is mine.I mean, I…it does something good for me, right?Like, I actually…when I click a playlist and I go, like:playlist radio or daily mixes, it's not doing too bad a job.
linkDaniel Midgley - I think the accent one is the one that gave me the tremors, you know?
linkBen Ainslie - Can I ask why, Daniel?From like a linguistics perspective, what's the sort of ethical implications in the background there?
linkDaniel Midgley - For some reason, I'm thinking of that project where they try to figure out where refugees are from, as a way of…what's that called?It’s a four letter acronym?Starts with an L.Language of origin?No, what is it called?It's LADO. — D
linkHedvig Skirgård - I know that, I know that various countries have wanted to do that.And the US wanted to do that.They wanted to, like…they have companies, and Australia has done that as well.Trying to just see if refugee stories match up.So like:Oh, you say you speak this language, but we've got this linguist here says that that language isn't spoken in that country, you must be lying.Is it that you're talking about?
linkDaniel Midgley - Or:You say that you're from Iran, but you sound like you're from somewhere else, and that's because you were in a camp, talking to people for like, a year?.And so I'm just suspicious of anything having to do with accent, and it's probably not related to anything that I should be worried about.But I am, I'm concerned about it.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I’m also surprised that that accent is included, because like, how much better is that going to do my prediction on Spotify, for example, than just looking at what kind of things other users who listen to my kind of music listen to?Like, surely that has to be, like, the best thing.
linkBen Ainslie - I predict, Hedvig, if I may, that it won't be a…my suspicion would be it is not designed to improve the results of the algorithm.It is designed to reduce the load on the algorithm.Right?So at the moment, they've got this like super complex network of things, figuring stuff out, and if they can listen to your accent and be like:Ah, this like, basic white boy just wants like a bunch of like EDM trash– and I'm speaking about myself right now –instead of having to like, cross reference a bunch of nonsense, it can just literally be like:eh, I know what these clowns like, and then just give it to me.
linkDaniel Midgley - Wait, it’s not so that they can give songs to you, it’s that they can give ads to you.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh!
linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh!
linkDaniel Midgley - Come on, what do you think this is for?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Song recommendations, obviously.We both thought so.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, Hedvig, correct me if I'm wrong.That was not made clear to me!
linkHedvig Skirgård - No!
linkDaniel Midgley - Don't you think?Don’t you think?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Also, I pay for Spotify, so I don't see them ads stuff.
linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.There's something.They want to know more about you, and I don't think it's so that they can give you what *you* want.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, that is…now that you’ve said it out loud, that is abundantly obvious.
linkHedvig Skirgård - That makes more sense.
linkBen Ainslie - Question though.And this is as a non Spotify user…I use YouTube for my music.
linkHedvig Skirgård - So weird, so weird!
linkHedvig Skirgård - LAUGHTER
linkBen Ainslie - How much are people speaking to Spotify?Like, what data corpus?
linkHedvig Skirgård - I’m not speaking to it at all.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, what data corpus is Spotify getting here?
linkDaniel Midgley - Well, it does show what's possible, anyway.And there are more things that are possible and the more possible things get, the more things we'll find that are maybe a little creepy and intrusive.
linkBen Ainslie - I have a feeling we have all three of us just displayed our age, and there's a bunch of teenagers listening being like:You put your air buds in and you say:Spotify, skip to the next track, and that's how we bloody interact with our Spotify all the time.
linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, well, let us know.You can get in touch with us at hello@becauselanguage.com.Should we move on to the next item?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
linkBen Ainslie - Otherwise we will be here until…yes.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, sorry.You should pick less interesting news, Daniel.
linkDaniel Midgley - Sorry, sorry.And less of it.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, we haven’t even gotten to the fucking questions, good god.
linkHedvig Skirgård - No no no no no.
linkDaniel Midgley - This one's about singular THEY.This one is Keir Moulton and a team from the University of Toronto.And this work was published in Glossa.We've talked a lot about singular THEY.We're big fans.
linkBen Ainslie - We have.I was a big fan…This is one of the very rare instances where I was ahead of the curve even before I joined the show.
linkHedvig Skirgård - MOCKING~Oh, so cool.~
linkBen Ainslie - Singular THEY;easy, makes sense.Just everyone needs to, like, just fuck off, basically, who doesn't like it.
linkDaniel Midgley - So you might use singular THEY in a sentence like, “The reporter said that their cell phone was recording the whole interview.” Sounds good?
linkBen Ainslie - Yep.Sure.
linkDaniel Midgley - Sounds good.Yep, sounds fine to me.Some people think it sounds funny, either for prescriptive reasons, or because they just think it sounds kind of odd.But what happens if I just got rid of the reporter altogether?What if I said, instead of “The reporter said that their cell phone was recording the whole interview?” — what if I just said, “They said that their cell phone was recording the whole interview”?What do you think?
linkBen Ainslie - Just makes perfect sense to me.The only thing that I can think about in that sentence is a…is a sort of a person going:But I must know more biographical details about the subject of the sentence!Right?And I think that is a real thing for some people, right?They're like:But is…DRAMATIC VOICE~is the person a man or a woman?~
linkHedvig Skirgård - To be fair, I do think it's strange in general to have a sentence with a pronoun.Like, pronouns usually are introduced after you say a full noun-phrase, where you say “the reporter” or “Andrea” or whatever.
linkBen Ainslie - Can you give the non-linguist…?Yeah.So give us a sentence with one, and both?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, so pronouns are HE, SHE, IT, YOU, ME, THEY, US.All of them.
linkBen Ainslie - Right.
linkHedvig Skirgård - And usually, a pronoun is replacing a noun or a full…even a noun phrase.So like:The ugly duckling was tired.Um…is ducklings IT?
linkBen Ainslie - Yes, duckling would be IT.
linkHedvig Skirgård - It was tired.But if you just strike up a conversation with someone, or if you read something, and they immediately just say, like:"It was tired," you'd be like:Wait, what?Like, not even…not even about the gender.You're just like:What was tired?Something.Just…I need to know what it's referring to.
linkBen Ainslie - I guess in this particular example, though, we've got enough contextual information that we can assume that it's probably not, sort of like, bobcat, for example, right?Because it's recording an interview.
linkHedvig Skirgård - So in the recording an interview, yes.But in general pronouns, usually you introduce the thing before.
linkBen Ainslie - You need to anchor them to a proper noun.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, It's a sign of someone not being used to writing, I think, if they do that.
linkDaniel Midgley - Well, some people find singular THEY perfectly fine and some people don't.But we're still kind of working to understand the conditions under which people do find or don't find singular THEY acceptable.Let's dig into the literature.So in earlier work, Kirby Conrod and the team found that people find singular THEY more acceptable when the THEY is somebody socially distant, like “The dentist washed their hands” instead of “My friend washed their hands”.They find the friend one not as palatable as the dentist one.But what we're finding with this work is that if you've got nobody in the antecedent role, the sentence with the reporter people thought was fine, but the people with no reporter thought it was weird.Their comment is, “we find that the presence of a linguistic antecedent, like 'the reporter', has an ameliorating role for a singular THEY, because it serves to reinforce the irrelevance of the gender of the referent,” which is why the reporter…we don't know if that's what gender that person is.But as long as you stick somebody in there, singular THEY sounds okay.Without it, odd.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, right.Oh, also, just apropos to nothing at all.I just figured, can we just all start calling female reporters reportresses?
linkDaniel Midgley - Hmmm…
linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, god, gross.
linkDaniel Midgley - Let’s not!
linkBen Ainslie - I just like:~REPORTRESS!~
linkHedvig Skirgård - German…German does this kind of stuff and I have to remember.But it is…And there isn't…there is a potential feminist argument for it, which is gender is relevant.And you shouldn't…like, being gender blind is not always helpful, either.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.It's the…it's what we're seeing in sort of racial discourse right now.Like, yes, push towards colorblindness is actually just deeply antithetical to any sort of forward progress on anti-racism and all that kind of stuff.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
linkBen Ainslie - Which is a thing that I have been speaking with my wonderful partner about, and who, which I was not aware of completely until she was just like:You white people have some interesting ideas about how this works.LAUGHTER
linkDaniel Midgley - And then you say:You're right.
linkBen Ainslie - And I cleaned that up a little bit.LAUGHTERWhite people are fucking idiots sometimes!
linkDaniel Midgley - We're a lot of work.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I thought about it, and it's led me to sort of more often say that I'm white, when I started thinking about this more.And sometimes I say that in instances where I realise that like, the other people might not be clued into why I'm saying it.And it makes things weird, but I'm working on it.
linkBen Ainslie - You’re just in a room of white people, and you're like, “Hi, I'm Hedvig.I'm white!” and they're all like……okaay….
linkDaniel Midgley - Also I’m descended from Vikings!
linkHedvig Skirgård - No, I think I said at one point, I was like— oh god, how was it? Oh, we were —it was about the train and like about the…It was actually kind of tricky.So, it was that the police were inspecting people's passport for entering into Germany.And they didn't check me and Ste.And I casually said to someone, like:Oh, I must be because they have like, racist bias and we're white people and they didn't check us.Which might be true.But it could have…
linkBen Ainslie - But that is that is definitely the sort of offhand comment that I would say, all the time.Like that is a very normal statement for me.
linkHedvig Skirgård - But I said it to someone I don't know.And I think they might have thought that I agreed with that?
linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, I see.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, right.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Like:They didn’t check us because we're white and we're better!
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Yeah.Kind of…kind of like:I found that with French people, like, especially older French people…
linkHedvig Skirgård - LAUGHS UNDER HER BREATHFrench people, okay.
linkBen Ainslie - …sometimes would be like:I do not want my culture diluted.I am not…I am not, like…I'm not being shy about this.So they will say things that can kind of sometimes sound to me like they would be progressive, but what they're actually saying— like you've just said —it's just like:Hm, yes, they must have put me to the forward of the queue because I'm French.And their implication is like…which is the right way to go!
linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTER
linkHedvig Skirgård - And I said this, and I realised the person I was speaking to, I couldn't tell which interpretation they had made, and I was like, I'm not going to draw attention to it.I'm just going to go on with the rest of the conversation because I don't know what to do about this.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, just move on!
linkHedvig Skirgård - Ugh.Bleh.
linkDaniel Midgley - Well, let's leave singular THEY for a while.I'm sure that we'll find out more interesting stuff about how that works.I noticed this tweet:“How do you say the name of the influential pragmatics theorist who invented all of the Maxims of behaviour?” Sorry, non-linguists.Hedvig?How would you say Herbert Paul…
linkHedvig Skirgård - Do you know who this is, Ben?
linkBen Ainslie - Hold on.Let me look at the…
linkHedvig Skirgård - I want to give you a guess.Don’t look at the run sheet, because it says the word.
linkBen Ainslie - I didn't look at the, like, content, but I could see the name.I am going to guess that it's the French pronunciation.
linkDaniel Midgley - And that is…?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Please produce it.
linkBen Ainslie - Hubert?ubeʁ
linkHedvig Skirgård - The last name is what we're after.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, uh…
linkDaniel Midgley - Herbert Paul, HP…
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, oh!If it's French it’s going to be like:Paulpwal?
linkDaniel Midgley - It’s not French.What?No.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Here, his last name starts with G.
linkDaniel Midgley - Here, I’m going to spell it:G-R-I-C-E.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh!I saw Herbert Paul, I didn’t see…okay.Look, in that case, I'm gonna go with Gricegɹaɪs.
linkDaniel Midgley - Gricegɹaɪs.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, that's how everyone says it, Gricegɹaɪs.
linkBen Ainslie - Rice with a G.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Gricegɹaɪsand GriceangɹaɪsiənMaxims, yup.
linkDaniel Midgley - The Gricean Maxims.Well, I'm looking at this tweet by Judy, the linguist on Twitter, “Linguist Twitter, quick question, do you pronounce the name g-r-i c-e, Gricegɹis, or Gricegɹaɪs?I had learned the first one was correct— Grice [gɹis] —but I have recently heard the second in a linguistic setting.And I need to talk about implicature in class this week.” And then a whole bunch of people in the comments were like:Yeah, no, I only ever heard Gricegɹis, and I only ever heard Gricegɹaɪs.And it was kind of split.I was like, Wait, what?'Cause I've only ever heard Gricegɹaɪs.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Has anyone ever done Gricegɹɪs?Gricegɹisor Gricegɹɪsor whatever it is.
linkDaniel Midgley - All right, so how do we settle this?
linkBen Ainslie - Gricegʁɪswould be the French pronunciation right?I know this person isn’t French, but that’s how you would…
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, it would.
linkDaniel Midgley - Let’s make him French.Herbertuʁbeʁ
linkDaniel Midgley - ALLIN FRENCH ACCENT:Herbert Paul Grice
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, that's fine.But he’s not French, is he?
linkDaniel Midgley - No, he's British.
linkBen Ainslie - But he might have a French heritage, right?Or he might have a French parent or something like that, which is why he's got a French name, potentially.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.But that doesn't always mean you inherit pronunciation, right?
linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I decided to take this to youglish.com, which is a website you can go to, to type in a word and find that word in YouTube annotations.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, what a cool…I've never heard of this!
linkHedvig Skirgård - WHAT
linkDaniel Midgley - It'll take you right to that spot in the video.And so you can hear like 44 different people saying Gricegɹaɪsor Gricegɹis, and you can count them up.
linkBen Ainslie - Ohhh!
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah!
linkBen Ainslie - Cool.
linkHedvig Skirgård - It’s like your Spotify!
linkHedvig Skirgård - LAUGHTER
linkBen Ainslie - It’s Ngram Viewer meets Spotify!
linkDaniel Midgley - You can hear people saying stuff.So do you want to know how people pronounce a certain word like divisivedə vaɪ sɪvor divisivedə vɪ sɪv?Is it this or that?Well, now you can look it up in a bajillion YouTube videos that have annotation.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Divisivedə vɪ sɪv?
linkDaniel Midgley - It's so brilliant.
linkBen Ainslie - And so I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess the answer is:a bunch of people say it both ways.
linkDaniel Midgley - No, everyone says Gricegɹaɪs.
linkBen Ainslie - Okay.LAUGHS
linkDaniel Midgley - Every single person said Gricegɹaɪs.
linkHedvig Skirgård - So who are these Gricegɹispeople?I’m confused.
linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, the other cool thing about Youglish is you can break it down by country, Australian videos, American videos, Great Britain videos.So Australians say kudoskju-dɒsto you.Whereas American say kudosku-doʊzto you.
linkBen Ainslie - And that's why I say kudosku-doʊz.There you go.I've always had Australians look at me askance, and be like:The fuck you doing, dickhead?
linkDaniel Midgley - AUSSIE ACCENTIt’s kudoskju-dɒs.
linkBen Ainslie - It’s kudoskju-dɒs, you bloody idiot.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Ya think you’re better than us?!
linkHedvig Skirgård - LAUGHTER
linkBen Ainslie - I bet you think it's Jello as well?Don't you, mate?And I'm like:CRINGINGLY~I actually do think it's Jello.~
linkDaniel Midgley - Well, if you say Grice differently, we want to hear about it.So get in touch.This is of course the second in a list of linguists whose names I'm not sure how to pronounce them.The first one is, of course, William, the sociolinguist William L-A-B-O-V.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Labovla bɒv.
linkBen Ainslie - Wouldn't that be Lebeaulə boʊ?
linkHedvig Skirgård - la bʌv.la bɒv.
linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, well, remember, he's the pioneering social linguist that investigated how people say items if they're on the fourth floor?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, he’s fucking pleased with this.He’s happy about this.
linkHedvig Skirgård - LAUGHTER
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, that's the thing.I started hearing Labovˈleɪ bɒvwhen I first started my master's program, and then I heard that was wrong, and it was Labovlə ˈboʊv.And then I found out that he doesn't actually want to resolve this conflict because he likes…
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.I know.
linkBen Ainslie - Of course he doesn’t!Hedvig hit the nail on the head, he’s pleased.He likes it.
linkDaniel Midgley - It's so appropriate that his name is a sociolinguistic variable.So good.
linkHedvig Skirgård - It's like our research center that we had in Canberra, which is Center of…ARC Center of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language.And some people said, CO-EDL, and some people said, like CODELkʌdəl, like curdlekɜdəlalmost.And I say coidalkoɪdəl!
linkHedvig Skirgård - LAUGHTER
linkBen Ainslie - No…coydel, really?
linkHedvig Skirgård - And our director Nick was so pleased.Because it’s so fun.And I told it to our director.And he was like, yeah, that's funny.That sounds like coitus!And I was like:Yeah, it does!
linkDaniel Midgley - So some people said that there was a Coital Party.And some said that there was a Cuddle Party.I guess…you know…whatever you're into.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, and our director was just like, I approve of this!This is fun!
linkDaniel Midgley - LAUGHSWas that Nick Evans?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.He was like:No, I'm not gonna correct anyone, you can all say whatever you want.
linkDaniel Midgley - Finally…something that's coming up.Hedvig, tell us about what's coming up soon.
linkHedvig Skirgård - So, as we may be aware of, if we are listeners of the show— but otherwise, I'll give you a bit of recap —The Linguistic Society of America in 2018 did a statement on race and racial justice in the association and in linguistics in general.And that later sparked a lot of controversy because certain members…
linkDaniel Midgley - There’s been no end of trouble since!
linkBen Ainslie - Was this the infamous, like, walkback and then the half apology and the whole, like, rigmarole?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, this is that whole thing.And a lot of various things happen after that, where some members said that certain other members were not living up to the statement, etc, etc.And the LSA also published a journal called Language, which was one of the most high esteem linguistics journals.
linkBen Ainslie - Seminal.Seminal linguistic journal.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Seminal.And I don't think we're going to cover the whole, like, letter and statement back and forth right now, but basically, they decided to to discuss this in their scholarly production as well.And in the latest issue of Language, there is a target article by Dr Charity Hudley, Dr Mallinson and Dr Bucholtz, where they discuss the conceptualisation of race in linguistics, and what linguistics as a discipline should do to increase social justice, both within the discipline and also what impact that has on our actual research — how people construct race in their research.
linkBen Ainslie - We had Hudley on the show, didn't we?
linkDaniel Midgley - We did.This was way back in I think 2014, 2015.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, I remember that.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Um, so some listeners might be familiar with her work.And this…so there was a target article.And then there were a number of responses, and then a sort of commentary on that.And it's a lot of content to go through.And they're also going to have a webinar where you can, like, meet the authors next Friday.So that's 12th of February.We're going to put the link in the show notes, and it's free to attend.We're going to be attending, I'm going to be attending because it's a decent time– so for me, I don't know about you guys, if it’s as good –but we're gonna report back and cover more after that discussion, I think.And hopefully, we might be able to have some of the people who wrote some papers in there on the show.
linkBen Ainslie - Awesome.Fingers crossed for lots of good progress.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, that's coming up.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, it's really cool.What I really liked about their paper is they sort of go through what other disciplines like anthropology and psychology and education studies have done that is sort of akin to what they argue linguistics should be doing.And they're basically illustrating how these disciplines are usually decades ahead of linguistics in many of these regards.It made me feel, you know, sad that we're not as advanced as I'd like us to be.But I was very grateful and very happy to read the papers, and see all the attention devoted to it.
linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, we’ll keep an eye on that and have that coming up in a future episode.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yesss!CLAPS
linkHedvig Skirgård - TRANSITIONAL MUSIC
linkBen Ainslie - And now, it is time for Hedvig and Daniel to do heaps of really hard work while I sit here and coast on their coattails, because they're gonna have to answer a whole bunch of difficult linguistic questions!
linkDaniel Midgley - Ah, not so fast — you're gonna have to answer them first, knowing nothing!
linkDaniel Midgley - LAUGHTER
linkBen Ainslie - Okay, okay.
linkDaniel Midgley - That's what we do.
linkBen Ainslie - All right.
linkDaniel Midgley - So the first one comes from Marty via email, hello@becauselanguage.com.
linkBen Ainslie - Martin?Lovely, lovely.
linkDaniel MidgleyHedvig Skirgård - Marty.
linkBen Ainslie - No, I'm gonna call you Martin, just for this time, because I feel like it's an honorific.I'm affording you even more respect.Because you're just a deadset legend, and you're starting off the show.I'm going to call you Marty from now on, though.Thank you.
linkDaniel Midgley - Now, on our Word of the Week of the Year episode, we talked about SUSS.
linkBen Ainslie - Ah, yes, SUSS, great word!
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.So Marty says, “Regarding the word SUSS.I've used that word— maybe spelled S U double S, but pronounced the same as you did on your Words of the Week of the Year 2020 podcast —for decades.”
linkBen Ainslie - You and me both Marty, you and me both.
linkDaniel Midgley - "To mean, not to suspect, but to know or to figure out."
linkBen Ainslie - Yep, to suss something out.
linkDaniel Midgley - Suss something out.
linkBen Ainslie - For sure.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Hmm.
linkDaniel Midgley - “I'm curious how this other meaning came about.”
linkBen Ainslie - As in how to suss something out.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.So SUSS in our earlier episode was, like, suspicious.
linkBen Ainslie - DRAMATICALLYSuspicious.Yep.
linkDaniel Midgley - Suspect.
linkBen Ainslie - Well, that’s a bit suss.
linkDaniel Midgley - But to SUSS OUT means to discover.
linkBen Ainslie - Investigate or to uncover.Yeah.
linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.So any ideas on how suspicious led to, to find out about something or to investigate something?
linkBen Ainslie - Well, I mean, for me, I've…do you know what, Marty, thank you so much for bringing it to the table because I'd never actually made the connection that it's been used outside of its, like, yard.Do you know what I mean?Like, it's, I've never really thought about how like to suss something out is actually based on suspicious necessarily, if it even is.But if it is, I would imagine because when you're suspicious about something you investigate, so when you suss something out, you investigate it.
linkHedvig Skirgård - There's also just the verb “I suspect that you're lying”.
linkBen Ainslie - Okay, yeah, true.
linkHedvig Skirgård - And you are suspicious.
linkDaniel Midgley - Creating some curiosity.That's the path that I found as well.But I tried to find some sort of quote to link them together.And here's one from the OED.It's from 1970 from a book.Somebody says, “You'll get sussed right off.The club boys will mark you down for a copper the minute you walk through the door.” You'll get sussed.
linkBen Ainslie - Sussed right off.So that almost like you will be tagged as suspicious, in that usage.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, you'll be suspected, but you'll also be…you’ll be sussed, they’ll evaluate you, they'll figure you out.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, okay.Okay.
linkHedvig Skirgård - It's a good threat.
linkDaniel Midgley - So that there is a neat little link between suspecting and finding out.I think that kind of encapsulates them both.
linkBen Ainslie - Fascinating.There we go.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Is this a case of a patient labile verb?So there are some verbs that are, like…
linkBen Ainslie - SNORTS IN LAUGHTERThat definitely needs some explanation on that one.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.no, I know, I know.I’m not stupid.
linkDaniel Midgley - She’s a pro.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I have a cup here.I can say "I will break the cup." The cup will be broken, right?
linkBen Ainslie - Cool.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Which is fun, because in the first sentence, it is I who's the subject and the second one, the state of it…or I can also say "The cup broke." The cup will break.So "I will break the cup" and "The cup will break." We actually have “will break” in both scenarios, but the subject is different.It's actually a bit weird in a way because…
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, because you flip the subject and the object a little bit, don’t you?
linkHedvig Skirgård - You flip the object and the subject, and usually when you do that, you should have a sort of a passive voice thing.Like, something like:the cup…the cup…
linkDaniel Midgley - Will be broken by me.
linkBen Ainslie - What I love is– just for all of our listeners, because we do this on Zoom so we can see each other —Hedvig just went, “the cup” and then she stared at her cup for an uncomfortably long period of time and just stopped.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I just had to be like:Wait, how does passive voice work in English?
linkHedvig Skirgård - LAUGHTER
linkBen Ainslie - It just felt like you were learning a deep universal truth from your cup in a film.Like:the cupMIND BLOWN SOUND EFFECT.So to finish that thought….
linkHedvig Skirgård - So to finish that thought, Daniel very kindly told me that "The cup will be broken" and then potentially you can add if you want “by me”.But that's weird, right?That I don't have to say that.That I can say "The cup will break." That's mad!
linkBen Ainslie - So you're thinking SUSS has done a similar thing?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, I suspect you, and you are suspicious.It's not the same thing exactly.Because it's not…well, you can say you are a suspect.So it's not…it's not the same because it's not like:I suspect you, you are suspect.SUDDEN REALISATIONNo, that works!
linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, it is.Yes.You can say that.Yeah.Yeah, it's the same exact thing.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I don't know if you saw that.But that was like:a light went up in my head when I said the words.I was like:wait, that's a grammatical sentence!
linkBen Ainslie - That was, that was a real aha moment.I saw it.All across your features.
linkHedvig Skirgård - So SUSPECT is a patient labile verb!There's your jargon for the week.
linkBen Ainslie - Right.
linkDaniel Midgley - Wow.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, there you go.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Labile as in, instable.
linkBen Ainslie - It has evolved along those different paths, because it has the core capacity to have been used in both ways.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Yeah.And, um, patient labile verbs are really fun.And if you can think of some more, then let us know.
linkBen Ainslie - That's a fun party game, like in Star Trek Discovery where they play the auto antonym game.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, things that are its own antonym.Yeah, I learned a fun one.I don't usually like these memes on YouTube and Facebook, where it's like:~hehehe other languages are so funny. They sound funny. SCHMETTERLING sounds so stupid in German, etc.~But someone pointed out that PLUS DE ÇA and PLUS DE ÇA in French both means "more of this" and "no more of this.LAUGHTER
linkBen Ainslie - That seems…that seems confusing and like it could lead to some serious difficulties.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I saw some French people commenting and saying:It's true, but we actually don't…Like, one of those is less common, and we use something else.But that's stupid!
linkDaniel Midgley - Well, one of the things about BREAK is that when you find a verb that does it…when you find one patient labile verb, you'll usually find others in the same semantic frame.So for example, "I shattered the glass", "The glass shattered"."I cracked the glass", "The glass cracked." So anything in that vein.
linkBen Ainslie - Okay, so what we want to find is multiple veins, listeners.So if you've got a bunch of different, like, little geographical regions where there these patient labile verbs…?
linkHedvig Skirgård - There you go.Good.Good job.
linkBen Ainslie - …live, then you should definitely hit them up to us.Because you could then be the same kind of unpopular person we are at parties and you will be likeMOCKING VOICE~oh did you know what patient labile verbs are? Isn’t this interesting~
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, you can also win a some sort of symbolic prize if you can think of a better jargon term than "patient labile", because it's not…
linkBen Ainslie - I will send you all of the trash 4-H pencils that Hedvig uses, as a reward.
linkDaniel Midgley - It's not the same as anti-passivisation, is it?
linkHedvig Skirgård - No, anti-passive's different.
linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, dang.Okay, next time, next time.Thank you, Marty, for that question.You are a legend.And so is Dual Power Ranger Rick — @aquaticonions on Twitter.
linkBen Ainslie - What a cluster of great handles!
linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, indeed."Is the segment Jd͡ʒas in JORTS, JOOTS or JAPRON…" Let's just pause for a second and talk about some of these J words.I knew about JORTS, jean shorts.
linkHedvig Skirgård - And you didn't have trouble figuring out JAPRON?
linkBen Ainslie - JAPRON is a denim apron, I’d presume.Yeah.
linkDaniel Midgley - A denim apron.I'd never heard of JOOTS.
linkHedvig Skirgård - What is that?
linkDaniel Midgley - They’re boots, I guess.Right?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Why would you have boots in denim?GooglingKEYBOARD TAPPING SOUNDSJOOTS.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, you do that.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, no, it's totally a thing.It's like, you know, you know, those Australian…uggs!They look like uggs, but they’re denim.
linkDaniel Midgley - Oh!Of course.Yeah.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Okay.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I hate it.
linkDaniel Midgley - "Is the segment J best analyzed as a reduced form of JEAN within a portmanteau?Or has it become lexicalised enough to be considered its own distinct affix?"
linkBen Ainslie - Well, when you said JAPRON before, I was like:I've never in my life encountered anyone who refers to something made of denim that is not in jeans as jeans, right?Like, I've never heard someone call, like, a denim jacket a jean jacket, for example.
linkHedvig Skirgård - A jean jacket.You've never heard that?A jean jacket?
linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, I’ve heard…Yeah, that’s what we used to call it.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, so is this an American thing where JEAN is actually a synonym for DENIM?
linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, it is.Yes, it is.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, I wasn't aware of this!
linkDaniel Midgley - SINGINGI got my blue jeans…TALKINGWell, blue jeans we know already.
linkBen Ainslie - This is what…this is what I mean.I've always had JEANS just referred to as pants.As in, I've heard the word JEAN solely reference pants and anything else is denim, which is the material.
linkHedvig Skirgård - KEYBOARD SOUNDSJean jacket, denim jacket.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, I had a jean jacket.Hey, can we think of any other J words?Of course, there are JEGGINGS.
linkBen Ainslie - Are they jean leggings?
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, jean leggings.
linkHedvig Skirgård - JEGGINGS.Yeah.Well, jeggings are leggings that give the appearance of being made from denim but they're usually not.
linkBen Ainslie - But are in fact not.Okay.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Yeah.
linkDaniel Midgley - In my quick searching I came out with JWEATS, which…
linkBen Ainslie - Oof.
linkDaniel Midgley - …doesn't work at all.I thought maybe there might be JWOVERALLS, which is sort of like a throwback to our SWOVERALLS from last episode, but made of jeans.I even came across– don't google this –JUNDERPANTS.FALLS ABOUT LAUGHING
linkBen Ainslie - I don't know how you possibly expect me not to google that.How could you…Why would you even say the sentence “Don’t google this”?That is 100% a thing that will be googled.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, that’s rude.
linkDaniel Midgley - JUNDERPANTS.It just sounds terrible.What a terrible name.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I found something curious, which is…we just talked about JOOTS, which we all had to be told were jeans boots.But I also found upon googling something very curious, which is JANDALS.
linkDaniel Midgley - Jandals, of course!
linkBen Ainslie - Jandals are different.Different.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I know.No, no, but the stupid teens on the internet have reinvented the term to be a jeans flip flop.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, no!No!That's just what lovely Kiwis call their thongs.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Because they’re Japanese sandals, right?
linkDaniel Midgley - Japanese sandals.Yes.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, but they've redefined the J to be jeans.So they've made jeans thongs.
linkBen Ainslie - I don't care for that at all.I want all these kids to get off my yard.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Also, I'm guessing that jeans thongs is a different thing as well.LAUGHTER
linkDaniel Midgley - That'd be JONG.Anyway, let's take it back to the regular question.How do we know the difference between J as part of a portmanteau and J as a legitimate prefix?What do you think it is?Do you think it's one or the other?Or is it fuzzy?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Why can’t it be b…Wait, why can’t it…What's the prefix in this scenario?
linkDaniel Midgley - Well, the J.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Wait, why aren't…Why aren't portmanteau things prefixes?
linkBen Ainslie - Because portmanteaus are explicitly the combinations of two words, whereas prefixes are more abstract, aren't they?Like PRE- for instance, doesn't have…I don't just say PRE- by itself.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Actually you don’t say J by itself either.
linkBen Ainslie - Actually, to be fair, though.No, no, you're right.We don't say J by itself.But we do say JEANS by itself.And it's…so a portmanteau is a combination of two words that get shortened.But those original words have definitive meanings.Whereas a prefix has a far more abstract, sort of non-anchored reality.Is that?
linkDaniel Midgley - Portmanteaus are hard because you put them together, and they could still refer back to their original thing, but sometimes it's much more opaque.Like with CHORTLE, which is like CHUCKLE and SNORT, where you've gotten that -ORT, and you've stuck it right in the middle.So the method of attachment is not clean.
linkBen Ainslie - It feels like portmanteaus are only portmanteaus in the early phases of that word's lifetime gestation phase.Like, that's the pupa phase of the word.And then after that, they just become a word in their own right.
linkDaniel Midgley - Like a combining form.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, a little bit.
linkDaniel Midgley - Like -POCALYPSE.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm thinking that part of the issue here is that portmanteaus, we generally tend to think of them as a sort of kind of compound.So when linguists say compound, they typically mean two words that are put together and they form a sort of new word in some sort of meaningful way.So what's a good compound?Sunbathing.Meh, not great.
linkDaniel Midgley - No, that’s great.Babysitting.
linkHedvig Skirgård - And usually when we say the word prefix, we mean things that can't occur on their own and that are productive.So they should be able to go on lots of things.They shouldn't be fossilised, usually when we say prefix, and I think what their question…Yeah, they're getting to exactly that the J is, like, quite productive.
linkDaniel Midgley - Productive.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, it…what have we got?Like, 20 examples or something?
linkDaniel Midgley - Got a lot.I mean, we could go on.
linkBen Ainslie - I mean, conceivably anything that could have, like, denim used in its manufacturing process could have this applied to it, right?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.But that's…that's just the subclass of nouns that are clothes.
linkBen Ainslie - Not necessarily.Like, denim can be used in accessories.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I can put anti- on anything.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Okay.I get what you mean.True.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, it's not as productive as all that.And it feels to me like word creation is kind of more complex than the narrow categories of just:this is a portmanteau or this is a prefix.It feels…it feels different.For what it's worth, all of the J words we mentioned are listed on Wikipedia’s list of portmanteaus.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, there we go.
linkDaniel Midgley - But then, so is BICURIOUS, and that feels like it's got a prefix to me.Doesn't feel like a portmanteau at all.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, I guess.But that feels like a bit of an accidental double up, though, doesn't it?Because what it's really saying is bisexual curiosity, right?As opposed to simply just using the BI- prefix in its "two, like, productive format, right?
linkHedvig Skirgård - It's not like I'm curious about two things.
linkBen Ainslie - Like, a bicycle has BI-, not because it's got anything to do with bisexuality.
linkDaniel Midgley - LAUGHTSBicycle!This stuff's complicated!
linkBen AinslieHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
linkDaniel Midgley - I don't know if there's a good answer to this.So what's our answer?Do we feel like this J is a portmanteau?
linkBen Ainslie - I’m leaning to portmanteau.I lean to portmanteau on this one.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, me too.
linkBen Ainslie - I think it's…we're a ways away from it being a productive prefix.
linkHedvig Skirgård - When I can start putting it on verbs, then I'm totally down for being a prefix.
linkBen Ainslie - But also, I think the the sort of like the asterix like it's a portmanteau, asterix, the barrier between portmanteau and prefix is a lot more fuzzy than we'd probably like it to be.
linkDaniel Midgley - Good, good, good, good.I'm happy about that.Hey, big thanks to Dual Power Ranger Rick for that question.And we'll go on.This one's from Nikoli on our Discord channel.“Why do PEEP, PEER and PEEK all mean the same thing and have such similar spellings?” PEEP, PEER, and PEEK.
linkBen Ainslie - PEEP, PEER, and PEEK.
linkHedvig Skirgård - This is like GLITTER, GLISTENING, GLIMMER, isn't it?
linkDaniel Midgley - Sound symbolism, hmm?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Hmm.
linkBen Ainslie - I am going to put it out there that I find slight semantic difference between these things.
linkDaniel Midgley - Like what?
linkBen Ainslie - I find that peeping and peering in my brain have a different connotation.Yes, they both mean looking.Absolutely.But to PEER for me seems like a long, somewhat more restive process of looking at something, whereas a PEEP has connotations that are far more furtive.
linkDaniel Midgley - CHUCKLESYes.And PEEKING as well.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Furtive.Furtive means…?
linkBen Ainslie - Like, like, to PEEP is like…
linkDaniel Midgley - Sneaky.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, exactly.Like if I peep at you, I kind of do this.UNSEEN GESTURE
linkHedvig Skirgård - Short amount of time.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, whereas if I peer at someone, I go…ANOTHER UNSEEN GESTURE.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, great radio, Ben Ainslie.Ben Ainslie’s performing great radio content here.
linkBen Ainslie - What I want everyone to imagine is in the first instance for PEEP, just any game of hide and…peekaboo you've ever played with an infant.And then the second instance, anytime you smell something and you don't know what it is, and your eyes narrow for the amount of time that it takes you to figure out what that smell was.That's a PEER for me.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I think this is a great illustration of…a question asker probably doesn't mean that they all mean exactly the same thing.I think they’re realising that these aren't perfect synonyms.By the way, if anyone ever finds a perfect synonym, tell us, because they're usually not perfect synonyms, but that they mean enough of the same thing.And I think we can all agree at that.They all have to do with looking, seeing.They're all a little bit negative-connotated a bit, right?
linkDaniel Midgley - Interesting, interesting.
linkBen Ainslie - PEER and PEEK.I reckon PEEK is the only one that I would not describe as not negatively connotated for my own suite of connotations in my head.
linkDaniel Midgley - They're all ways of looking that you don't…you're not really supposed to do.Like:Don’t peek!
linkBen Ainslie - AH, I guess that…Yeah, true.Okay, fair.Yep.
linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.Well, I did a little bit of digging in Etymonline.
linkBen Ainslie - Good ol’ Etymonline.
linkDaniel Midgley - And I found that two of them are related, and one isn't.Which two?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Ooh, fun Hedvig/Ben game.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah!
linkBen Ainslie - I'm gonna go with PEEK and PEEP are the related ones and PEER is different.
linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.Hedvig, do you agree?
linkHedvig Skirgård - That was gonna be my guess too.But that's boring, so I’m going to say…
linkBen Ainslie - Then…no no no!Let’s both guess the same thing, and then we can both be wrong and salty together in our loss.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, okay.Yeah, I agree.PEER is the odd one out.
linkDaniel Midgley - Turns out you're both correct.DING!
linkHedvig Skirgård - CLAPSYess!
linkBen Ainslie - See?Did you see how I just encouraged you to, like, trust yourself there?You're welcome.
linkDaniel Midgley - So PEEK and PEEP were once the same word, but now:what was the word?Did PEEK come from PEEP or the other way around?Which came first?
linkBen Ainslie - I'm gonna guess PEEK is the originator.
linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm gonna guess PEEP, because sound changes tend to go front to back.
linkBen Ainslie - Ah, see, you got me…you got me pipped on this one.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, I thought so too.It turns out that PEEK came first.PEEK with a K.
linkBen Ainslie - Ha hah!!
linkHedvig Skirgård - Darnit!Darnit!
linkBen Ainslie - The layperson rides triumphant into the field once again.
linkDaniel Midgley - Now you might ask yourself:if PEEK can turn into PEEP— if there's a K to a P —what about the first P in PEEK?Is it possible that if we went back further…
linkBen Ainslie - KEEP!
linkHedvig Skirgård - Has that ever been KEEK?
linkDaniel Midgley - …is it possible that there was a word KEEK?And the answer is yes!
linkHedvig Skirgård - !Oh!There is in Swedish!Ha ha ha!
linkDaniel Midgley - What, no?!I need to know more!
linkBen Ainslie - KEEK means what?
linkHedvig Skirgård - So we affricated the first one.Sorry, but we spell it!
linkDaniel Midgley - So it's CHEEK?
linkHedvig Skirgård - No, KIKAʃi-ka.
linkDaniel Midgley - ʃi-ka?
linkHedvig Skirgård - ʃi-ka.It’s to PEEK!
linkHedvig Skirgård - LAUGHTER
linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, there you go.There you have it.
linkBen Ainslie - What possible word could we use?!
linkDaniel Midgley - So the words PEEK and KEEK and PEEP are all used for about the same meaning through the 1400s, 1500s.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, well, hang on a second.Then, like, it's pretty clear why Hedvig's language has it and we were using it in the 1400s.'Cause a bunch of them came to, like, Britain!
linkDaniel Midgley - Well, it all came probably from Middle Dutch KIJKEN.Middle Dutch.Okay, so that that one was an interesting look at some words, and it kind of blew my mind.So Nikoli, thanks to you for that one.
linkBen Ainslie - Good one, Nikoli!Very good.
linkHedvig Skirgård - That’s so funny that both Dutch and Swedish.I think they also have softened the first K so it's CH-ish?No, or so they maybe they still say Kijken, so Swedish…so you guys went:Oh, K.I’m going to make it into a P.And we went K?I’m going to just affricate that and make it CH.That’s weird.
linkDaniel Midgley - That is weird.The whole thing’s weird.
linkHedvig Skirgård - That's just so much fun!
linkBen Ainslie - Here’s the takeaway from 10 years of this show:Language is weird.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Thank you so much!That was a great question.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah!One from Margaret on Facebook.“Hey, I've got a question for the Mailbag show.What is the origin of the word POSH?” Ben, have you heard anything about this?Have you heard any funny stories?
linkBen Ainslie - Uh, no.I have never investigated the etymology of POSH, as we say here in Australia.
linkDaniel Midgley - "I have heard a few reasonably reliable sources say it is an acronym from taking a ship journey:Port Out Starboard Home" — because that's the nice seats right?It's very, very posh.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, I've always thought acronyms are very folk etymologist, personally.I am deeply suspicious.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Suss.
linkBen Ainslie - But having said that, it has happened once or twice.So, you know.
linkDaniel Midgley - “From the show,” says Margaret, “I thought the general rule was that acronym stories were generally false.” That is correct.They are usually false.“Is it true in this case?What other ones are true?”
linkBen Ainslie - I want it to be now, for Margaret's sake.I want Margaret to have brought, like, a rare gem.You know, like a lovely little linguistic fossil that contravenes the rules and we get to go:bloody hell, Margaret, great job!
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Yeah.
linkBen Ainslie - So, do I get to say that, Daniel?
linkDaniel Midgley - No, you do not get to say that, I’m afraid.
linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHSI'm sorry, Margaret.I built you up so high.You’re probably listening to this going:Ooh!No.
linkDaniel Midgley - “The etymology of POSH is probably from POSH:a dandy, from 1890"— I'm reading this straight off of Etymonline —there was a word, thieves cant meaning money, which is POSH, 1830.And it's thought that this was a coin.
linkBen Ainslie - DOSH!
linkDaniel Midgley - Hm?
linkBen Ainslie - We say DOSH.
linkDaniel Midgley - DOSH.Oh, what is the etymology of DOSH?
linkBen Ainslie - Well, surely it's the same thing.
linkHedvig Skirgård - It’s money.
linkDaniel Midgley - Mmmm…what don't we just…?
linkBen Ainslie - Money.Dosh is money.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, I got a bit of dosh.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, I got a bit of dosh in my back pocket.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Is it related to DOUGH?
linkDaniel Midgley - Don't think so.Don’t think so.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, that's a bit more American, I think, DOUGH as a word for money.
linkDaniel Midgley - And also bread, you know, things you eat, that's very likely to have…become a word for money.DOSH is unknown, possibly a combination of DOLLARS and CASH.Oh, so there is a possibility.
linkBen Ainslie - There we go.
linkDaniel Midgley - Anyway, what about acronyms?How far back do acronyms go?Or initialisms.I'm going to treat them both the same.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh Latin, surely.Like, didn’t the Romans do a bunch of acronyminising?
linkDaniel Midgley - They did.SPQR.S-P-Q-R.That appears in inscriptions, so Senātus Populusque Rōmānus, which means the Roman senate and people.
linkBen Ainslie - And what was the…?Wasn't SPQR also the acronym for the entire Roman Empire?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, you just put it on everything you own.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, that's right.But from then, it was a bit of a lull.We don't see it in English until…I'm just gonna give you some here:GIFgɪfor GIFʤɪf1987, RAM 1957, Scuba 1952, MIDI from 1983…you get the idea.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Wait wait wait.
linkBen Ainslie - Hang on, hang on.Oh, sorry, sorry.I'm getting what you mean.It wasn't until the sort of the '70s and the '80s where acronyms started turning back into words.We were using acronyms far earlier than that, but we weren't word-ifying them.
linkDaniel Midgley - That's right.They existed here and there, but they weren't wordy.So according to an article by Ben Zimmer, the earliest one we can find is from 1879, where they abbreviated Supreme Court of the United States as SCOTUS and President of the United States as POTUS.That's like literally the first one.And I thought it was kind of new, but it's not.It's, like, the oldest acronym in English.
linkHedvig Skirgård - What?
linkBen Ainslie - The oldest acronym being used as a word.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
linkBen Ainslie - Right.We had acronyms.Like, they exist.
linkHedvig Skirgård - That’s what I think too.They…surely.
linkBen Ainslie - Surely the Dutch East India Company was referred to by its capital letters in forms and stuff, surely.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.It's like you say, Ben, they were around, but we didn't just go around saying them as one word.
linkBen Ainslie - Interesting.I want to dig further into this.Because if, literally, the earliest modern acronym we have was POTUS from the late 19th century, that's gonna blow my freaking mind.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, me too.
linkDaniel Midgley - Here's the other thing.I mean, in World War One, we had A-W-O-L, Absent WithOut Leave, we had AWOL.But in World War One times, they weren't saying it as a word.They would spell it out.He's A-W-O-L.
linkBen Ainslie - Sure.But that's still an acronym!
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, it is.But then by the time we get to World War Two, then people started saying AWOL.And if you hear a story, like FUCK, or SHIT or whatever, that…that this was before the 20th century, mmm, they're few and far between.There really are not a bunch.So yeah, that rule happens.And don't believe POSH, because it probably comes from somewhere else.
linkBen Ainslie - But the good answer, Margaret, is that thieves cant is super fun.And that is, like…when you go to like various origin stories, anytime you run into like Polari, or thieves cant or any of those, you always know you're in for a good time, right?Because anything that was even remotely around any of those words, is just a hoot.It's such a good time.
linkDaniel Midgley - And whenever you see an etymology— that's the origin of a phrase —that says:Oh, this comes from the Navy, then be suspicious.LAUGHTER
linkHedvig Skirgård - Hey, here on the on the Wikipedia page for Acronym, it says that Edgar Allan Poe made an acronym that spells out PRETTY BLUE BATCH.
linkDaniel Midgley - You mean a poem where the first letter of every line spells that?
linkHedvig Skirgård - It's the initials of a name.Isn't it?
linkBen Ainslie - That would have to be the world's longest name.
linkHedvig Skirgård - “We always add our names' initials PRETTY BLUE BATCH, that is to say, Philadelphia, Regular, Exchange Tea, Total, Young, Belles Lettres, Universale, Experimentale, Bibliographical Association to Civilise Humanity.”
linkBen Ainslie - Holy Jesus, what a mouthful.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I mean, know what?That's a funny joke.Right?No one said that.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, that’s a party trick essentially, isn't it?
linkHedvig Skirgård - That's…he's being silly and funny, Mr Poe.But it is for SCOTUS.
linkBen Ainslie - It is an acronym, it is.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, and then AM and PM also existed before English did.And then of course, there's OK.Which is an acronym for OLL KORRECT.They were being silly.But that goes back to…
linkBen Ainslie - Is that?Is that the settled answer?I thought that was like one of a few contentious possibilities.
linkDaniel Midgley - It's not contentious.It's pretty solid.That's the first…because the first references we have to it are from that.It was then picked up by Old Kinderhook, which was, I think, President Martin Van Buren in the US.But it looks like we started using RSVP around 1850.So that would actually be a very early one.Again, we didn't say it like a word, but it was definitely used as a unit.The main thing is when you hear that a word was created by acronymy or initialism and it was before the 20th century, you…no, probably wasn’t.
linkBen Ainslie - Fail.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Usually.
linkBen Ainslie - That was a doozy, Margaret.Well done.
linkDaniel Midgley - Let's go to Cass.Cass on Facebook says, “Why do we add a “sh” sound to things to diminish them?Like when you're saying something's not a big deal?It's coming to say:oh, justice, schmustic, or hill schmill?I don't mind this stinking hill
linkBen Ainslie - I guess— gonna go out on a limb and guess —there was a funny man or woman at some stage in the last 100 years who did that as a thing, and people thought:That's a hoot, I'm gonna do that.And it's just carried on ever since.
linkDaniel Midgley - What language background might this person have had?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Isn't this a Yiddish thing?
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, Yiddish, for sure.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yup, it is.Came into English from Yiddish speakers in the late 19th century.By the time the '30s come around, everyone was saying "fancy schmancy" and things like that.It's my favorite example of reduplication:shm- reduplication.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Fancy schmancy.Yes, good.
linkDaniel Midgley - Or reduplication schmeduplication.
linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHSThat’s fun.
linkDaniel Midgley - But then I found a fun article by Arika Okrent– who's been on the show –on Mental Floss, where she points out that there are difficult words to schmeduplicate.
linkBen Ainslie - Yes!Absolutely.
linkDaniel Midgley - I'm gonna see how you do, okay?Breakfast.How would you schmeduplicate BREAKFAST?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Schmekfast.
linkBen Ainslie - Breakfast schmekfast!
linkHedvig Skirgård - Schmekfast.
linkDaniel Midgley - Okay!Schmekast.Not schme-r-ek-fast?
linkBen Ainslie - No!
linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, good.It’s hard to do when there’s a consonant cluster like BR.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, just replace the whole thing.Yeah.
linkDaniel Midgley - Just rip it out.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
linkDaniel Midgley - How about UNITY?
linkBen Ainslie - Unity sch-myoonity.
linkDaniel Midgley - Sch-myoonity?
linkBen Ainslie - Yep.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Sch-moonity.
linkDaniel Midgley - Do you like sch-myoonity or sch-moonity?
linkBen Ainslie - Sch-moonity.Sch-myoonity.Sch-myoonity.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Sch-moonity, yeah.
linkBen Ainslie - Unity sch-moonity!That's all I have to say.And considering that it was just Australia Day, that's pretty much what white people of my culture think, so yeah.
linkHedvig Skirgård - CRINGESYeah.
linkDaniel Midgley - Reduplication is hard when there's a glide likewandj.How about WITCHES?
linkHedvig Skirgård - You say hard, but I think Ben and I are crushing this!
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, witches schmitches, honestly.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Schm-, schmitches!
linkDaniel Midgley - Did you say schmitches?Or…
linkBen Ainslie - Schmitches!Yeah, schmitches.
linkDaniel Midgley - Schmitches.
linkBen Ainslie - Schmitches.Sch-mi-tch-es.Schmitches.
linkDaniel Midgley - Schmitches.You're working that pretty hard.Are you sure you wouldn't rather say smitches instead?
linkBen Ainslie - Nah.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Nah.
linkBen Ainslie - Witches, schmitches.
linkDaniel Midgley - Oh go on, witches schmitches.
linkBen Ainslie - See, for me that SCH-, that real protruding the jaw forward is the fun of doing it.Right?I really want to get my SCHmitches in there.
linkHedvig Skirgård - What about when you have another SH-, CH- sound?So, like, CHAIR?
linkDaniel Midgley - Chair schmair.Yeah, it's hard when there's a CH- in there.Like with WITCHES.Either a sh- or a ch-, it’s hard to do.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Or SHEEP?Like the animal.
linkDaniel Midgley - Sheep, schmeep.
linkBen Ainslie - No, no, no, that's easy, because you just replace it with the other thing.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.How about IMMUNITY?When there's a soft unstressed syllable in front?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Schmemoomoo, schmemoo…
linkBen Ainslie - Schemoonity.Schemoonity.Immunity, schemoonity
linkDaniel Midgley - Wouldn’t you rather say immunity isch-moonity?Im-schmoonity?
linkBen Ainslie - No.No, I do not want to say that.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh god, no.No, no, no.I don’t want to say that at all.
linkBen Ainslie - That is awful, and you should feel bad for suggesting it.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Agreed.
linkDaniel Midgley - I do feel bad.I also feel bad for suggesting SCHMOOZE where there's already a SCHM- at the beginning.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Schmooze, schmooze.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.There's this famous comedian who has this as a bit and their name escapes me right now.But they do a bit where yeah, this is like:this is all really good, right up until you get SCHMOOZE.And then you’re just like:ah, schmooze…schmooze.
linkHedvig Skirgård - So, hey, so, do we agree that the meaning of this kind of reduplication is like:SIGHugh well, money schmoney.Like, I don't care about it.
linkBen Ainslie - It's a diminishment, right?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Diminishment, right?
linkBen Ainslie - You say this thing is of less importance than most sort of…than the baseline assumption that I presume is at work right now.In this conversation.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Right.So the other kind of reduplication you have in English is the like:money money.
linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, right.Salad salad.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Like, I paid in, I paid in cash.I paid in money, money.Not bitcoin.LAUGHS
linkBen Ainslie - I have not encountered that very much, I have to say.
linkDaniel Midgley - Contrastive reduplication.
linkHedvig Skirgård - So I have a theory that, in general, grammar sort of flies under the radar.People don't…They're not as aware of it, they're not as aware of the boundaries, they're not as aware of the variation.So I think that maybe this kind of money money is a book book.An oak is a tree tree.It's not like, what's a not-tree tree?
linkDaniel Midgley - A weird tree, like a palm.
linkBen Ainslie - Like a shrub tree, or whatever.
linkHedvig Skirgård - A palm.Yeah, exactly.It's like it's in this of the prototype of the category that is these things, this is at the very center of it.
linkBen Ainslie - Like this Socratic form of the thing in question, kind of thing.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, exactly.And it's one of those things where…so you said interestingly, Ben, that you don't think it's as common in Australian English, maybe?
linkBen Ainslie - Well, as you were speaking, I came up with the one example that I know that English speakers do use pretty regularly, which is like-like.Do you like them?Or do you like-like them?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Like-like, yes.Natalie Tran has a very good sketch on like like, and fancy fancy.Okay, so like schmike is diminishing, like like is prototyping.But I wanted to bring up before we…because I think…haven't we talked about this on the show before, because I…
linkDaniel Midgley - We had a whole episode about reduplication.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, and I remember bringing up the Swedish nickname thing, which is replacing the first thing with a P.So Ben Pen.
linkBen Ainslie - Like the song!
linkDaniel Midgley - Daniel Paniel.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Daniel Paniel, yeah.
linkBen Ainslie - One of my very best friends in the world, whenever I pick up the phone, it's just like:Andy Pandy!
linkHedvig Skirgård - Exactly.Yeah, so we've got the same one.My, my mother likes to call my brother Hannus Pannus.Just for fun.
linkBen Ainslie - It's cute.
linkDaniel Midgley - And it’s cute.
linkHedvig Skirgård - And it’s cute!And why does this abstract pattern have…what have we got?We got diminishing, we got prototyping, and we've got…cute.
linkBen Ainslie - Adorable.Kawaii!
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, reduplication’s so dope.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
linkDaniel Midgley - So the short answer is:this is schm-reduplication and it signifies derision, dismissal and disparagement, the three Ds.
linkHedvig Skirgård - And if you found us rambling about reduplication interesting, we have a got a whole episode with only reduplication.
linkBen Ainslie - Which is apropos to what I was gonna say, which was like, I love that knowing our listeners, Margaret is not the kind of person who would have asked that question, got her answer in the first, like, minute of us speaking, and then gone:Ughhh, they're talking about this a lot, this is not what I wanted.What I love is that our listeners are just kind of like:Ooh, 15 minutes of reduplication chat!Because we could have wrapped it up with, like:It's Yiddish.Bye.
linkDaniel Midgley - Bye.Let's go on.Thanks, Cass.This one's from Diego on Patreon.This is our last one, “I've seen and heard…” I think I feel like this one is addressed to me!
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I think it is.
linkDaniel Midgley - “I've seen and heard on more than one occasion that Mormon missionaries…”
linkBen Ainslie - Why would this be about you?I don’t understand.
linkDaniel Midgley - We've got the ex-Mormon linguistic thing locked down tight.That's our niche, right?“Mormon missionaries seem to have a real knack for learning languages and learning them fast.With your background and experience, can you speak to this at all?Thanks.”
linkBen Ainslie - Well, you can’t Daniel, you came to Perth.LAUGHTER
linkDaniel Midgley - I did.
linkBen Ainslie - You didn't have to learn another language.I know we speak badly, but not like that badly!
linkHedvig Skirgård - You could have learned Noongar!
linkDaniel Midgley - I did actually speak a bit of French and Spanish.
linkBen Ainslie - Okay, sure.I'm really glad Daniel didn't learn Noongar at that stage and proselytise to the Indigenous people here.I'm fine with that.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Ooh, yes.We are grateful for that, yes.That’s true.
linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, so here's the background.Many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints— commonly known as Mormons, which annoys them if you call them that —so Mormons…
linkBen Ainslie - Really??
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
linkBen Ainslie - I have known you this entire time, and you have never told me that I annoy Mormons when I call them Mormons.
linkDaniel Midgley - It's kind of a new thing.It's a whole story.It's a whole thing.Many members go on a two-year mission, many times to places where they have to learn the language.And to do that, they go to a place called the Mission Training Center for about eight weeks for intensive language training.And it's been claimed that missionaries are super good at learning languages.I used to hear that people at the CIA or the FBI or the KGB would come to the MTC to try to learn their methods, but they never did quite as well.
linkBen Ainslie - This sounds like the kind of, like, internal big-upping that so many institutions— not just religious ones, I'm not throwing a bone here at, like, true believers, but like —like, down the road from us we've got the West Australian Center for Performing Arts, right?And they love sort of, sort of like just kind of being likePRETENTIOUS VOICE~did you know we're the most prestigious Performing Arts Academy in Australia?~Like, it's just like, really?That's what it sounds like to me.Like that kind of, like, completely baseless~did you know were actually lowkey super good at this?~
linkDaniel Midgley - It is.It’s exactly that thing.Mormons have an interest in promoting themselves as, like, supernaturally good at learning languages.
linkHedvig Skirgård - But also if we revisit the Ben Ainslie theory of language acquisition, which is that it's all about motivation.
linkHedvig Skirgård - LAUGHTER
linkHedvig Skirgård - Religious people;pretty motivated!
linkDaniel Midgley - Good point.Good point, okay.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Like, I'm not religious, but like, if I believed that there was a creator, and that if you didn't please him, you would go to hell and that I would go somewhere and save people, I’d be…That's the motivation to learning a language that I've never felt in my life, and I'm a linguist!Like, that's got to put a fire under your butt!
linkDaniel Midgley - Yep.
linkBen Ainslie - And even if you don't necessarily believe to that degree, the fire and brimstone aspect of it, I would have to imagine, Daniel— and please correct me if I'm wrong —a lot of Mormon missionaries, at the very most baseline are at the, like, vocation level of engagement, right?Like, I am called to this.Right?
linkDaniel Midgley - There is definitely that sense.Yes.
linkBen Ainslie - And being called to something is a higher threshold of, like, motivation than just like:I'm bored!I might sit on Duolingo for a while.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, I mean, if they give you a badge and tell you YOU can be the instrument by which people of Earth can attain salvation through the Gospel, and people's eternities will look completely different if you do a good job, then yeah, it has a way of making you do some pretty strange things.
linkDaniel Midgley - Now, as far as the scripture goes, Mormons think of this as a manifestation of the Gift of Tongues.Which a lot of churches think is, you know, glossolaliaSPEAKS GIBBERISH.But which, if you look at the New Testament, on the day of Pentecost, it describes all the Christians getting together and speaking.And everyone runs in and listens to them and thinks that they're just babbling away, but they're actually speaking languages.And in the book of Acts, it says:How are we hearing everybody teaching us the Gospel in our own language?So Mormons think of this as more translation.
linkBen Ainslie - Right.Gotcha.Like a Babelfish.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, that's it.And I'm reading this from Mormonwiki:“In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the gift of tongues is manifested every day among the thousands of missionaries serving around the world.Missionaries learn foreign languages and the interpretation thereof with astonishing ease, and words come to them that they have not mastered."
linkBen Ainslie - Aha.Yep.Okay, sure.
linkDaniel Midgley - There is a body of work on this, to see if it's actually true.
linkBen Ainslie - Ah!
linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
linkBen Ainslie - I'm, I'm just…I'm champing at the bit for it to turn out that when you plonk a person in a fucking foreign country, and that's all they speak, you learn real fast!
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, but do they learn well?That's the question.
linkBen Ainslie - Okay.Let's find out.
linkDaniel Midgley - The answer is no.They don't actually learn all that well.So here are some conclusions from the literature.Number one:on average, returned missionaries are not very proficient in their foreign…in their mission language.
linkBen Ainslie - Really?
linkDaniel Midgley - No.Using the FSI test—hat's what the US government uses —they score about 2+, which is described as “limited working proficiency”.They can do work stuff, they can do social routine stuff, most situations, but they don't have very good control of the grammar.
linkBen Ainslie - What is baseline?If you took Ben Ainslie, and you stuck him— as a profoundly mediocre human being —and you stuck me somewhere in the world that is a non-English place for two years, because that's how long a mission goes for.Correct?
linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, that's right.
linkBen Ainslie - What is accepted baseline for a mediocre douche like me?
linkDaniel Midgley - Well, it depends on the language.But I mean, even if you're talking about the ones that English speakers find really difficult, like Korean or Arabic, for two years of immersion, you'd expect to get to, like, intermediate, high intermediate, maybe even advanced.
linkBen Ainslie - Okay, so the Mormons are not doing any better or worse than any other numpty.So they're definitely not amazing at it, they're just exactly what you would expect from human beings being pluoked in some sort of immersion situation for two years.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, that's about right.They're great when it comes to churchy stuff.
linkBen Ainslie - Right.
linkDaniel Midgley - When it comes to talking about that whole domain, they're great.Because they've done it.
linkBen Ainslie - Because that's…because that's what they're practicing day in and day out, right?They're knocking on doors and they're going:Hey, Jesus Christ and the Latter-day Saints, but they're saying that in Swahili or whatever.
linkDaniel Midgley - But they have trouble supporting opinions, speculating, and producing speech without errors that disturb or distract.They do not seem to experience this Pentecost-like outpouring of linguistic skill.They seem to be okay at language in a manner consistent with the stuff that they talk about all day.No better than most people, no worse.Not supernatural.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, fair enough.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Yeah, that's exactly what I expected.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Fair enough, fair enough.
linkDaniel Midgley - And that's the answer, Diego.
linkBen Ainslie - There you go.So Mormons are not super gifted at learning languages.They just seem to have this interesting system built into their faith, which just takes a bunch of young people and puts them all over the world.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yep.Great question, Diego.Thanks for that.Appreciate that.And thanks to everyone for all of their questions.We have another bracket of questions to go next time we do a Mailbag.So we'll get to those then.Don't worry.
linkDaniel Midgley - TRANSITIONAL MUSIC
linkBen Ainslie - Yeehaw!And now we come to the crunching halt of the show.LAUGHS
linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, I love this part:It's Words of the Week!
linkBen Ainslie - Huzzah.
linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, the first Word of the Week:STONKS!
linkBen Ainslie - I've heard of this before.
linkHedvig Skirgård - CHUCKLE
linkDaniel Midgley - They’re stocks, as in Wall Street.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, no no no.but I've heard of it in a different context.
linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, what are STONKS?
linkBen Ainslie - Like, like, a stonking good time.
linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.Yeah, that is an earlier meaning.But now, this STONKS, as in the stock market, is taking over.Lord Mortis suggested this one.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, thank you, Lord Mortis.
linkDaniel Midgley - Who has heard about GameStop?
linkBen Ainslie - I have.
linkHedvig Skirgård - NERVOUS LAUGHI have.
linkDaniel Midgley - And the wild shenanigans.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I think we're all on the internet enough that we've heard about this.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, okay.So to understand what's going on, we need to start with short selling.
linkBen Ainslie - I've got the best example of this!
linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, go ahead.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Does it involve Skrills?
linkBen Ainslie - Let me quickly, really, really quickly Google it.I found the best summation I've ever seen.Like, I understand what shorting a stock is, and I have done for quite a while.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Look at you go!
linkBen Ainslie - But I’ve never heard it more succinctly sort of expressed than this.Here goes, okay?And this comes from a wonderful gaming website called Penny Arcade,
linkDaniel Midgley - Ah yes.Yes, of course.
linkBen Ainslie - Which you should check out if you ever want to get, like, the hot take on games.So, “You just got a new Xbox.Before you open it, I ask you to borrow it.I then sell that borrowed Xbox for 500 bucks."
linkHedvig Skirgård - Rude!
linkBen Ainslie - "I go to Best Buy and I get a new Xbox for 450, and I pocket the 50 bucks that I've made and I give you the Xbox unopened.That's short selling."
linkHedvig Skirgård - Why is the game store selling you an Xbox for less money than…?
linkBen Ainslie - So, in this particular instance, the example of the Xbox is really pertinent because of the shortages of supply for all gaming hardware at the moment.There is a far more sort of stock-price kind of pricing scheme, in that it's very difficult to get hold of a retail-priced new Xbox or new PlayStation or new graphics card for for a gaming PC.So mostly what people are getting are resale cards which have been jacked up prices substantially.Does that make sense?
linkHedvig Skirgård - No.
linkBen Ainslie - Okay.LAUGHS
linkHedvig Skirgård - Why is JB Hifi selling you something for less than I bought it for?
linkBen Ainslie - No, no, you bought it second…you bought it from a scalper, essentially, because you had to.
linkDaniel Midgley - Right.So like, as with stocks, Ben thinks that the original Xbox is overvalued now.And he's planning on the price dropping later.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I understand that.Okay, let's, let's just make another example.Let's make concert tickets.Ariana Grande.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, it's exactly the same thing, right?You got an Ariana Grande concert ticket for $500.I ask to borrow that concert ticket.Then I go and sell that concert ticket for even more money.
linkHedvig Skirgård - $600.
linkBen Ainslie - And then I go…because I've got, like, the inside line, I go and buy a concert ticket for less money, right?Say $450.Because I know where the good tickets are.
linkHedvig Skirgård - That’s the bizarre thing.I don't know how you got that.
linkBen Ainslie - Because I'm better at it than you.Because I'm better at this than you.
linkDaniel Midgley - But in the case of stocks, you're betting that the price will go down later.So I borrow Ben's shares in Orange Corp.And I can sell them to Hedvig.I can pocket Hedvig’s money.And then later on, when the stock goes down like I expect, I could just buy cheaper shares, give them back to Ben, pay him a little extra, and then I pocket the difference.So that's short selling.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay.
linkBen Ainslie - Short selling is like the ultimate sort of, like, I-know-how-to-do-this-better-than-you move in stock trading.
linkDaniel Midgley - But what happens if the shares don't go down in price?What happens if they go up?
linkHedvig Skirgård - Then you're fucked, right?
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.So this is the ultimate, ultimate Faustian bargain, because there is no safe limit to shorting.If the stock price goes up, you get fucked proportionally to whatever that increase is, and you're on the hook for it, and it's bad news.Shorting is a very dangerous game.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Right.Because prices don't go below zero, but they go above one.
linkDaniel Midgley - Right, right.If you…if you just buy and hold shares, you could lose your whole investment.But you can *only* lose your investment.If you're shorting and it goes up 5X?10X?You could lose multiples of what you invested.That’s the danger in short selling.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
linkDaniel Midgley - And then what you have to do is you have to buy shares to give back maybe to Ben, right?I've got to buy shares at a higher price, I've got to bite the bullet and buy those shares, give them back.And then what happens when I buy the shares, then that makes the price go up even more, and that's what we call a short squeeze.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, yeah, squeeze.That's what I've heard.Okay.I want to hear from any of our listeners, if they, after listening to this, understood it better or worse when they listen to.Because I think other people listen to other like economy podcasts.And I listened to the Indicator from Planet Money, and they had a whole squirrel example, and that didn't make any sense to me.But what you just told me about concert tickets and Ariana Grande vaguely made some sense.It got somewhere into my brain.
linkDaniel Midgley - All right.Good job, Ben.So here's what went down.Some folks on the Wall Street Bets subreddit, including the main instigator, someone named DeepFuckingValue, decided to embark on a massive buying spree for GameStop stock, as a way of screwing over the short sellers.And they had a number of reasons for this.Some people it was the money, for some people it was the lulz, of course.And then for a lot of people, it was deeply personal.Like, I read stories about how Wall Street messed with the global economy during the crash in 2008.And there were entire families sleeping on people's floors.There were people making tomato soup out of ketchup packets.So for a lot of people, it was like super, super personal.
linkBen Ainslie - So a bunch of…a bunch of different people, for different motivations, have come in and they have bought a bunch of stock, which is not what short sellers want to have happen.
linkDaniel Midgley - LAUGHSNo, because what happened was, the stock went way up.Like in early January 2021, GME (GameStop) was trading at about 17 bucks.That was the start.On the Monday night it closed about 77 bucks.Unheard of.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, SNAP!!!I knew the broad outline strokes of this story.I did not realise that they had nearly order-of-magnituded this stock.
linkDaniel Midgley - 5X in one day.On the Tuesday night it closed at about $150.On Wednesday night it closed about $350.
linkBen Ainslie - WHAAAAA…???LAUGHTER
linkHedvig Skirgård - Exactly.It was at, like, $400 for a while.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, it was!And I'm watching this and I'm saying this is up two and a half times in one day, I waited for years for Tesla to do this.
linkBen Ainslie - That is just…
linkDaniel Midgley - So far, the short sellers have lost about $13 billion.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yay!
linkDaniel Midgley - On GameStop.
linkBen Ainslie - I mean, I say yay.The niggling part of me worries that to a lot of these hedge funds, they're like:No, no, we're down like 4% this quarter.That's a shame.
linkHedvig Skirgård - The other thing is– and if you smart economy heads can help me –some people are saying like:Oh no, but this is going to be bad for the people who are buying the stocks, because the stock is going to plummet at some point.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.It will.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Which is technically what you want in a shorting situation.So some people are saying it’s making the matters worse.But correct me if I'm wrong, if you have stock in a company and things go shit, you just lose your investment, right?
linkBen Ainslie - Yes, correct.
linkHedvig Skirgård - You don't do like the shorting people, and potentially lose more than that.
linkBen Ainslie - What this is creating right now is:a bunch of hedge funds are probably looking at the stock right now and they’re going:Let’s short the fuck out of this.
linkDaniel Midgley - They’re piling in.Yup.
linkHedvig Skirgård - But it means that the people who are investing their $1,400 stimulus check from the US government are only losing $1,400.They're not losing $400,000.
linkDaniel Midgley - Multiples, correct.
linkBen Ainslie - That is correct.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, good.That makes me feel, like, a bit better.
linkDaniel Midgley - I think shorting is kind of a shitty thing to do.Because…it's great if you're shorting a corrupt company or a bad company, but it can cause a struggling but otherwise solid company to go under.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, because it just communicates a huge amount of lack of confidence on the part of investors, which can be the deathstroke to a lot of otherwise fine companies.And I do feel a little bit bad for GameStop, like Incorporated, and I'm not going to get into all of the like various ethical issues around how GameStop operates as a business or anything like that.But just like, as a company, you were just like, you were struggling, you were ticking along and then through no actual action on your part, you find yourself at the middle of this maelstrom of, like, plucky revolutionaries fucking over capitalist dogs.And you're just sitting there being like:I just wouldn't mind having a retail business that sells games.Could I do that please?I don't want to be the standard bearer for, like, eating the one percent all of a sudden, or whatever it is.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, yeah.
linkDaniel Midgley - It's not just GameStop.It's also Blackberry.It's also AMC, the movie chain.It's Dogecoin.All right?Everybody's looking for this.Now that we know that we can bid up a business…
linkHedvig Skirgård - Dogecoin.
linkDaniel Midgley - …market manipulation is no longer in the hands of the institutional funds.It's in the hands of retail schlubs like me.
linkBen Ainslie - As long as, as long as you can touch a nerve with enough people, right?Like, that's the classic, you have to be able to mobilise a bunch of the schlubs like you!LAUGHTERThat isn't always an easy thing to do, by any stretch of the imagination.
linkDaniel Midgley - And the first one is going to be the one that makes it big, just like Bitcoin was, right?
linkBen Ainslie - Yes, exactly.
linkDaniel Midgley - So GameStop is gonna be the big one.
linkHedvig Skirgård - And to make it more confusing, right, there was an app people were using for doing this, which allowed you to, like, easily invest things that was called Robinhood.Which is very confusing to me, because when I started seeing these news about Robinhood, getting shitted on for restricting people to buy GameStop shares, I was just, like:why do they call it that?What are they doing?
linkBen Ainslie - It's like, it's like Lisa Simpson in the Australia episode where she sees the Yahoo Serious movie festival.And she's like:I know what those words mean individually.I don't know what it means when you put it together like that!
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.I was very confused with them being called Robinhood.It's very odd.
linkDaniel Midgley - Well AOC— Alexandria Ocasio Cortez —and several other people in the US government have favoured a look at this.Like, why is Robinhood allowed to stop trading for retail investors while the institutional investors are still allowed to trade and making the price go down?What's going on there?So it's such a fascinating story.It's kind of a David-and-Goliath story, or it's kind of like a monkeys-flinging-feces-in-the-same-direction story.
linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHSYeah, it's not a David-and-Goliath story.It's that bit in, like, Jurassic Park II when a little girl gets attacked by, like, a bunch of tiny dinosaurs.
linkDaniel Midgley - I didn't see that.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Are we getting to our Word of the Week, STONK, because I don't know what that is and is it related in the end?
linkBen Ainslie - It's the…Okay, to surmise, STONK is the word for stocks that all of these monkeys throwing the feces were using?Correct?
linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, it's just STOCK but nasalised a little bit.STONKS!
linkBen Ainslie - I’m buying stonk!
linkHedvig Skirgård - Wait, what?Why?What?
linkDaniel Midgley - Because it's funny!
linkHedvig Skirgård - I thought it was gonna be like…
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, just because like, for shiggles, like the way you do sometimes in the internet.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yep.
linkHedvig Skirgård - So what is it with internet slang and nasals?Because you know about lomg, lomg?
linkDaniel Midgley - The Forbiddem Masal.
linkBen Ainslie - Is that "lol oh my god"?Is that what you mean?
linkDaniel Midgley - No, you're not allowed to use the letter M.
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, right.
linkHedvig Skirgård - It’s this silly internet culture thing where you need to replace every instance of N with M.So you say lomg words, etc.This is like…you know, we can't spend money on fun things like— I don't know —amusement parks and concert tickets and cruises and exciting things.So like, if you got to have some entertainment and spend a big chunk of money, like, this is pretty entertaining!
linkBen Ainslie - You get to say…you got to spend $1400 dollars and be like:I was part of the group that did that hilarious thing that you will remember for the next ten years.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yep, that's right.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.I have a lot of friends who are like:Ooh, I should have done that, not because, like, they're interested in but they're like:that would have been so much fun!That would have been like going to like Coachella or like Woodstock!I could have been like:I was a game stock…stop…I can’t speak any more.
linkDaniel Midgley - A game stonk!
linkHedvig Skirgård - I was a game stonker.Like, I literally think that's it.That's like, I went to Woodstock.I bought GameStop stock.
linkDaniel Midgley - Stock is the new game.Let's go onto our next word.
linkBen Ainslie - All righty.Next Word of the Week.This might be our record, I reckon.This might be our record for longest recording.
linkDaniel Midgley - UNITY.This one was suggested by Nigel.The word UNITY has been coming up a lot in the context of US politics.Joe Biden mentioned unity in his very first speech as president elect.He said "I will work to be a president that seeks not to divide, but unify."
linkBen Ainslie - Meh.
linkDaniel Midgley - So now Republicans are using this as a rhetorical tactic.They're saying that having consequences for insurrection is divisivedəvaɪsɪv.Or divisivedəvɪsɪv?
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yeah.
linkDaniel Midgley - So here's the problem.
linkHedvig Skirgård - DIVISIVEdəvaɪsɪv!
linkDaniel Midgley - I say DIVISIVEdəvaɪsɪv.
linkHedvig Skirgård - I’m just going to shout my preference.
linkBen Ainslie - Every time Daniel says DEH or DUEH, Hedvig’s going to be like:DUEH!
linkHedvig Skirgård - DUEH!
linkDaniel Midgley - The problem is you want to have unity and you want to have bipartisanship, but you also want to…You won the election, and you now have to get stuff done.And you'll be punished if you don't get stuff done.But Republicans are still obstructive.
linkBen Ainslie - I don't…I find the call for unity to be not a good one.I don't like it.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yep.
linkBen Ainslie - I don't think, I don't think this is a time to be unified.Because to be unified on a bunch of these issues,— whether it's race or climate or whatever —usually means being dragged to a fucking dumb-as-shit point by a bunch of fucking idiots.I don't want to unify with that group of people.I will happily just…like, conservative people have won for a really fucking long time on a bunch of issues.Like, just fucking lose for a while.I'm fine with that.I'm fine with you losing.Just fucking lose.
linkHedvig Skirgård - They could have chosen…what are other like that kind of…like DIGNITY is a word you could have chosen.
linkBen Ainslie - Ooh.JUSTICE.I would have gone with JUSTICE.
linkHedvig Skirgård - JUSTICE.Just a very bland thing like FUTURE.You know what I mean?It's these kinds of words.I don't know how to say this in a way that makes sense.But it annoys me sometimes in political discussions when people use positive words…I don't know, what's a good example?Right, so the reigning political party is…
linkDaniel Midgley - CIVILITY.
linkHedvig Skirgård - CIVILITY.The reigning political party in Samoa is called the Human Rights Party.
linkBen Ainslie - Right…
linkDaniel Midgley - Hmm.
linkBen Ainslie - No, not a thing.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Not a thing, or what, or not, or like.
linkBen Ainslie - Or, like Australia, The Liberals.In Australia, our conservative…arch-Conservative Party is called The Liberals, which everyone else in the world thinks means, like, permissive and free.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, that's because they're wrong and Europeans are right, and LIBERAL means NEO-LIBERAL, but never mind.
linkDaniel Midgley - Well, we need to talk about what UNITY can mean.The best example was the Drake meme.But with Geordi from Star Trek.On the first panel it says, “Uniting America with alt-right, and fascists?" Blegh."Uniting America AGAINST alt-right, and fascists?" Mmm!LAUGHTERThat's a positive vision of unity.I mean, the latest message out of the Biden camp is:Unity and bipartisanship is good, but we're not going to let that get in the way of getting things done.And so I think they're playing it exactly right.They're saying unity unity unity, and then they're saying:well, we couldn't work with them, so we're going to do stuff our way.And that's positive.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Which is good.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay.
linkDaniel Midgley - And finally:this one was suggested by PharaohKatt on our Discord channel:The QUIET PART OUT LOUD.
linkBen Ainslie - What the what the wha?
linkDaniel Midgley - Saying the quiet part out loud, Ben, you haven't heard this one.
linkBen Ainslie - This is new.Saying the quiet part out loud.
linkDaniel Midgley - She says:I've been hearing it more and more recently.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Is it like vocalising dog-whistling?
linkDaniel Midgley - That's actually a pretty good description.Let's say that you have bad intentions, but you want to make it look like you have good intentions.And this comes from the Simpsons.Okay, Krusty the Clown is on the judging panel for the Springfield Film Festival, where Mr Burns has a film in contention.Someone says “How can you vote for Burns's movie?” and Krusty says “Let's just say it moved me…to a bigger house!Whoops.I said the quiet part loud and the loud part quiet.” He accidentally said what he meant to say, which was obvious, but which he didn't want it to be explicit.
linkBen Ainslie - You accidentally communicate your true intentions, when you meant to be deceitful about them.
linkDaniel Midgley - This was very big in the Trump era, with its utter shamelessness.When Trump says, you know:go back to your countries, he was saying the quiet part out loud.So, the Simpsons:it's one of those phrases that comes to us once again, along with CROMULENT and EMBIGGEN.
linkBen Ainslie - The Shakespeare of our generation.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, exactly, exactly!
linkHedvig Skirgård - …
linkBen Ainslie - I stand by it.Hedvig, don't you squint at me!Hedvig just squinted like a motherfucker at me, and I stand by that statement firmer than any statement.That show…
linkHedvig Skirgård - It's great.Yeah!
linkBen Ainslie - Shakespeare.Shakespeare.
linkDaniel Midgley - Lots of phrases, lots of words.So:STONKS, UNITY and QUIET PART OUT LOUD, our Words of the Week.Let's get to some comments.This one's from Lauren on Twitter.Lauren says, “GLEEFRESHING is my vote for Word of the Week.” There's been a lot of gleefreshing.
linkHedvig Skirgård - It's good, yeah.It's the opposite of DOOMSCROLLING.I like it, I agree with Lauren.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, it is.
linkBen Ainslie - I like that.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Good, very good.
linkDaniel Midgley - And from Maya, our wonderful transcriptionist— ah, what a job! —for Word of the Week:Karen, but with a Q
linkBen Ainslie - Like Qarenkweɹən.Oh, for QAnon?
linkDaniel Midgley - For QAnon.
linkBen Ainslie - QAnon Karen is a Qaren.Yeah, okay.
linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.And this is because of that one hateful representative, the QAnon Congresswoman who…
linkBen Ainslie - I can't remember her name.She's the worst.
linkDaniel Midgley - I can't either.Double-barreled last name.Worst person.And in fact, a Black representative has moved office because the staff was so hateful.Christian Turner @chistor says, “I may be late to this, but somebody in my feed just referred to that representative as Qaren.And that's perfect and about all that ever need be said about her until she can get the help she needs.”
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I think that's really good.I think if you're looking for insightful…insightful insights into QAnon stuff, I can really recommend the podcast QAnon Anonymous.I think we might have talked about this one before, I’m not sure.They do a great job of covering the conspiracy theories and the mythology in a very meme- and internet-savvy way, but also with a lot of depth and seriousness.And after the sixth of January, what are we calling them now?
linkDaniel Midgley - Insurrectionists.
linkHedvig Skirgård - We want to call it domestic terrorism…Insurrectionists, okay.Domestic terrorist, whatever we think is a good term.They did a good job of sort of talking about the…the tragedy of some of the people who are a part of this movement, and their sort of life choices and things.They're not saying that it's excusable, but they give some nuances and depth to like how…how crazy and how far people get pushed in this movement.In it, they managed to be empathetic and not patronising at the same time.I don't know how they do it.
linkBen Ainslie - It’s what you need.If you want deep analysis on anything, there has to be empathy there, otherwise it just doesn't work.Something I'm classically terrible at, by the way.Like, really, really shit at it.
linkHedvig Skirgård - And I struggle with empathy to QAnon people in a very serious way.
linkBen Ainslie - Conspiracy theorists broadly, I've just looked at askance and I'm just like:Ugh, just put it down.
linkDaniel Midgley - Well, hey, thanks, everybody for those comments.
linkDaniel Midgley - OUTRO MUSIC
linkBen Ainslie - Hey!You have been listening to a special patron, Pat-….Hey, you've been listening to a special patron-only episode of Because Language, our Mailbag episode.But you might be listening to this aways down the line, when we open it up for gen-pop.If you have any questions, thoughts, queries, insights, anything at all like that, you can get ahold of us in all of the conventional social media channels.We've got a Facebook presence, we've got an Instagram presence.We've got a very small YouTube presence.Don't visit us there.We haven't really done that in a while.We have a Mastodon presence, we have a Discord channel.And of course, as always, if you just really want to spend some time crafting a meaningful missive, you can send us an email to hello@becauselanguage.com.Is that correct?
linkDaniel Midgley - Yep, that is.
linkBen Ainslie - Also, please, please go and give us a review.But if you're one of my high school students, and you want to leave a review about this podcast, please don't leave a one star review as a joke, because most of you said very nice things, but then you left a one star review.And it really kind of fucked with our rankings a little bit.So, leave us high reviews!That would be great.I'm looking at you, Daniel.
linkHedvig Skirgård - If you like the show, leave us high reviews.And if you feel like other people besides Mr Ainslie are good on this show, feel free to mention that too.LAUGHTERBut if you do like the show just because of Ben, do that, but just don't leave a one star review as a joke please, if you can.
linkBen Ainslie - thank youuu…
linkDaniel Midgley - One of the hazards.
linkHedvig Skirgård - They're very funny.We get the whole internet edgy meme thing.Just…
linkBen Ainslie - BEGGINGStop fucking with our rankings.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.That'd be great.Thanks!And also, this is a Patreon special episode, like Ben said.So we'd like to thank you all for being our patrons on Patreon, which is always a mouthful for everyone who uses the service.You keep the show ad-free and you help us employ people to transcribe our shows, to make them more accessible and searchable.So we'd like to give a special shout out to all of our patrons, and especially people who participate on our Discord channel and send us in ideas and questions and comments for the show.We love hearing from you.So those people are:Termy, Chris B, Lyssa, The Major, Chris L, Matt, Damien, Helen, Bob, Jack, Kitty, Lord Mortis, Elías, Michael, Larry, Binh, Kristofer, Dustin, Andy, Maj, Nigel, Kate, Jen, Nasrin, Nikoli, Ayesha, Emma, Moe, Andrew, James, Shane, Eloise, Rodger, and new for this time:River and Rhian!
linkBen Ainslie - Wicked!
linkDaniel Midgley - And getting in just under the wire for this episode:Jonathan and Steele.Thanks to all of you.And a huge thanks also to Dustin from Sandman Stories @storiesSandman who’s doing a great podcast of his own, and who has been repping us to everyone on Twitter who's been ever asking for podcast recommendations.So thanks for that, Dustin, you once again are a ledge.Our music has been written and performed by Drew Krapljanov, who's a member of Ryan Beno and of Dideon’s Bible.Their new EP, EP2, is available on Bandcamp.Thanks for listening.See you next time.Because Language.
linkDaniel Midgley - PAUSE
linkBen Ainslie - MIC CHECKBlah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
linkHedvig Skirgård - AIR HORN NOISESPew pew pew pew!
linkHedvig Skirgård - PAUSE
linkHedvig Skirgård - If I don't sleep well, or if I wake up at the wrong period, then essentially my mood and my, like, capabilities cognitively for the entire day are sort of fucked.
linkBen Ainslie - I would agree with that.But I've just recognised that me at 75% capacity is fine.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay.
linkDaniel Midgley - Because you’re so wonderful.
linkBen Ainslie - No, I wouldn't say that, but more just like I can….The Ben Ainslie that the world requires is about a 75% Ben Ainslie.100% Ben Ainslie is just too much.
linkDaniel Midgley - How about the amount of Ben Ainslie you're willing to give the world?
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, no, there's a great, there's a great synergy there:What they actually need of me and what I'm willing to give…like, I'm not a doctor or a lawyer, so thankfully, I don't work in an industry where they're like, you must like always be fucking closing!
linkDaniel Midgley - But is it the same 75%?That's the question.
linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, that’s a good point.
linkBen Ainslie - BOOP
linkDaniel Midgley - We hope that you're enjoying the mailout of stickers slash postcards.People are starting to get those.They're coming through.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Yeah, let us know if there's anything else you want.So my merch-life is basically the usual, right?Like, stickers, tea cups, tote bags.But if you have any funky ideas for content that is, like, really interesting to you, but not normal, let us know, because I'd be interested.Not condoms.
linkBen Ainslie - That’s a good point.
linkDaniel Midgley - No condoms?
linkHedvig Skirgård - But…ehhh…I don’t…
linkBen Ainslie - We can't, we can't do custom condoms?
linkDaniel Midgley - Well, not on Redbubble, no.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Why are you both so positive towards that idea?
linkDaniel Midgley - Because we're latching on to any idea here.Just anything.
linkBen Ainslie - Sex positivity matters, right?I…had you said sanitary pads or tampons, I would have been like:That's a great idea.Let's do that.Why not?
linkHedvig Skirgård - I think sex positivity is fine.I'm just not sure that I want to be in every situation.Does that make sense?
linkBen Ainslie - Oh, that's fair enough.I tell you what:why don't we do, like, Ben Ainslie double thumbs up on the condoms, because I'm sure that's what every safe-sex practicing boy girl and otherwise loves to see when they are applying their prophylactic.And Hedvig, we can put you on, like, pencils.
linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Oh, pencil!I want a pencil.Yes, that’s good.
linkDaniel Midgley - Because Language pencil.
linkDaniel Midgley - What do I get?