59 - Mailbag of Ew

699 turns

• linkTranscript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription
• linkBen Ainslie - This pop screen is amazing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's going really well.I am--
• linkBen Ainslie - Dealing with so many plosives.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, it's just dealing with them.It's just like bashing them.Bom, Bom, Bom.Dealing with that, dealing with that.
• linkIn Unison - Pew, pew, pew.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hello, and welcome to this special bonus episode of Because Language, a show about Linguistics, the Science of Language.My name is Daniel Midgley.Let's meet the team.Back in Action, fresh from the Hinterlands, it's Hedvig Skirgård.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Hello, I am-- I'm back.
• linkBen Ainslie - It feels, look, I have only a cursory knowledge of global events based on watching Al Jazeera every morning with my son at like 6 in the morning, when he demands to wake up.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, God.
• linkBen Ainslie - But it sounds like you have returned to Europe, and 100% of it is on fire.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, yeah, it is so warm.And here in Saxon we've had like-- a friend sent me pictures of the forest fires and it looks like Australia.I don't know how to explain it.Ben chucklesit's like big forest fires.Some of the pictures also show like, really close to houses, like residential areas.It's insane.It's been hot.
• linkDaniel Midgley - When you say it's insane.What do you really mean?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I mean, that it's very unusual.That's an extreme outlier.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, I understand you.Yes.chuckles.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Thank you.
• linkBen Ainslie - chuckles.That's so passive aggressive.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I don’t mean it to be.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I know, I know what you mean, it's fair.Daniel chucklesIt's very, very, very warm.And it has multiple consequences.One of it is the rivers are low.In some places in Europe, there are like-- dug into the river canal, there are stones.Have you heard about these?
• linkBen Ainslie - I heard about this.Hunger stones?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - When the river is below a certain part and you can see a certain stone, there'll be an inscription saying like, "If you can see this stone, shit'sunintelligible 00:02:16."
• linkBen Ainslie - Shit's--chucklesYeah, buckle up, next year's--
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Right.
• linkBen Ainslie - --Harvest is going to suck really, fucking bad.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - This is going to really bad.And it is like that.And the--crosstalk.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, sorry, Daniel.Yeah, yeah, yeah,crosstalk.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - --And Daniel thinks we are discussing weather too much.That's fair, but we just met.It's very hot.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - laughter
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's great to have you here.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Uh-huh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - He's back, but it feels in some ways like he never left.It's Ben Ainslie.
• linkBen Ainslie - Hello.I have returned.See how good I'm being?I'm not digressing at all.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You're great.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm amazing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - This episode is a Mailbag episode.And if you are listening to it reasonably soon after release, it means you're a patron.So, thank you for your patronage, you're helping us to keep the show going, helping us to do stuff.And we hope that you enjoy the benefits like bonus episodes, Discord access, and lots of other stuff as well.If you're listening slightly later, why don't you become a patron?You can help the show.That's patreon.com/becauselangpod.All right.Who's ready to get to some mailbag questions?
• linkBen Ainslie - Juicy Qs, I'm ready for some juicy Qs.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm ready for some juicy As.So, this one's from Matias via email."Hi, Daniel and the team.I love your mailbag episodes.Here's my question.We're taught in school that morning is a time of day that goes from sometime in the night and all the way until the midday, noon at 12.Right, Hedvig?Are we good so far?
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, I hear her Swedish kicking in.
• linkBen Ainslie - Daniel laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I don't like this.I--
• linkBen Ainslie - Wait.Let him get to the end of the question before--crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - She doesn't like where this is going.
• linkBen Ainslie - --we get the laundry list of your complaints.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Then, there's the afternoon, evening, and then the night.What's the word for before noon?For example, German has 'morgen' for morning and 'mittag' for midday or noon, 'nachmittag' for after midday or afternoon and so on.But it also has 'vormittag' meaning before midday or before noon.Was there such a word in English previously and we just forgot about it, or did English loan the word 'afternoon' without also loaning before noon?Cheers, Matias from Aarhus, Denmark.
• linkBen Ainslie - Hedvig has been making so many gestures--
• linkBen Ainslie - Hedvig chuckles
• linkDaniel Midgley - What's your beef?
• linkBen Ainslie - --I feel like we need to just cede the floor entirely.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Go on then.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Also, good job, Matias suggesting two plausible hypotheses.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeahcrosstalk--
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Both of those were good and I think it's probably one of those, and I was going tell us which one.
• linkBen Ainslie - It feels like he's given us one of those little notes in school like, "Do you like Jenny?Yes, or no?Please circle."Daniel chucklesAnd we've just got the option of just circling one of his answers and being like, "Here you go, mate."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, no, and they're very plausible and good hypotheses.My reason that I just get confused because I feel like when English people use the word 'morning', usually they don't mean all the way up to noon.They say like, "In the mornings, I go for a run," or something.And they don't mean right before lunch.They have in their mind this natural boundary that the other Germanic languages, so I'm going to guess that Matias maybe is from Denmark as well or not, at least he knows about German, and I know about Swedish.And we have the same, we haveunintelligible [00:05:42, 'vormittag'.So, after breakfast and before noon, there is a time period.
• linkDaniel Midgley - When the morning is getting a little stale.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - The only thing I can think of in English that might fit in here comes from Lord of the Rings, and our favorite band of ne'er-do-well hobbits, who talk about the concept of elevenses?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Elevenses.It's good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, that's specifically a meal, right?That's like--
• linkBen Ainslie - I think it does pertain to a meal.But I wonder if when we say lunchtime, we often don't mean the meal lunch, like we'll say lunchtime to mean, that part of the day kind of thing.So, I was wondering if maybe at some stage, people, "Ah, one moment, found elevenses," or something like that.But then at that point, I guess you're really just saying a numberchuckles"We could meet at 10 o'clock," ten-ses.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But cuter.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I have to say though that if you have the distinction morning, and for noon, or before noon, you do run into the problem that some people are early risers, and they think that morning ends at 8 AM or somethingDaniel laughsAnd then, you have people like me, who for where the English system is essentially true, that morning is right before lunch.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm not going to say that it's a perfect system, it has its problems.But I think it's also that we associate morning with breakfast, food, like shower, and the things you do before you-- And then when you get to work--crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - The morning routine stuff.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.And then when you get to work, and you start your day, you're no longer-- Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Part of me wonders in the conventional Western work schedule, obviously, all of the shift workers and all that kind of stuff are out the window, but your 9 to 5 kinds of jobbies.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Everything from when you start till about midday is pretty fucking useless time anyway.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - We don't have a name for it, because no one's getting anything done at that time.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I know--
• linkDaniel Midgley - I know, I'm pretty productive.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, lately, I've been learning more about circadian rhythm, because weird stuff is going on with mine.And I find that now that I live in a place where it gets so hot in the midday and afternoon, I have to try and get more things done before the temperature gets that hot.
• linkBen Ainslie - Really squeeze it in.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And I'm finding that a lot of my colleagues and friends already are early risers, and they say the opposite.So, they're like, "Oh, I get more things done in the morning." And then like in the afternoon, "Oh, that's a waste of time." Whereas for me, it's more like what Ben described, mornings are wasted time and afternoons is when it kicks in.Daniel chucklesand so--
• linkBen Ainslie - I just take a really long time to get up to speed.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, me too.Me too, for sure.
• linkBen Ainslie - By the way, I'm one of those people you hate, who does the exact opposite.And I just keep laughing all of the time, because you and my partner are like identical in this regard.She has spent her entire life railing against mornings.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I took it back to what we say in old English.And in old English, you could do that.You could just refer to the time.You could say, "We'll meet at nine or three bells," or whatever.But they did have terms for time, and one is prim, 'hit is prīm', which is like early morning, about 6 o'clock, first hour.But then, there's also 'undern', which was anywhere from 9 to 10ish.And 'undern' sounds a lot like under but it's more like 'inter', an interval or an intermediary time between morning and noon.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Is this pre-vowel shift?Is that why it sounds a bit different?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hmm, this was too early for the Great Vowel Shift, which happened around the 1400s This was a lot earlier.I have noticed that if you have 'understand', that's another case where 'inter' became 'under' because you're standing among things that you know about and 'inter' became 'under'.
• linkBen Ainslie - Interesting.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And then, they had 'middæġ' which is midday.So, here's what happened.People before the 1400s used 'undern' for that time that forenoon, or 'vormittag'.But right about the 1400s, we stopped seeing it.And what happened was it kept getting pushed later and later.So.by the 1300s, people were using it to describe a time after noon, like the sixth hour, maybe even later.So, we did have a word for this, 'undern', but then it just moved.And then, because we already had afternoon, we kind of stopped using it.
• linkBen Ainslie - Is it possible that this word just died a slow death for no other reason than it just wasn't hugely productive?Like it wasn't really a needed thing?And maybe it's hung around a little bit in other languages.Hedvig, does it get used all that much in these other languages?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Or is it kind of like the-- oh okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, when people try to schedule meetings with email, for example, people, English speaking are like, "Oh, do you want to have a morning meeting?" And Swedish people would be like, "Would you like a vormittag meeting?"
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, it is used.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Because you are not meaning while you have breakfast.
• linkBen Ainslie - True.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, that's the answer.We did have a word for this.But once it semantically shifted into the same territory as afternoon, that was it.It was done.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Isn't this a general thing with time and meal words that they all get shifted later and later?So,crosstalkdinner used to be-- Yeah, because in Swedish, and I think German as well, 'middæġ' like midday is the meal you have in the evening.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hmm.I mean, dinner is related to déjeuner, which is the French word for breakfast.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, lunch, and petit-déjeuner is breakfast
• linkBen Ainslie - Hmm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But the same with like--
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, and the tea and supper?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And tea and supper and lunch, I think all of them like tend to get pushed later and later and later.Maybe it's like the struggle between morning and evening people, and evening people are like winning against--
• linklaughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - And the fungibility of time.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Which means that maybe morning is going to start meaning 'vormittag', and we'll start saying like early morning.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, like dawncrosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Early morning, dawn.
• linkBen Ainslie - Maybe we'll go back all the way back to the beginning and we'll call it prime, like prim.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, well, thanks, Matias, for that question.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I like that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, this one's from Laura on our Discord Server.It's about 'ew'.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ew.
• linkDaniel Midgley - "Why is 'ew' the sound some English speakers make when disgusted?See also 'ugh' and 'ick'.Why is 'aw' or 'aww' the sound we make at small, cute things?What do speakers of other languages use?" I focused on 'ew', but we could talk about 'aww' if you want to.What's your experience with 'ew'?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I associate 'ew' specifically with like Valley girls and North Americans.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Same, same.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ew, it has--
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.It has like a real American--
• linkHedvig Skirgård - A bit nasal, 'ew'.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah."Oh my god, ew."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ew.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ew.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ew,chucklesit's fun to say.
• linkBen Ainslie - I can't imagine-- so, I think of other examples that I lock in my head as quintessential examples of other varieties of English.So, my go-to for British English, kind of just random British English, is Wallace and Gromit.I don't know why, it just is.And I can't picture Wallace saying 'ew' in any way shape or form.It's just--
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's interesting.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Hmm.
• linkBen Ainslie - -- not in his-- Do you know what I mean?Picture Wallace saying that, and you kind of can't.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I can't.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Hmm.I'm trying to think of what they would say, I'm trying to think of something disgusting happening in their show, and then looking at it, but they would say like, "Oh, no."chucklesexactly.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, they'll be like, "Oh, my."chuckles.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Do you know-- this is just a side note about Wallace and Gromit.Do you know where they debuted?Where that first moon-- Wallace and Gromit's Day Out on The Moon?
• linkBen Ainslie - I presume, BBC.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I know that they're from a northern English town, sort of between Manchester and Liverpool.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And they have like a Wallace and Gromit Museum.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It debuted, and I was there for it, but I got it from the Wikipedia page.There used to be this animation festival that would go around America.It came to Salt Lake a few times, and I would go for a few years.It was called the Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Animation Festival.
• linkBen Ainslie - And it sounds amazing, and I want in my life.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It was fun, but some of the animation was just fucking raw.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It was just like anything on the table, just gross.And they dropped it in that, and it was really well received.Everyone loved it, but it was funny to have it there.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's so funny because it's so cute and safe.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, it is, it's a very gentle, little-- So, where does 'ew' come from Daniel?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, okay.So, this is difficult because when you check out the etymology in lots of places, you see that it's imitative.And I think it is imitative.Like, imagine a disgust face, something smells bad.And then, you just say what comes out of your mouth.Uuuuu--- Ahhh.My own personal experience, in 1983, my friend, Heidi and I, we had this simpatico sense of humor.And we would always say 'ew' to each other, but very clearly and exaggeratedly, 'ew'.And we thought it was new then, and I noticed from the OED that it appears to date from no later than 1967.That's the first reference.I explained I'm going on a trip with my friends.Ew, where to?That's 1967.But for a while there, it was also something good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wait, sorry, you're going for a trip with your friends.And the person you're speaking to says, "Ew"?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm not sure.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm thinking we're giving it the wrong inflection in that usage, because Daniel, you were just saying how sometimes it could be a good thing as well.I could picture like, "Aww, where to?" kind of thing, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - By 1969, we see, "We're celebrating our 10th anniversary.So, this stew is on the house." And then, the response is, "Ew, are you sure it's not the stew celebrating its 10th anniversary?" But there's also one from 1969."Here my, darling.She sipped at the lip of the glass.Ew, delicious," which is--
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, okay.So, there was a little bit of--
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So, for all descriptions of 'oh'.Like, "Oh, oh."
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They're weird spellings of 'oh'.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Only the stew one seems to be an 'ew'.
• linkBen Ainslie - And it seems like that was a play on words, specifically.E and W in stew.Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Maybe.So, any experience with other languages, and expressions of disgust?Because I'm seeing some patterns.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm thinking that the spelling is going to be hard, because it sounds like the precise vowel we're hitting, and the intonation is mattering more, and it's hard to express that.So, some of the example you read there, if you change the intonation, it would be different interpretations.
• linkDaniel Midgley - "Ew, where to?"
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It is unfortunately one of those words that you don't-- one of those expressions and pragmatic tools that you actually don't find that much in language books.So, in my head, when I'm doing an inventory of languages I've learned, I don't know what you say in French.Like, I don't know.Daniel chucklesBecause I know that in Swedish, we would say, "Oosh".
• linkBen Ainslie - Like "Ooosh."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What else would we say?Like, ugh, like that?Maybe?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, kind of like ugh, U-G-H.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And I'm thinking the only patterns I'm noticing is that like, an openish, or like a back vowel, I mean, and a low tone, whereas the cute ones are like higher pitched.
• linkBen Ainslie - Is there something to be said for some linguistic approximation of vomiting?Like,makes retching sounds.
• linkDaniel Midgley - makes retching sounds.Okay, that's what I got as well.As I went around to glosbe.com which has lots and lots of languages, and you can look up any word you want.It's very useful, even if you don't speak the languages.I saw a bunch of different patterns.One was some kind of yuck or something like that.Something like 'phooey', or 'phuey', or something like 'bleh'.And those three things do--crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, yeah, 'bleh'.
• linkDaniel Midgley - --seem like imitative of you've eaten something, something's in your mouth, and then you eject it, those three things.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mm-hmm.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, for example, in Finnish, you've got 'hee' or 'yock'.In Hebrew, 'iks' or 'puey', getting rid of the thing.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yeah, like 'karpuey'.
• linkDaniel Midgley - 'Karpuey' in Polish, you've got 'phree' or 'blae', that's according to glosbe.com.Link on our website, becauselanguage.com.But I feel like 'ew' is really different because you're not trying to spit out or inject something that you've already taken in.It's just like the squinchy face.And then, what you say when you're making the squinchy face.And it's really different from the others because it's a newcomer to English.It took us a long time to write it down.
• linkBen Ainslie - I feel like 'ew' is the flea on the back of the rat that is American pop culture.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - I think it's only in Laura's mind.Because much like Hedvig said, 80s Valley girl stuff just exploded pop culture wise.Everything from Fast Times at Ridgemont High forward, I think, was just that's why we have that.I reckon Australian English probably-- we wouldn't be saying it very much at all if it wasn't for that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Didn't it appear in Clueless as well?"Ew, as if," that kind of thing.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Is 'ew' an outlier in English-speaking world?I was having trouble finding anything that corresponded to 'ew', even though it seems so natural and so instinctive.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It sounds a bit like 'pew', like the 'pluh'
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, but there's got to be something like-- what's the word for T sounds?Like ta.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Plosives.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Plosives.
• linkBen Ainslie - I feel like there has to be a plosive in there to really get that feeling ofcrosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Bleh, blach, bloo.
• linkBen Ainslie - --of like 'tu' or 'too' or whatever.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hmm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Or even 'phooey'.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's funny with the 'phooey' becauseunintelligible 00:20:09means very good in--
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ah, that's funny.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Malaysian?Is it in Bahasa or in--?I don't know, anyway, if anyone here watches the viral comedian, Uncle Roger, you know thatunintelligible 00:20:35means very good.
• linklaughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - unintelligible 00:20:40means bad.
• linkBen Ainslie - I honestly feel like one of the things that would make me feel better than anything in this world is to upload a cooking video and have Uncle Roger get to the end of it, and not even not criticize me, he can for sure criticize me, but if on balance, he was more positive than negative, I could go to my grave like, "I have arrived.I have made it."
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - "Uncle Roger mostly didn't hate my shit."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Umm.Please, if you speak another language besides English, tell us if there's some analog to 'ew' in your language as an expression of disgust.And do you feel like it's a loan?Or does it go back quite a ways.Please let us know.And thanks to Laura for that question.
• linkBen Ainslie - Cheers, Laura.Next.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It was really good-- Okay.
• linklaughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - This is from Melissa on Twitter.And Melissa retweeted.Astronomer and science communicator, Brian Cox, tagged us in it.So, I'll just read it.Cox's tweet is, "Where's the logic in whether a vegetable can be plural or not?I'll have the cabbage.But also, there are cabbages, I'll have the broccoli, but there aren't broccolis or asparaguses." So, my question, and Melissa's question, is why are some vegetables not countable?Or are there asparagi?
• linkBen Ainslie - I think it's interesting.I don't know the answer linguistically, obviously, because I'm stupid.But the two examples that Melissa just provided, or I guess Brian Cox provided via Melissa, broccoli and asparagus both have multiples already working.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - So, when you get ahead of broccoli, it's like a weird fractal thing, like its chaos theory personified where you can get smaller and smaller parts.And no one ever buys a single spear of asparagus ever.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - Right.So, I feel like maybe the bunchingness, right?But by that logic, grapes, grape, I don't know.Maybe I'm completely--crosstalk.
• linkDaniel Midgley - well, okay, yeah, let's, start there.So, I call this divisibility.Like, if you have a potato and you cut it in half, you don't have two potatoes.But if you take a celery, a bunch of celery, can you have celeries?Give me two celeries?
• linkBen Ainslie - No, you have celery.You pluralize the other thing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, if you cut a celery in half, which is really a bunch of stalks, you now have two things with stocks.Your broccoli has lots of florets.And if you cut it, you've got two things with florets.You don't have two broccolis.So, anything comprised of elements that are kind of fractal, like a potato is a thing, whereas a celery is a bunch of things.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Maybe.I guess the other question then is do all of these things have an addendum word-- No, the opposite of that, a prefix word to describe the unit, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, classifier.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.There we go.Thank you.Good job, linguist man.
• linkDaniel Midgley - A stalk of celery.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like you have a head of broccoli, or you have a bunch of asparagus, or you have-- are there heads of garlic?Bulb.
• linkDaniel Midgley - A bulb.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Bulb.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, a bulb of garlic.And so yeah, if it needs a classifier, then you probably are looking at something that isn't going to plural super well.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.The other thing is plural is one thing, like cabbage, cabbages.But then, there are some things in this list where you can say, "Oh, my barn is full of cabbage," which meanscrosstalk,
• linkBen Ainslie - True.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - -- that you have loads of them.And it's like a mass.So, just because something isn't plural doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mm-hmm.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's a good point.I never thought of that.But you do have to say, "It's full of".Or some version of that first to denote the many.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I buy and sell cabbage.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, exactly.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And you can't do that with grapes because grapes-- There's a lot of potato in here.There's a lot unless you mash it."There's a lot of grape--"crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - "I buy and sell grapes."
• linkDaniel Midgley - "I have a warehouse full of grape."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mm, "I buy and sell grapes." Yeah, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And we also can't talk about cabbages without like, "My cabbages"--
• linkHedvig Skirgård - laughs.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Which is also the name of an Avatar the Last Airbender podcast I believe.Yeah/
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ooh.
• linkBen Ainslie - Is that the one where Donnie Brasco is on it, and they watch through the series?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I don't know.They're watching through the series.But he is a cabbage salesman in that anime show, and he has many heads of cabbage and repeatedly through the show, they get destroyed in some way.But he says, "My cabbages."
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, specifically--crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - He doesn’t say my cabbage.Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You can take anything plural, except for grapes, and make it partitive, like make it a mass--
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But I think, "My cabbage," I wouldn't have been like, "Oh, my God, what's that?"
• linkBen Ainslie - He had one very special cabbage.How peculiar?
• linkDaniel Midgley - There's something odd though.I think that word formation, the way the word looks matters.For example, can you have two cauliflowers?Or do they have to be two heads of cauliflower or two bunches of cauliflower?
• linkBen Ainslie - I reckon.Look, I think that when a person were to say, "Oh, can you grab me two cauliflowers?", no one would be confused about that instruction.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - But at the same time--
• linkDaniel Midgley - Would you say it?
• linkBen Ainslie - I feel like the person who was saying it and the person who was hearing it would both kind of understand that that person didn't quite get it right.Do you know what I mean?Like there would be that sense of like, "We both tacitly agree that that was not the correct way to say that.But for the sake of just getting shit done today, let's not talk about it, or bring it up or care about it at all, because it's very minor."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But that's where it's a slip and slide.Because you can easily desensitize yourself to not have that instinct eithercrosstalk.
• linkBen Ainslie - Absolutely, yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - If someone says like, "Oh, could I have two cauliflowers?", I would know what they mean but I would know that it's wrong.I'm not sure I have that second part right.Daniel laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - To be fair, to English is not your first language as well.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I mean-- no, no, no, no, no, I'm not going there.Because that's--crosstalk.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, that's fine.Um, butcrosstalkIt's the same in Swedish when people do that kind of thing, I'm like --
• linkBen Ainslie - I also though, have got the sense that you're extremely fungible when it comes to languages.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I am.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like radically fungible.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I did take a look at lists.There are tons of ESL lists for language learners, which vegetables are mass ones, and which ones are countable ones.And cauliflower comes up on a surprising number of countable lists.So, a lot of people feel like cauliflower is at least marginally countable.And that's weird because broccoli and cauliflower look the same.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - They're both just as fractal as each other.It's just one's green and one--
• linkBen Ainslie - And also, are the same, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - They are the same.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like, so they are part of those ridiculous plants that we've--crosstalk.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But that doesn't matter.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's--
• linkHedvig Skirgård - One of them has the word 'flowers' in it.And that's why you have many flowers and one flower.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And that is why I think that maybe the word formation has a little bit to do with this, not just divisibility.
• linkBen Ainslie - Hmm, interesting.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's what I think.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And it might also have to do with the origin of roots, but modern speakers wouldn't know the broccoli is the loan from blah, blah, blah.But like Daniel was saying, the shape of it, like the ending vowel, the ending syllable might have to do with it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Umm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We don't know, but it's a good question, Melissa.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think that divisibility is a really good heuristic with maybe a little bit of morphology, word formation on the end.Anyway, thank you, Melissa and Dr.Brian Cox.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - If you're a second language learner, and you're listening to this and you're worried about this, if you find yourself making a so-called mistake on this and someone comments on it, take it as a good litmus test of assholes.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, 100%?Definitely yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And remember that our instincts on this even for someone who's learned English as an L1 are marginal.And you don't have to go about it being a learner.Some of those learners are pretty sharp.All right, this one comes from Ariaflame on our Discord server.How common is the use of 'dooblydoo' for the bit under a YouTube video?And where did it originate?All right, details are in the dooblydoo.Have you--
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Have you heard this term?
• linkBen Ainslie - I have, and I know where it comes from.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You do?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yep.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I guess you've got to tell us.
• linkBen Ainslie - This is one of those random things where the question accidentally jagged my thing.Like it jagged, it jagged--chuckles
• linkDaniel Midgley - Jagged your thing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You know how sometimes-- Hedvig now that you're on TikTok as well, perhaps you've experienced this, you know how sometimes you see the source of a sound that blows up before it blows up, and then it blows up and you're just,gasps, I was there when the old magics were writtenchucklesI know the source."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Daniel laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So, this comes from Idea Channel, PBS' Idea Channel on YouTube, which I believe is defunct now, like they've stopped making it.But for a long time, it was like one of those really early explainer video channels, kind of like the Vox video type of things, but like way older.I'm looking at-- Is Math Real?is particularly famous one of theirs, and it is from 2013.And yeah, the presenter whose name actually escapes me right now.He was a really nice guy though.Would always say "information in the dooblydoo," And he'd just point downward knowing full well that that's where in the geography of YouTube, the comment section would be.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, about 2013 you've got it?Okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - I've got it here.Yes.gasps, are you telling me that I'm wrong?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Can we take it back farther?
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, let's find out.Wayback machine.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I can take it to 2009.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.I don't know if the Idea channel was still doing their thing then though.So--
• linkDaniel Midgley - But it wasn't the Idea Channel.We'll take it we'll put a link to this--crosstalk.
• linkBen Ainslie - In the dooblydoo?
• linkDaniel Midgley - On our website, in the dooblydoo.
• linkBen Ainslie - Good.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It appears to have been first used in 2009 by WheezyWaiter.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Whose real name is Craig Benzine.So, describe things as in the dooblydoo.He also used the term 'describey', "The details are in the describey." But he started using dooblydoo.And then, it got picked up by the Vlogbrothers.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah, there we go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Hank and John.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Then, it went nuts.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's about right.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But that appears to be the first instance that I can find and many people who have looked into this have said that's the first one that they can find as well.So, if you can take it back farther, farther than WheezyWaiter-- Some people just have a wild number of videos.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's funny because, I think the first YouTube video is like 2005, My Day at the Zoo, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - unintelligible [00:31:37.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.It's like, I think, is one of the YouTube employees.And then, it starts kicking up proper speed in like 2007ish.And then, you get like-- I really like YouTube history, and I was watching it avidly during this time and everything.And then, you get likecrosstalkunintelligible [00:31:57
• linkDaniel Midgley - You were there when the old magics were written.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, What the Buck.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - There was a special news show devoted to the YouTube community called What the Buck.And WheezyWaiter, I was watching him as well and Vlogbrothers.But WheezyWaiter in 2009, that's actually like-- I would almost have expected it to be earlier, actually.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Umm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But fair enough.
• linkDaniel Midgley - If we can take it back farther, we'll add an addendum in the dooblydoo.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, no, that's really fun.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And Vlogbrothers, they're one of the ones that have stuck.They're so smart.They're doing well on TikTok as well.
• linkBen Ainslie - OG, right.Like they are-- theyunintelligible 00:32:52.I don't know how they've done it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They're OG, and they're keeping strong.I don't knowcrosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - That's what I mean.They're likeunintelligible 00:32:51or something like.They were there all the way back and they have just stayed.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And they do really decent charity projects.And they are like one of the originators of VidCon aren't they?
• linkBen Ainslie - They are the originators of the VidCon, I believe.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's fascinating to me that they have survived the thresher that is living to the algorithm though and the evolution of the algorithm over time.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's just getting harder and harder and they're still there.Maybe it's one of those things.Once you've broken through to a certain level of infamy, it counterintuitively actually becomes much easier, because that audience is just arriving and stuff.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But there are some people who just haven't-- like, Shawn, what's his name?What's up, guys?
• linkBen Ainslie - You've just described the start of everycrosstalkYouTube video.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, I haven't.I haven't.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What's up, guys?He was so big.He was so big.Oh, shit.His name is-- fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And he did a thing with Jeffree Star.Ah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Do you know what's happened here is we've accidentally likecrosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Sean Dawson-- Shane Dawson.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, here we go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Shane Dawson and it looks like thecrosstalk.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's Lawrence Jesterton.laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No but incrosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Name that movie.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - There was so many and then that when people started doing these little production teams, there's so many that didn't make it that were bigger than Vlogbrothers, I'm telling you.
• linkBen Ainslie - So, we've accidentally tripped and fallen--
• linkHedvig Skirgård - All right.
• linkBen Ainslie - --through Hedvig's nostalgia window.That's what's happening right nowlaughs.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I just love a good tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But it's also special for me because it's one of those things and I think a lot of other Millennials or maybe Gen Z people can identify with this as well.I watched a lot of YouTube and was really into these things.No one in my family.No one in my school.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Like my window to this communitycrosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - You have to find the people.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - --was through the screen.And when I talked to like anyone else in the real world around me and they're like, "Don't know what you're talking about." I'm like, "Okay, well, that's normal." That's been my life.Now that I'm an immigrant living outside of my country, and I speak about Swedish things, I have a similar thing.So, I'm used to being like an IRL culture of one.So, when I meet someone who knows who Jenna Marbles is, I get very intense.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - laughs.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Because it's like being permanently in the diaspora or something.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, it's like being a metal fan in a small Midwestern town and then running into another metal fan.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - And just being like, "Disturbed, and Metallica, andunintelligible 00:35:40.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.And then, also finding out that your little cultural niche interest actually don't necessarily align to being compatible people, because sometimes I meet people--
• linkHedvig Skirgård - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - --they've watched the same YouTube videos, and we do not get along.And it's like, "Oh, cultural diet is not a personality.I get it now."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Can I just share a story like that?I had a mission companion.Here I am with a guy named-- well, I won't name him.But we both liked the same kind of music.And one night, we were waiting for a train in Perth.And he said, "What musician would you like to meet?" And I said, "Hmm, actually, I think the most interesting person would be Bill Nelson." And he was like, "I'm the only one who knows Bill Nelson.You don't know-- who told you to say that?Did someone put you up to saying that?" He made me sing a bunch of Bill Nelson songs.
• linkDaniel Midgley - crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - Because he was so-- no, nocrosstalk.
• linkBen Ainslie - It was his unreleased first EP that no one even knows about.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And I knew it.It was just that he was so used to being misunderstood as a kid in Utah--
• linkBen Ainslie - Fair enough.
• linkDaniel Midgley - --He couldn't believe anyone shared his esoteric interests.Well, let's keep moving on.Thank you.Diego on our Discord server asks, "The word 'whoa', whoa, is it spelled W-O-A-H?"
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Or W-H-O-A or both ways?Just to make this easier, we're going to aspirate the H when we say these.So, we're going to say either 'woah' or 'whoa'.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, Jesus.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Or some combination of those.It's going to be great.Which one do you say are right?
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, this is the thing, we all say 'Whoa' the same way, right?First of all, let's just establish that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - None of us say it is like a surfer dude.I think that we're standardizing something where we have a unique opportunity to not do so.So, when it comes to things like 'yuck' and 'ew' and 'oh' and 'aww' and 'whoa', these are not always included in teaching materials.They're weirdly like inconsistently picked up by dictionaries.And it's one of those things where the spoken word is still ruling, and the written word is trying to imitate and where the written medium is not as good at doing this as the spoken medium is.So, I think we have an opportunity to let a thousand flowers bloom.Ben chuckles.And I think we should.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughsYou like that.Only a linguist could be like, "A thousand flowers bloom," over where the H goes.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, but there's so much standardizing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I agree.
• linkBen Ainslie - I do agree.I do as much as I mock, I do actually agree with you.And the other one that I would throw on the table is, 'Yeah'.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah?
• linkBen Ainslie - I think 'yeah' is a bit more standardized, but I've seen 'yeah' spelt Y-E-A, Y-E-R by some people.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - And then, obviously, the Y-E-A-H that most people would beunintelligible 00:38:45.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's that H again, that H again.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Did you say R?
• linkBen Ainslie - Y-E-R like 'yer'.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yer.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Is that Australians writing it like that?
• linkBen Ainslie - No, this is other people.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Really?
• linkBen Ainslie - Mm-hmm.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Odd.
• linkBen Ainslie - A minority example, I agree.But it's one of the thousand flowers, Hedvig.Don'tunintelligible 00:39:06on it.chuckles
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, I'm trying to look where the flower is blooming.Is it like on Speak Like a Pirate Day you're saying this?
• linkBen Ainslie - No, it was--
• linkDaniel Midgley - What happened on Speak Like a Pirate Day?
• linkBen Ainslie - I think it's like just Northern English.Like yer, that kind of thing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, I have texted my husband to come and bring me milk.And I can query him when he does.
• linkBen Ainslie - You guys can get married now.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, we don't see 'woah' in very many dictionaries at first.We start seeing it in 1864.By the way, this all comes from a wonderful article by Merriam Webster.We'll slap that up on the website.
• linkBen Ainslie - A acceptable stand-in if you can't get access to the best English dictionary.
• linkDaniel Midgley - They added value.So, in 1864, we start seeing "ho" use to stop a team of animals.Ho.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Also, as a way of attracting attention to something like 'land ho'.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, like, "Ho there, on the bridge".
• linkDaniel Midgley - Precisely.But eventually, 'ho' turned to 'whoa' but there were a lot of spellings including a lot that didn't have any H at all.So, this is an area where two versions are duking it out.The accepted form is 'woah', and most dictionaries have this.But 'whoa' is creeping in, and some dictionaries are considering entering 'whoa' as variant spelling of 'woah'.In fact, I've even seenunintelligible 00:40:34.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, with an H of the beginning and the end.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah,
• linkBen Ainslie - Way to split the difference, you fence-sitters.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mm-hmm.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let a thousand flowers bloom.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughsYeah.But not onunintelligible 00:40:44.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Were you surprised to find 'whoa' is probably the most popular and you do the other one.Where do you put the H?
• linkBen Ainslie - Are you asking us or our listeners?I can't tell.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm asking you.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.I don't use 'whoa' very much.Perhaps, there's like an understatedness to how I communicate via text message that I'm only now becoming aware of, but something would need to be pretty huge for me to bust out a 'whoa'.Like it would need to be a friend texting and saying, "Hey, look, me and whoever that I've been with for six years, I think we're ending things," and I would be like, "Whoa, that's huge.Are you okay?" That sort of thing.I wouldn't use 'whoa' for very many things.
• linkDaniel Midgley - In which case, you would put it at?
• linkBen Ainslie - Putting me on the spot, probablyunintelligible 00:41:35.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.All right.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - If I would, I would do W-O-A-H.But I think that in many settings, I would write, 'wow' instead, W-O-W.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, okay.All right.Well, it's pretty interesting.And I am down with variety.I think that we should encourage it.Anyway, younger people with the Whoa-ha, variant are probably coming out.So, I think this is going to get more varied and not less.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, no.It's going to be another thing where Gen-Z call me cringy Boomer, because I put the H in the wrong part of fucking word or whatever.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, it's not too late to turn this around, Ben.You can--
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ben, you can know.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, that's even worse, just trying to be like that."I can be one of the cool kids.I put my H in, man."
• linkDaniel Midgley - But not obviously so.Not obviously.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah, so what's the-- is it bougie?What's the word they use?We've talked about it before.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Cheugy?But they don't use it.crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Cheugy.
• linkBen Ainslie - It just got cycled in and cycled out again?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.Yes.So--
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So, Ben and I are both like Millennials and we're trying to understand Gen Z.I am more on that, "I'm still cool.Iunintelligible 00:42:40.You guys like it.I'm trying." And Ben, it's like, "No, I've decided that I'm not part of this generation." But I've noticed on TikTok and on other places, I get video recommendations for Gen Z people making fun of Millennials for various reasons.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh--
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And I noticed that, and I don't mean this as a way of-- but a lot of them are about things that Americans do.
• linkBen Ainslie - Mm, okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And that I'm like, "Oh, I never called dogs doggo in real life."
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, or like puppers or whatever, right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I always thought that was cringey.I might write it in direct relation to a meme.But I won't walk down the street and pointed the dog and be like, "What a cute doggo."
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, Hedders.We get it.You are cool and young and hip.And you were on to all the cringey things before the cringe police were there.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, but I think most people were.And some people weren't.And we identify groups by some of the outliers that are unique to that group.And that's fine.I do some other things.But there are some things where I was like, "No, no, who did that?No one did that." Anyway, the other thing that I was going to nominate as a Word of the Week, but I didn't because we didn't have a Word of the Week.But can I say it anyway?It's related.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
• linkBen Ainslie - We're just playing fast and loose with the rules.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Millennial pause.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes, I've heard about this.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We had the Millennial whoop.And now it's Millennial pause.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.So apparently, Millennials.
• linkBen Ainslie - Not apparently, it's a thing.We do it.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm trying to-- I can't-- I'm sorry.So, millennials when they start recording a video, they do a short pause at the beginning to be like, "Oh, is the video on?Is everything working?"
• linkDaniel Midgley - "Hi, everybody.Drop me a message in chat to make sure that you can hear me, and my audio is working."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, no, like a silent pause.
• linkBen Ainslie - Now, I want to quickly defend Millennials for a second.Because I don't think they're quite as Boomery as you're making it out to be in terms of like, "Oh, is it working?What's going on?" It's just that millennials have been conditioned because early technology, you would press record and then because they were working on fucking archaic chip architecture, it would take a second before it would actually start doing anything.So, after enough videos of being like, "Hello, everyone and welcome to my blah, blah, blah.Okay, so we've got to-- wait a second."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Just pause.
• linkBen Ainslie - But now, apparently, it's a little giveaway that we're ancient and disgusting if we just pause at the start of a video.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Gen Z's don’t pause,
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You are right.It's a very, very short pause.And it's not like, "Oh, is it happening?" We're not saying anything.It's literally a silent pause of microseconds to seconds.Like tiny.And apparently, the Gen Zers have noticed this.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah, look at Granny's little light.laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And it's so funny, it's like, "Well, fuck y'all.Ew."
• linkBen Ainslie - So, see?See?See?You see what I'm feeling?I wanted to clarify, and I was going to do this at the end to just put a button on this little section before we move on.You before, Hedvig, said Ben's just accepted or he's decided that he's not, no, no.Oh, no.It was not me who decided.I'm reminded every working day of my life that I don't belong.That's what's happened.The other side has made it very clearlaughswhich team I mean, and it's not theirs.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, at least you're not getting ignored like Gen Xers.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's true.You are the new silent generation.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, we are.It's not just a pause.It's an entire silence.
• linkBen Ainslie - To be fair though, I think, Daniel, if we're being honest, you're not being ignored.You're just being lumped in.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think Gen Zers are making fun of Millennials because we're like on the same medium still, like we're still in the same places.
• linkBen Ainslie - We're available for shots.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, but also the potshots they are taking at us is like, "You guys talk too much how much you like coffee.You do a pause at the beginning of videos." Whereas with Boomers, they're like, "You stole our future.We hate you." And then, it's like Millennials are--
• linkBen Ainslie - This is yet another racist video of a Karen.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, and so we're at least getting very friendly made fun of I think.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, look.You hold on as hard as you like, but they're coming for us.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Anyway, Gen Xers, not all of us are religious, but those of us who are, all went into politics.
• linkBen Ainslie - Umm, it's true.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, last one.I think it's going to be the last one.It's going to feel pretty full after this.Elias on Discord asks, "Why do we still use capital I for I, as in me, the subject of a verb?It's so annoying to type.Won't English get rid of it soon?"
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You know what they say.When you assume, Elias, you make an ass out of you and me.I am desperately trying to teach my little phone to not do this.I am even starting sentences with lower capital I.I have even tried to get rid of the apostrophes.I'm spelling 'l'm' lowercase 'im'.
• linkBen Ainslie - Whoa.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, this is why I like you.
• linkBen Ainslie - That is radical.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You're working pretty hard.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm trying.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It seems like a lot of work.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah it is.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It is.My autotype-- I also I have to do it for like several languages because I sometimes text in English with the German spelling turned on, so I need to teach all of them.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, yeah, oh.That sounds like a hard--
• linkBen Ainslie - Mm-hmm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They all just get blended.
• linkBen Ainslie - I hate texting on a phone so much.If you want me to sound like a Boomer, here's me square in Boomer territory, and I maintain, and I will go to my grave maintaining no matter how fancy pants Steve Jobs might have been about designing the smartphone blah, blah, blah, no one, and I mean no one has figured out how to make word processing on a tiny screen anything other than fucking terrible.It sucks.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I agree.
• linkBen Ainslie - Across the board.It sucks.It's terrible.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Fully agree.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's not Elias' fault.Because when I read his question, at first, I was like, "It's annoying to type?" My left pinky riding the shift button on a keyboard is thoroughly inconsequential to me.That does not annoy me on any way, shape, or form.And it took me a second to realize, "Oh, he's talking about phones, obviously." Because keyboard is just-- argh, I will just say that I want us to do away with mobile devices.That's how radical I want to be.I'm like,incoherent angry noises".
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay for scrolling.They're okay for certain--
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - --things, but I fully agree.And one of the reasons I like using DM tools like WhatsApp or even Facebook Messenger over texting, like SMS--
• linkBen Ainslie - SMS yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - --Is because I can open it in a web browser if I want and I can type like a normal person.And the reason it took me such a long time to shift from a dumb phone, like a dumb mobile phone to like an iPhone was because when you type something and then you want to change it and you need to take your finger and move the cursor back--
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - --maybe some speech typist who compete are good at doing that, but that shit is not fine.
• linkBen Ainslie - They're like 15 years in smart phone technology--
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And still bad.
• linkBen Ainslie - And we still have not figured it out.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's still bad.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's really annoying.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So, phones are for watching YouTube andcrosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Phones are for consuming content.Laptops are for producing.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, big time.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, but I feel like typing messages--
• linkBen Ainslie - But a lot of people live their-- so my partner is the administrator on quite a few different really political Facebook groups.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mm-hmm.
• linkBen Ainslie - And these are big.We're talking groups with like thousands and thousands of members.And so, she has a lot of work to do educating people around issues of race and feminism and all this kind of stuff.And she does it all through her phone, like don’t-- Argh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, my God.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What?
• linkBen Ainslie - It is.It blows my mind.And every time I query her-- I don't criticize her, I'm just agog.I'm just sitting there going, "How do you--?" She's like, "Yeah.It's just, you know."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's so like I am00:50:58.
• linkBen Ainslie - She's like if we got a keyboard in the bed then, she likes to be able to lie down and do it.And that makes perfect sense to me.But the annoyance of the phone would outweigh the comfort of the lying down for me by a very large margin.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I can never place that cursor.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I admin one Facebook group with like 3000 members, and I can tell when people submit posts or request membership, and they've done it through a mobile device or a web browser.Because the mobile devices like the way that they have to answer the permanent questions doesn't really work very well on a lot of mobile devices.So, I can tell that this is a genuine person who wants to become a member of this group, they have answered none of the questions.And it is because they use a mobile device.And I'm like, "Okay, I'll excuse you."
• linkBen Ainslie - To answer Elias' question, I don't think it's going away.Hey, in the sense that if it was going to, it would have by now, surely.It has been-- how long have we been using 'I' in this way, Daniel?With a capital specifically?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's take a walk through the history.In the Proto-Germanic days of long, long ago, the pronoun was 'ech', not capitalized.And that's where we get ego from Greek the 'ech' turned into an 'egg'.Okay, by the 1100s, other languages have gone to 'ich' and so on.But in English, it was reduced to just 'i'.And by the 1200s, we start seeing capital 'I', so somewhere between 1100 and 1200.
• linkBen Ainslie - And I realize we've discussed these many times, but English language writing for several hundred years was just fast and loose.The level of standardization was very, very low.When did we start to see only exclusive capital I, the way we kind of understand it now?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm reading a case by Caroline Winter for the New York Times Magazine, who says, "The growing 'I' became prevalent in the 13th and 14th centuries with a Geoffrey Chaucer manuscript of the Canterbury Tales among the first evidence of this grammatical shift.Initially," this is interesting, "Distinctions were made between graphic marks denoting a capital 'I' at the beginning of a sentence versus a mid-phrase," first person pronoun, "Yet these variations eventually fell by the wayside, leaving us with our all-purpose capital 'I'.A potent change, apparently made for simplicity's sake."
• linkBen Ainslie - I mean, look, if it's 600 years of consistent uniform usage, that's a long time.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, it's long.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's not anything in language,
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But also, the modern technology, this is actually quite an easy rule to implement.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - If you see it all by itself, just cap.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - There's basically nothing else.So, if it's start of a sentence or a space, and then an 'I' and then a space, teaching a computer to make that capital is super easy.And there are basically no problems with it because it's very rarely that you, you actually want to use a lowercase in that situation.This is actually such a prevalent rule that it spreads to other languages.Like in Samoan texting, 'I' is just like a preposition, and you want to have it lowercase.But because everyone uses computers with English dictionaries, they're starting to capitalize that, because--
• linkBen Ainslie - Rightcrosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - --That's how theunintelligible 00:54:21does it.And it is annoying as fuck, but--
• linkHedvig Skirgård - laughs.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now I took a look as to why it went from lowercase 'i', whichever other language has to uppercase 'I' and apparently the prevailing sense is that lowercase 'i' just wasn't typographically strong enough to stand on its own.People would think it was a mistake, that it had broken off from some other word.
• linkBen Ainslie - I guess in an era where mistakes were more prevalent, that might have offered more confusion.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mm-hmm, yeah, that's right.
• linkBen Ainslie - I don't even know if that's true, necessarily.I imagine monks actually were pretty precise if your entire life was copying text or whatever.
• linkDaniel Midgley - They were, they were.And yet, people started making it bigger, those scribes started making the 'I' bigger so that it would stand out.And maybe that was also to lend a bit of importance to the subject.So, there may have been a number of motivators.But partly typographic, partly semantic, 'I' became capital 'I', and it still is today.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, sorry, Elias.I think it's staying.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think we're stuck.
• linkBen Ainslie - Hedvig, power to you for screaming at clouds.I salute you, madam.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ben laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - Thanks, Elias, this was a great question.Let's take a bit of a comment from John on Facebook.John says, "Listening to Episode 46.In the beginning, when you're talking about dictionaries, Ben says X, Y, Zee, and Daniel says X, Y, Zed.This is the opposite of what I would have expected given your origins."
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - Yep.Welcome to the wild and crazy world of Ben and Daniel.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, what's going on?I think I'm--
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, let me tell you, Daniel.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Daniel is a man, who grew up in America, and then came and lived here.And Ben is a man who was born here, and then did some growing up in America.And I think--
• linkDaniel Midgley - Do you think that's where you got it?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, 100%.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - Definitely.Yeah, I was just in America at the time that learning your alphabet was a thing.So, like in year two, and that sort of thing, And also like Sesame Street, and whatnot, and so forth.Whereas, Daniel, you came here later, but you've reached the midpoint.You're past the point of no return.To use Back to the Future III parlance, you've gone past the window, mate.So, I think you just kind of affected it originally and now you've got little ones again in Australia.And so, this is the fourth go-round of having little ones in Australia.So, there's only so much watching Australian children's TV a person can possibly subject themselves to before you just osmosize zed.I imagined.
• linkDaniel Midgley - There has been an interesting pattern with alphabet songs.The Wiggles go, W X, Y, zed or zee.So, they managed to work it in there.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, because they want that sweet American dollar.I see you, Wiggles.I see you.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's both.And then, Regurgitator, who has made an unusual foray into children's music has an ABC song.
• linkBen Ainslie - What?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, the Gurge.
• linkBen Ainslie - All right, unknown to me.
• linkDaniel Midgley - With the-- very famous for their song, I Will Lick Your Arsehole.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mm-hmm.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, their alphabet song goes W X, Y, and zed.I said A, and it goes back to A.So, they rhyme zed with said and it makes the song work.Interesting, huh?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes, you're right, John.Daniel and I, freaky, bizarre, linguistic abominations.Thank you for pointing it out.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mm-hmm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - The real question is not how you pronounce the last letter of the alphabet but how you pronounce the first letter of my name.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.Is it H orcrosstalk?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, sorry.Sorry, it took me a second.I was just like, am I supposed to be saying Edvig?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, no, no, no.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, no, I get it now.I get it now.I don't say H either because I-- genuinely think it's because like during the singsongy period of my life where that shit was going down, I was just taught the American way.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And Daniel, what do you say?
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's a bit stigmatized saying H, isn't it?
• linkBen Ainslie - That is the other thing, is the part of my family that I had the most to do-- And we don't need to get into a whole thing about Ben's family.But basically, the well off and the working class came together to create Ben Ainslie and the side of the family that would say H, I should say-- sorry, I can't even get it out.The side of the family that would say H is the side of the family I didn't have as much to do with and was stigmatized for shitty classist reasons.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And Daniel?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Which is funny because H and H, I always say H because Americanism and I never quite identify with H.But remember that H, H aspiration is one of those things that's gone in and out of fashion.So, it used to be that you would have 'herbal' being the prestige, pronunciation, and then 'erbal'.The rich people dropped the H and that was considered.So, you had 'otel' and 'onest' and 'our' and--
• linkBen Ainslie - Is that Mid-Atlantic shit?Is that what that is?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Not that late, it might be 1700-1800s where dropping your Hs was fashionable, and then it just went back and forth.So just like R vs R-less.It's one of those things that's flipped back and forth.And if you got on the wrong side of it, then you were stigmatized, and that's--
• linkBen Ainslie - Can I share a great word I heard the other day?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
• linkBen Ainslie - Not a word of the week.Just it's a gift to the audience and to you too.I was watching a TikTok about a person making a particular dish and this creator was like, "I'm adding heaps of these things because I want it to be really--" She's American, so she said 'erbaceous, but like the word 'herbaceous'.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ah.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's like bodacious, but herby.I love it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ah, digging it.Digging it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I like it.Speaking of the thing you just talked about dropping, you can see some remnants of it with fancy people in England saying 'an hotel'.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes, yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And 'an'--
• linkDaniel Midgley - 'An historic', classic.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - 'An historic', and it's really annoying, but--
• linkBen Ainslie - I hate it.Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I say the H--
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's the old style.That's the old way.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I say H both because fuck classism and also because it's like the letter 'Ha'.You have to-- it's the word-- it's at the beginning.It should be--
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, it makes more sense.It does.
• linkDaniel Midgley - crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It should be at the start, please.
• linkBen Ainslie - Testify.
• linkDaniel Midgley - They all do except forunintelligible 01:00:51.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, L and M and those things have a vowel before.
• linkDaniel Midgley - They all contain their sound somewhere.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's a really good example of how the way you say even something as small as a letter can be picked up and used as a social variable by us ourselves to show affiliation or distance.Big thanks to everybody who gave us questions, who hung out with us on Discord.We're having a lot of fun.You should give it a try if you're a patron.If you're not, thanks for becoming one.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - If you are not a patron, there are other ways you can support the show.If you like the show and if you like what we do, here are some of the things.You can send us ideas and feedback in multiple places.You can follow us.We're becauselangpod everywhere except Spotify.You can, for example, message us on Facebook or Twitter, or-- I've never looked at our inbox on TikTok, but I guess there exists one.So, that should be feasible.You can also leave us an audio message on SpeakPipe if you'd like.It'd be lovely to hear your sweet voices.You can do that on becauselanguage.com.You can also send us a good old-fashioned email, hello@becauselanguage.com.And if you do like us, something else you can do to support us as tell a friend about us.And I would advise as the person who listens to podcast, say something specific.Because when people say, "Listen to this podcast," I'm like, "Why?"
• linkBen Ainslie - Sell us.Really sell us.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, but just pick something-- you don't have to sell us, but just say something that you like specific and if you thought hard about it-- because I recently noticed which podcast, I listened to reduce anxiety.And it is not necessarily the content.It's like something else.I'm curious, what do you like about us?Because that--
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooh, that's a fun one.Yeah, tell us what we tickled for you in your review.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, yeah.Because different podcast tickle different things.Some people have sweet voices.some people have calming materials.Some people are exciting.Some people have banter.What is it?And that is, for example, what Justin of Sandman Stories does, and we appreciate that very much.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We have a new review, speaking of, and I have promised that I'm going to read out reviews?Did I at some point?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yup.That's right.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, I think I made some sort of promise.Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Here we go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - This is a five-star review from Gregory via Apple Podcasts.This is from Australia, so it's fun.The title is, "So many podcasts but Because Language rules.Seriously, I love podcasts, and there are heaps.But I find Because Language to be highly entertaining, highly informative, and I love the peeps.I hang out for the next episode to bring me comfort and knowledge." See?Comfort, that's such a sweet spot hit if you're a podcaster.And I like it in my podcast, and I'm really glad to hear you like that.
• linkBen Ainslie - I didn’t think that we would be even adjacent to the cozy podcasts of the world given how often I say 'fuck', but I'm cool with it because Stardew Valley is my favorite video game of all time basically now, if you go purely by how much time I've spent in a game.So, if we have arrived at some sort of cozy podcast nook, I'm on board.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Me too.Thank you for entrusting us with your comfort.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, by the sound of it, we have accidentally arrived at some sort of-- well, I shouldn't say accidentally.You two are very cozy, warm, inviting people who ensconce the acerbic grumpiness of me really well.So much so apparently that we have arrived at cozy podcast land, which I love.I love cozy games.I love cozy podcasts.I didn't think that I would be, like my podcast would be a cozy podcast because of how often I say 'fuck' and get really angry at people.But here we are and I'm really stoked with that.
• linkBen Ainslie - And so, to all of our patrons who allow us to exist in this cozy little podcast nook, I would like to extend a personalized thank you to all of you.And that goes out totakes a deep breathDustin, Termy, Elías, Matt, Whitney, Chris L, Helen, Udo, Jack.PharaohKatt, Lord Mortis, gramaryen, Larry, Kristofer, Andy B, James, Nigel, Meredith, Kate, Nasrin, Ayesha, Moe, Steele, Manú, James, Rodger, Rhian, Colleen, Ignacio, Sonic Snejhog, Kevin, Jeff, Andy from Logophilius, Stan, Kathy, Rach, Cheyenne, Felicity, Amir, Canny Archer, O Tim, Alyssa, Chris W.And Kate B, who we have said many times but we will continue to say many times, just destroyed the one-time donation button on our website.And if you are similarly inclined to annihilate us with a single donation, you can go ahead and do the same.That is becauselanguage.com.And our newest patron at the listener level, Laurie.G'day Laurie.
• linkBen Ainslie - So, thank you to all our amazing patrons.You do really cool work.You allow us to keep making the show.You allow us to transcribe the show, which is a big deal.And you also allow us to do a thing, which I think is really cool, which is offer a little stipend to the people who come on our show so that we're not just stealing their emotional and intellectual labor.Many people are really cool about it.And they're like, "Don't worry about it.Just like do other things with the money.That's really cool," but I know for a fact that a lot of people in that industry of punditry and academia and that sort of thing, it's not easy to be up at like 6 AM to hang out with a bunch of fucking weirdo losers from three different parts of the world.And they do it.And it's important to offer them a bit of money.And that's what a lot of the Patreon money goes through, and I think it's really cool.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Huge thanks to everybody at SpeechDocs as well for listening to us and transcribing every word so faithfully and accurately.We've been really putting them to work here.And if you have a podcast and you feel like accessibility matters, you should get them or somebody on board.That’s SpeechDocs.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooh, I just want to speak to SpeechDocs exclusively for just a second.This won't make it into the show, or you could leave it at the end if you want to.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think it might.
• linklaughs
• linkBen Ainslie - But the last time I mentioned some of my like fantasy preferences, some of the SpeechDocs people just like shot back, a little a return salvo which I really enjoyed.And I just was wondering if the same nerds who listened and responded last time, I've been recently getting into Dan Abnett's work in the Warhammer 40k book,Hedvig laughsuniverse and I am loving it.And so, I'm just wondering--
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, my God.
• linkBen Ainslie - --if there's some Gregor Eisenhorn fans listening who can just rap with me about that.So, if you want to throw another little nerdy reference my way, SpeechDocs crew, I would be more than happy to because, man, those fucking Warhammer books go hard.I never knew.I never knew.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Our theme music has been written and performed by Drew Krapljanov, who’s a member of Ryan Beno and of Didion’s Bible.Thanks for listening.We will catch you next time.Because Language.
• linkBen Ainslie - Pew, pew, pew.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Pew, pew.Our pal Ellen from Grammar Table had a tweet about 'big dick energy'.A lot of people didn't know about it.
• linkBen Ainslie - As in-- when we say know about it, do you mean a familiarity with the phrase, full stop?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Right.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - A lot of people know that it's the quiet confidence that comes from apparently having a big dick, although we know that people without penises can have big dick energy as well.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, I've always found big dick energy to be a kind of aspect of toxic masculinity alongside the friendzone.I know it's the thing that tends to get used by women as anunintelligible 01:09:04towards men, which I think is probably given it like a bit of cover as like a social thing.But I've always found the idea to be born out of a pretty gross kind of machismo--
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - --Masculinity kind of space.Says the guy with the tiny penis.Sorry.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - Size doesn't matter.I was wondering if we could modify the expression.I think that big duck energy would be very good.Imagine that you're walking around with a big duck under your arm and you're like, "Yeah," and the duck is like, "Yeah."
• linkBen Ainslie - Almost like a weird sort of inexplicable kind of pimp persona.Is that what you're going for there?Like a person with a ginormous fluffy hat, who's just like, "I don't even need to explain this.I'm amazing."
• linkDaniel Midgley - I was trying to uncouple it from a gross sexual metaphor.So, I think the duckcrosstalk.
• linkBen Ainslie - But you know the sexual side of ducks though, right?Like it gets real bad real fast.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, I know, I know.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I don't think we need to modify it.I discovered when we were talking about it in my mind that I had already very early uncoupled it --
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mm.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I am not thinking about large penises.I had to go out of my way in my head to think about it.And then I was like, "Well, those two things don't seem to have to do with each other.So--"
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, but whenever I mention the phrase, I feel like I have to go on a tangent of reams and reams of explanation uncoupling it.
• linkBen Ainslie - I suspect, Daniel, if I may.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Do you think I'm overcompensating for something?
• linkBen Ainslie - I think perhaps Ex-Mo rears its ugly head, like a lifetime of like fairly puritanical attitude towards sex is dug in deep.
• linkDaniel Midgley - To be honest, getting rid of obscure language taboos about deity was kind of the easiest part.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ben laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - Especially as a linguist.
• linkBen Ainslie - Should we do a show?Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, what are we doing?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, okay, Hang on.Let--
• linkBen Ainslie - More questions?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let me just--
• linkBen Ainslie - More questions?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I have one more trivia about things.In order to go through the process, you have to prove that you are in a relationship, and have been for as long as you say you've been.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, is there some sort of creepy sex test?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, no, they want to see screenshots of direct messages you've sent.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ben laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughsOh, yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And they need to be obviously dated to the time when you say you started dating, and they need to be messages that--
• linkBen Ainslie - Confirm some kind of relationship?Right.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, they can't just be like, "Hey, can you buy more cheese?" They need to be like, "I love you.You might want to know me." So, you need to do text that.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, I've got to be honest.I would feel uncomfortable because there is some stuff that has been communicated between my partner and I that I don't need other people seeing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hmm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, yeah, I mean, obviously you can choose.You can just choose a few examples.But also you have to find messages.
• linkBen Ainslie - Cand you imagine the people whose job it is to read it?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But also, you need to find messages where you're like, "I love you," which, most of the text messages, you're like, "Oh, I'm running late."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Or, "You know, I really enjoyed our date last night and I don't know.I think this could be something more.Let's just see where this goes."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, like who texts-- Maybe people do.Anyway, we found somewhere where it was like, "I love you.Wee, wee."crosstalklaughs
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm not even comfortable with it now, a story that's like third hand.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, I am not.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Most of it is honestly like, "We need more milk."laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - Look, a lot of life, a lot of partnership boils down to like boring, procedural, life admin.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But anybody who sees that, should be like, "Yeah, that's for real."
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, right.That is the true marker.Have you been buying this person milk for like six years?That's marriage material.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's real.It's real.That person's a keeper.
• linkBen Ainslie - Even if you were just housemates all that time, but you were the person regularly buying those things, that's enough as far as I'm concerned.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription