1 - Our Favourite Things

540 turns

• linkBen Ainslie - Should we…I mean, should we do a show at some point, do we think?
• linkBen Ainslie - THEME 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.It's media observer, educator, and smart person Ben Ainslie.Hey, Ben.
• linkBen Ainslie - Hello.As an Australian, I feel deeply uncomfortable with any kind of laudatory statements.I'm just going to push through.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Get used to 'em.LAUGHTERAnd we've got linguist and newly minted PhD, Hedvig Skirgård.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Thank you!I don't know yet if I'm a doctor, so let's just hold on that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, you certainly smell minty, so…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What?
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's why I thought you might be newly minted.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, okay!LAUGHS
• linkBen Ainslie - It's all them lingonberries.You know how it is in "Sveden".
• linkDaniel Midgley - Is that what it is?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm actually wearing an Ariana Grande perfume.I don't know if that matters.
• linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHSHedvig?Honestly, honestly, every day that we do a show, I learn a new….You defy stereotyping so comprehensively.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah!I think I spent a lot of years of my life sort of needlessly rejecting feminine things.Like, I didn't wear pink, and whatever.
• linkBen Ainslie - I want to be abundantly clear:I am 100 percent not hating on Ariana Grande fragrances…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, no, no, I know.It surprised you, yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - …for I do not know them.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's lovely!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Is it by any chance called "Smell U, Next"?LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No.It's called like RiRi.No, not RiRi;that's Rhianna.It's called something — Ari!I think it's called Ari.Anyway…
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think you've got the Rianna smell too, don't you?You do, don't you.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No!I only have one!LAUGHS
• linkDaniel Midgley - A big thanks to all of our listeners who have shown such excitement and energy about our return.Hasn't everyone been great?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - I would like to offer a huge thank you to everyone who did our listener survey.Man, oh man!Did we get some really cool and interesting data from that?Principally:buckle up, fuckwits!There's some swearing coming your shit-ton way!'Cause everyone was like, swearing is fine!So fuckin' Ben Ainslie is fuckin' on the fuckin' swearing wagon.Whoo!
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm setting the entire podcast to "explicit".Thank you.Thank you, everyone.
• linkBen Ainslie - Good times.No, but seriously, a big thank you 'cause…if for no other reason than:I got a whole bunch of really great podcast recommendations.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh yeah, that too!Yeah.I thought it was really nice reading through.Also, people really liked…Ben, when you go off and talk about non-linguistic stuff, apparently people really like that, so, you know, this is going to be great!
• linkBen Ainslie - I also elected to see the three times that was mentioned, and inflate it to "everyone likes this!"
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yup.Yup.LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - So…we are back together after a break, during which a lot of stuff has happened.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, man.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So I think we need to talk about it.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So we're living in a moment now where there are two major tragedies combined.There's the emergence of Covid-19, and the murder of George Floyd and many people of colour by the police.And these two events are not entirely unrelated.Both of these events have been compounded by incompetent leadership, both affect people of color disproportionately.So the first thing I want to say is:we're really grateful for the uprising that we're seeing.We want to affirm that Black lives matter.That police have been given control over areas that they have no business being a part of.For example, you know, drug addiction:oh, let's let the police handle that.Homelessness:let's give it to the police.And most tragically, enforcing a discriminatory social order based on race.
• linkBen Ainslie - I mean, the only thing I'd add to that is just also that we are going to strive to be really aware that we're a White podcast, and just push forward, knowing that we exist in the position that we're in because of the lottery of birth, essentially.And we have always, but we will continue to always try and elevate voices of colour, queer voices, intersectional voices of all kinds.And we welcome people having a listen and maybe taking issue, or having something to say about the way we've gone about things, and as much as we do love to talk, we also really want to try and listen.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.I think that's really important, listening, because we are a podcast about language by three White people.It's not our place to lead this struggle, or take up space.I think it's good that we recognise our role, and listen when people critique what we do, but also to not step outside of that role and take on responsibility, or think that we have a space where we don't.There are things we can talk about.We can make silly jokes about language and talk about papers, but I can't certainly speak to the experiences of living in this world as a person of colour and I don't intend to.
• linkDaniel Midgley - There was a tweet by Anne Charity Hudley and we've had her on the show before talking about her book "We Do Language".And the tweet— I'm paraphrasing it —was something like "White people, what are you going to do?Don't just like this, tell me what you are going to do." So I decided to respond on Twitter, I took that as a challenge.I said:I am going to educate myself about my own privilege, about why the demilitarisation, why the defunding, and even the abolition of police is a good idea, and to keep learning and exercising humility about it.So that was one thing.The other thing that I said I was going to do was to feature Black voices and that includes Aboriginal voices.We are going to pass the mic whenever we can on Because Language.
• linkBen Ainslie - Mmm.A hundred percent.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So please hold us to that, let us know how we're doing, and don't let us forget.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Thank you.
• linkDaniel Midgley - With that in mind, let's go on to our news item.There were a lot of papers and a lot of stories and a lot of things going on, and I guess I've kind of handled that in other places.But the thing that I wanted to bring up in connection with our first show was the statement by the Linguistic Society of America on Racial Justice.Let me just read a bit:"The Linguistic Society of America asserts its collective support for Black members of our community— students, colleagues, family, friends, and neighbors —who are carrying an extraordinarily painful burden during these already distressing times.The pandemic has highlighted the structural anti-black violence and broader racial disparities endemic to our communities.Black lives are being lost at a disproportional rate, as important life outcomes for Black citizens continue to be diminished.In recent months and days we have seen murders of people of color by vigilante civilians and the police, and we have heard explicit devaluation of Black lives and legitimization of attacks against them from the highest levels.We have also seen, with rising horror, the active suppression of ongoing peaceful protests and threats of military deployment against dissenting citizens.The LSA stands opposed to oppression and injustice in all its forms, and to the weaponization of language and culture."
• linkBen Ainslie - For my money, I think the more interesting place is to actually look at some of that language and how it's being used, right?So the now-infamous Trump tweet, which got censored by Twitter under their new moderation laws and all that kind of stuff, like the:When the looting starts, the shooting starts.And also just the…for me, I mean, that's just explicitly violent.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's just…yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yep.
• linkBen Ainslie - There's absolutely no other possible way to construe that — and I don't think there's any intent to construe that in any other way, right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like, that's just actively very dangerous language.But the one that's just so clearly the synonym— for racists —for Black people is the word "thug".
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right?and I just wanted to — I just really wanted to drill down into that, because I think people who use "thug" in that way don't fully…I think we talk about dog whistling like:everyone who is dog whistling is kind of doing it deliberately.But I think there are people who are probably engaged in this language who are racists and who are using it racistly, who would say to themselves:Oh, I'm talking about anyone who sort of behaves in a certain way.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - But if you really were to just sort of, like, take a snapshot of that person's brain, that is a Black person in that picture.Right?Like, that's what's going on there.So when we see the word "thug" deployed, what it invariably means is:my idea of a dangerous Black person.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.Ben Zimmer did a really good article in…was it the Wall Street Journal?about the words, specifically the words "looting" and "thug".So that's worth checking out.We'll put a link on our blog, at becauselanguage.com.The statement continues:"As linguists, we need to continue to ask what we can do as individuals, programs, departments, and a discipline to bring about change.There is already important work in these directions and a clear need for more." And then they mention a couple of articles;one by Rickford and King about the jurors' reactions to the testimony of Rachel Jeantel, who was a speaker of African-American English in the Treyvon Martin case and how she was misunderstood because of prejudice.There's some work by Voigt and company:Language from Police Body Camera Footage Shows Racial Disparities in Officer Respect.And there's a lot of good work, and we need to have more."The LSA Statement on Race also makes the point that linguists must be active participants in creating an intellectually inclusive community.For linguists seeking to mentor and support students of color, listening to and respecting their experiences is crucial, as is acknowledging and addressing, rather than overlooking or denying, the role of the discipline of linguistics in the reproduction of racism."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.I think this is something that linguists don't like to think about, which is that prescriptivists often care about what linguists say and people who use words like "thug" — they sometimes ascribe maybe an inordinate amount of authority to academics and to linguists, especially White linguists.So it is actually a position of power that I don't feel comfortable with and I don't like.But it is true that when linguists say something like, you know, "Afro-American Vernacular English is a perfectly valid version of English", people do listen.And it's silly because as linguists, we just want to say:No, all language is okay, and don't you already know this?And why do I need to keep telling you this?
• linkBen Ainslie - I think the linguists need to pick up the bandanas, tie them around their faces, and start telling those people in employment interviews, it's not this way.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Knock it off.You know, linguistic discrimination is incredibly pervasive and it often flies under the radar.So I think as linguists, we are really well positioned to fight this kind of discrimination, and I think it is amenable to change.People do sort of change their minds a little bit, or at least they have to concede:Okay, well, language changes and it is normal for people to talk differently.And sign differently. Sorry for the omission. -DSo, on the show we're going to keep doing that.We're going to keep talking about linguistic discrimination, and if you want to have a whole podcast about it, you can listen to The Vocal Fries with Carrie Gillon and Megan Figueroa, who talk explicitly about linguistic discrimination on every episode.Just wanted to give them a mention.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Big ups!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I feel like we're all struggling at this moment to know what is the thing to do, and where our energies are best placed.And I personally having been, you know, just writing my thesis, I'm in this bubble and been quite disconnected, and at a loss, honestly, of what I should be doing in this moment.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mhm.
• linkBen Ainslie - I reckon as a podcast, my gambit here or my play is just, like, let's us do a whole bunch of the reading and the research and the educating that White people should be doing, and then send that to as many White people as possible, basically.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's a good point.We do have a platform and we should use it.But at the same time I just want to say that we also…I'm sure we have listeners in America.We probably have listeners, people of colour in America who are going to protest and who are engaged in this, and I would love to know what you think we should do.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes, please, please get in touch about our show, about what, like…use our platform!Right?It's here!What do you want us to say to people?
• linkDaniel Midgley - All right.Well, with that in mind, let's go on to the main part of our show.Ooo — we don't take a track.No longer do we take tracks!
• linkBen Ainslie - Trackless!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Trackless.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - GASPSOh, no — this means I can't just, you know, shove '90s pop down your throat.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You still can.
• linkBen Ainslie - And I can't come up with, like, late 2000s psy-trance bangers.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah!
• linkDaniel Midgley - And then I can't ignore them all and do something local.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - I mean, I suppose here we should probably come up with a suite of, like, stings and stabs and stuff, really, shouldn't we?to function as, like, structural conduits.
• linkBen Ainslie - STRUCTURAL CONDUIT MUSIC
• linkDaniel Midgley - So back when we were on a show called Talk the Talk, we used to interview loads of people about their books and their work.So to help us launch this episode, we put out the word to lots of our lingopod friends and linguist friends to tell us what some of their favorite things were about language, and boy, did we get a fantastic response!So many great people sent us so many great things.So let's get started, shall we?
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mhm!
• linkDaniel Midgley - First, we're going to hear from Nicole Holliday of the University of Pennsylvania.
• linkNICOLE HOLLIDAY - This is Nicole Holliday, now an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania.My favorite thing about language is that I can't think of anything that better captures fundamentally what it means to be a human being.Recently, the entrepreneur Elon Musk tweeted that he thought that human language would be obsolete in the next five years, and first it's laughable, but also I realize that that means that linguists need to do a much better job of explaining how language actually works for human beings.The reason that something like that is kind of a ridiculous statement is that language isn't just about communicating.You know, if we're thinking about a world that we're moving towards in which there is AI and robots who are capable of communicating fairly straightforward messages, I could see how someone would make that claim.But there's so much information that we provide via human language in the choices that we make and in the really subtle points of variation that we don't even understand well enough to encode in sort of computational systems.So when you hear me, you're hearing me talk right now, it's not just that you're processing the words that are coming out of my mouth— that's true; that's one thing that's happening —you're processing them in the context of every time you've heard them in the rest of your life.But you're also processing a lot of social information about me.So you hear my voice, you probably intuitively guess that I'm a woman.You probably make an assumption about my race, about my age, probably you get that I'm American, if you are also American.There's so much information that we need about each other and about how to be social beings in this world that's encoded in our language, and I find that sort of miraculous.The fact that, when we talk, we carry the entire stories of our lives with us, and that's part of what we're communicating when we're using language, too.And for that reason, I think natural language will never be obsolete and it's one of the things that I continuously find so fascinating about language itself, even after all these years of studying and working and doing research on it.
• linkBen Ainslie - I've got a couple of hot takes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Go for it.
• linkBen Ainslie - Straight out of the gate, I think we just officially now — Elon Musk, we can just refer to as a douche-trepreneur.LAUGHTERSecond of all, I would really really like to take a class from Professor Holliday because, man oh man, she's one of those teachers who clearly is just like, "You guys.You GUYS!LAUGHTERThis is so much cooler than you think it is!"
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, it's true that language is a lot more than bare communication.We really do carry the entirety…
• linkBen Ainslie - Bear?Bear communication?
• linkDaniel Midgley - LAUGHS and GROWLS
• linkBen Ainslie - Is that what we're going for here?
• linkDaniel Midgley - No.
• linkBen Ainslie - Because if that's the case — man!I'm going to stop trying.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I just thought that was really well put, and a really good point as well:I think we tend to think about language as this, like, information game, like just getting ideas from one head to another, and it's not just that.We are also communicating unconsciously and consciously about who we are, where we come from, and it's just so fascinating as well, what she says about how we're running all these processes all the time.You know, we're both decoding what she's saying, but then:where is she from?I was trying to pinpoint where in America she was from as well, but I couldn't.
• linkBen Ainslie - Nah, she just has like General Americano accent, I reckon.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ah— there are some things in there that I thought were a little bit distinct, but I can't really —augh!they're sort of slipping from my…it's like a dream!They're slipping from my mind.But for a moment, my brain was like:Oo!the way she did that fricative.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh!It's like that Antonio Banderas movie, where he's, like, captured by Vikings, and he can't understand their language…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah yeah yeah!What was it…um…
• linkBen Ainslie - And then every now and then and then, like, a little word comes through.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - The Thirteenth Warrior, whatever, yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes!That one!Yeah!Exactly!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, but it's slipping from me now, like a dream.But I think that was so well put.We do carry our identities and our experiences with us cumulatively through our lives, through our language.Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - All right.Let's go on to a chat that I had with Ben Zimmer.Ben Zimmer is a writer for The Wall Street Journal, and he's all over the language beat.So let's listen to Ben and me.
• linkBEN ZIMMER - Well, there's so much that one could say about the joys of language.One thing that I appreciate in studying language, writing about language is not just language itself and how cool it is, but the wonderful community of linguists and language lovers.You know, there are people who study language, people who write about language, people who podcast about language, and these days it's very easy to communicate and build things together.You know, from when I started contributing to Language Log back in the mid-aughts, you know, this is one thing that I noticed right away — this kind of community aspect of it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We have an amazing language community.We would be lost without the people who come on the show like yourself and like all our contributors and who help us put the word out there.
• linkBEN ZIMMER - Yeah.You know, I was thinking of a kind of a funny example of just this type of thing that has come up again recently, and that involves the word 'shitgibbon', which I know that you talked about on your old show.So this just strikes me as a great example of what I'm talking about.So you know, if you'll recall back in 2016, a British fellow on Twitter called Donald Trump a shitgibbon — in fact, it was a tiny-fingered Cheeto-faced ferret-wearing shitgibbon.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Wow.
• linkBEN ZIMMER - And then in 2017, an American politician from Pennsylvania used it, and then suddenly shitgibbon was everywhere.And I wrote about it, just sort of reacting to this word that people were using as an insult towards Trump.And so I wrote about it on the Strong Language blog, the sweary blog about swearing, and then I wrote about it for Slate, as well.And you know, I was interested in:where did the word come from, and why is it so appealing to use this kind of insult and similar ones?And the amazing thing is right away, I was able to find out where it came from because a guy got in touch with me named David Quantick, a British humor writer, who actually originated it back when he was writing for the NME, the music magazine from Britain back in the '80s and '90s.And then he went on to write for shows like Veep, and used that word shitgibbon.And so right away, just from talking about this online, I was able to find out exactly where it came from.But then even more amazingly, linguists started chiming in about my question about, well, why do we do this and why do we see this so often, where it's a one-syllable curse word followed by a funny two-syllable word?And you know, there are so many other examples, many that were being used towards Trump at the time, like you know:'cockwomble' and 'fucktrumpet' and all of these things.And so then there were linguists like Gretchen McCulloch and Taylor Jones who were writing about this very quickly, and you of course chimed in, as well.I know that you talked about it on your show, and you came up with a lovely table of frequencies for these different "shitgibbon compounds", as they came to be known.And you made an observation that having two of the same vowels is great, like 'twatwaffle' or 'fucktrumpet' or 'cockwomble'.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
• linkBen Ainslie - And then you know, that led to actual scholarly research on the topic.You know, there was a paper by phonologists looking at "Vowel Harmony and Shitgibbon Compounds".And then earlier this year, there was yet another scholarly paper by people who do psycholinguistics in the psychology department at Temple called "Building the Perfect Curse Word", and it would take this sort of algorithmic approach to understanding shitgibbon compounds.And so before you know it, there's an entire subfield of linguistics in shitgibbonology, and I just find that wonderful that that just sort of came together, just from people talking about this, and even though it's something that just seems kind of like a funny insult, it gives you all of these insights actually into how language works.
• linkDaniel Midgley - When it comes to human language productivity and creativity, you just sort of stand in awe, don't you?
• linkBEN ZIMMER - Yeah, it's incredible and I think that something like, you know, these shitgibbon compounds are a great example of that.It's just, you know, people will always find ways to innovate.They'll take the building blocks of language that they already have and create brand new ways of using them…using those building blocks.So suddenly, you get these bizarre compounds like 'douchecanoe', or whatever.And again, it might seem very frivolous, but when you start analyzing and looking at:how do we do this?How do we put these things together for various reasons?And it could be humorous, it could be a political purpose — which you know, we're still seeing.People still talk about this in terms of criticism of Trump, for instance.And so there are always all of these different aspects at work.And it's a joy for me just to observe it and bring it to people in the writing that I do.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ben, do you have a favorite shitgibbon compound?
• linkBEN ZIMMER - One that I remember liking at the time— again, I think it was used towards Trump —was 'wankpuffin' and I think that's a pretty good one.You know, there's 'turdweasel', 'dickbiscuit'…I mean, there's so many good ones.It's really hard to choose.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It is.It's like choosing your children.LAUGHTERBen Zimmer, thanks so much for jumping on the phone with me.How can people find out what you're doing?
• linkBEN ZIMMER - Well, you can follow me on Twitter, @bgzimmer.You can also find me at benzimmer.com, and look for my writings in the Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic and other places.
• linkDaniel Midgley - (to BEN and HEDVIG) Does anybody have any favorite shitgibbon compounds?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I asked Ste, and you know we had to postpone our…we were going to get married this summer, and we had to postpone it because of everything.But I got confirmation today that we are truly meant for each other, because he also has 'cockwomble' as his favourite.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah, there you go.See, I immediately looked at all of the low-scoring ones, thinking that there was an underdog who really needed a helping hand, and I've got to say 'jizzpiston' is really high up for me.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, yeah.For me, anything with biscuit.Fart biscuit, dick biscuit…anything with biscuit, it's just great.
• linkBen Ainslie - Biscuit is such a wonderful Australian catch-all.I use it all the time.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's move on to John McWhorter.He does the Lexicon Valley podcast, and he teaches linguistics at Columbia University.
• linkJOHN MCWHORTER - My favorite thing about language is its changeability, its inherent changeability.And so, there were people on the steppes of Ukraine about 6 to 8000 years ago who would have said something like:Gʷərēi owis, kʷesjo wl̥hnā ne ēst, eḱwōns espeḱet.And what that meant was:"There was a sheep on a hill that didn't have any wool and he saw horses." That's what it meant.If they wanted to say that, they would have said what I just said.That sentence— Gʷərēi owis, kʷesjo wl̥hnā ne ēst, eḱwōns espeḱet —gradually morphed bit by bit into "On a hill, a sheep which had no wool saw horses." That's how it ended up coming out on the windy island that we now know as England, just bit by bit.Cultural exchange with speakers of other languages had maybe a very little to do with the difference between the old sentence and the sentence now.And it wasn't a matter of slang changing.Almost completely, it was just a matter of the fact that language morphs sound by sound, suffix by suffix.It really is a majestic thing, it's just like the way cloud formations are always changing.And next thing you know, you go from "Gʷərēi owis, kʷesjo wl̥hnā ne ēst, eḱwōns espeḱet" to "On a hill, a sheep that didn't have any wool saw horses." To me, that is the most amazing thing about language:its changeability, and how that explains why we have so many different languages and dialects.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You know, a lot of people just hate language change.So, to say that that's your favorite thing…that's so linguist!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It is.
• linkBen Ainslie - #ThatsALinguist.Like, being able to study swear words, and "I love that stuff shifts."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yep!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I also…just maybe just an explainer for people who didn't catch all the things…what John McWhorter was saying.So, as far as I understand it, he's pronouncing a sentence in Proto Indo European.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mmm.About 7,000 years ago, probably?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, between 8 and 6000, we don't really know.He also says specifically steppes of Ukraine, which is, like you know, taking a stance in Proto Indo European homeland, but that's fine, that's fine!
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's the right stance, I think.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ohh…!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, even if it wasn't the homeland, it probably was also spoken there.
• linkBen Ainslie - Fight fight fight fight fight!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Or soon moved there, so you know, whatever.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.It was the mountain horsey peeps.
• linkBen Ainslie - Mountain horsey peeps, as Ben Ainslie likes to call them.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And what he said was a reconstructed sentence.So the reason why he specifically says "the sheep" and "the wool"and "the horses" are:these are some of the few words that we have been able to reconstruct.This is, like, one of the few sentences we can make!It doesn't mean that people then only talked about sheeps and horses and wool.It just means that it's one of the…
• linkBen Ainslie - Hey look, if you're a steppe people, like I'm sure you are talking about them quite a lot!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, fair enough, fair enough.And also, like, he's also taking another stance, which is:It sounded very Latin, the way he was pronouncing it.And I kind of enjoy that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.You know, when I do my Middle English voice, I don't know how it really sounded.I just do my best sort of Olde Accent.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, you do OP Shakespeare.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I try.Now I got a bunch of people who are mentioning very specific things.We've had the long view;now we're going to zoom in.Helping us is Carrie Gillon of the podcast The Vocal Fries.She does that along with Dr Megan Figueroa.
• linkCARRIE GILLON - Because Language!Welcome to existence.My name is Carrie Gillon.I'm the co-host of the Vocal Fries podcast, the podcast about linguistic discrimination.And I don't know how to choose what my favorite thing about language is, but I'm going to say:it's reduplication.So reduplication is where we copy a whole word or part of a word to create something new.A new meaning.So in English, we do this with like:Do you like him or do you LIKE like him?And in one of the languages that's nearest and dearest to my heart, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh or Squamish which is a Salish language spoken in southwest British Columbia, you can reduplicate part of the word to create the plural.So s-λan-ai̯ is 'woman', and s-λin-s-λan-ai̯ is 'women'.
• linkDaniel Midgley - (to BEN and HEDVIG) We bonded over Squamish, I have to say.
• linkBen Ainslie - Just being from that rainy, dreary part of the world.
• linkDaniel Midgley - There you have it.
• linkBen Ainslie - Reduplication is awesome.I adore it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's too bad you weren't on the Reduplication Reduplication show.That was fun.
• linkBen Ainslie - I know.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I also really like reduplication and the way it's used for sort of like iconicity in this case so like, if you say a woman more than once you can understand that, like:ooh that's like similar to like plural.You have more of the material in the word, so you have more of the thing!
• linkBen Ainslie - You have more of the women!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I really like that, and I'm also very impressed by her…laryngeals?No, sorry, laterals, likeλ,λsound.I can't probably do that.Good job.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I love reduplication, but I love ablaut reduplication, where you repeat a thing, but you modify the vowel.Like the way the bells always go "ding dong", they never go "dong ding".
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHSWhy don't they‽
• linkDaniel Midgley - We always say "splish splash, I was taking a bath." It's never "splash splish".It goes I-A-O, like splish splash splosh.But I have a story here.My oldest daughter, who's now three years old, we have a book — it's one of these books that they give you at the hospital?
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, "Baby Ways".It has a bit:This is the way the baby washes, splash splosh splish.And it does A-O-I!It doesn't follow the order.But interestingly, my daughter was trying to read the book.You know how they can't really read, but they know it?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - She said:"This is the way the baby has a bath, splish splash splosh." So she came up with the ablaut reduplication the way we do it, contrary to the input she was getting from the book.Isn't that cool?
• linkBen Ainslie - That is very cool.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That is cool.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's go on to Ryan.Ryan Paulson from Lexitecture.You know, there's an interview with Ryan and Amy that we did and it was really fun.So let's hear from him.
• linkRYAN PAULSON - Hi, everybody.My name's Ryan and I'm one half of Lexitecture, a podcast about etymology.That's word origins and histories.My co-host Amy couldn't be here at the moment, but she sends her most enthusiastically Scottish regards as well.We were thrilled to be asked to participate in the launch of Because Language.Huge congratulations, and welcome back to the word-nerd podcast world to Daniel, Hedvig and Ben.I think one of the biggest things I've learned and learned to love about language through doing research for our show and talking with other language podcast geeks is just how fluid language is, and always has been.I was quite the prescriptivist before I started, but the simple fact is that it's nearly impossible to get hung up on "mistakes" people make with language when you spend any time at all looking at how drastically and constantly English has changed over the centuries.For example, people get all giggly and snide over things like "nucular" or "asterix".What if people just started swapping other sounds and letters around willy nilly?You'd have people saying ridiculous things like "waps" and "hros", instead of "wasp" and "horse".People would count "ten, eleven, twelve, thriteen…".And it would be absolute chaos!Well the truth is that hross, wæps, and thriteen used to be absolutely correct, until a process called metathesis happened, and the sounds gradually got swapped around.Eventually the swapping stuck, and we've got the words we know and love today.So my advice to you is love the words you use, but love the words other people use too.Let go of the rules you love to cling to, and really jump in on the wild and crazy ride that is language evolution.And be sure to listen to all the Because Language you can while you're at it…maybe a little bit of Lexitecture or two if you've got time.Congratulations again, Daniel, Hedvig and Ben — we can't wait to hear what you've got in store for all of us.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Aw, lovely.
• linkBen Ainslie - That was very nice of him.He sounds better than we do!That was a very well put together little sting.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, that was…both like, what he said content wise, but as a person who's just now coming back to, like, talking on a show and I've sort of forgotten how to do all this, it was very well spoken!
• linkBen Ainslie - Like, we just sit around talking shit, and he's sitting there like, crafting some Jed Bartlet-esque, Toby Ziegler-written little perfect nugget!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah!It was really good!It was perfect.And it was a very good point, well made, and…yeah.Just great.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Metathesis is really cool.Here's one of my favorite metathesis bits.The word "curd", you know, like curds
• linkBen Ainslie - Like, when you make cheese.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, exactly.It is metathesis.Can you guess what word it's related to?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Crud?
• linkBen Ainslie - Please tell me crud.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's crud!
• linkBen Ainslie - YES!Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The two words are related!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wow.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And the same as task and tax, those are related as well, they're both a duty that you have.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, of course, yeah right!
• linkDaniel Midgley - I love metathesis.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - The /r/ thing…I've heard a theory that, you know, when you have an /r/ next to a vowel, you often r-colour the vowel.And then that can sort of like…
• linkBen Ainslie - Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa…back it up, dummy Ben time.You…hwat now?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You r-colour the vowel, so…
• linkBen Ainslie - You r-colour as in, like, to colour something?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You, you…while you're doing the vowel you're sort of like doing a bit of the /r/ at the same time — one of the /r/'s that you have available in your repertoire.
• linkBen Ainslie - Not to be confused with, like, r-COLLARing the vowel?Like in some sort of kinky sex dungeon way?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Eh, what?
• linkDaniel Midgley - No.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, I'm just making sure.Like, as the non-linguist, sometimes I feel like I have to really drill down for some of the other dummies out there like me.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah yeah yeah no, that's fair.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You're maybe working through your own issues there, Ben.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm just…!LAUGHTEROkay, fine — someone else might have said "like you put on a dog", but I don't like pets, okay?
• linkDaniel Midgley - No kink-shaming, no kink-shaming.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like you put on a treasured loved one who just wants to not make decisions for awhile.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You know, that's a really good point, because we've got "curd" and "thirteen" and "bird" and "horse" — those all have /r/'s.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, yeah.So the idea is that you start out by just saying the /r/ at the same time as you're doing the vowel, and then when you've got the /r/ sort of on top of the vowel— because /r/ is one of the few things you can do while you're doing a vowel —you then sort of forget if it was came before or after.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, so basically — yeah, okay, okay, I get you.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, it sort of hops on to the middle.It's like a trilobite in Hive.LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh my gosh, so that's why people say "modren" and "perscriptive".You know, instead of "prescriptive".
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, yeah, I think that's what's going on.
• linkBen Ainslie - So, it's kind of the difference between like say, "rock" could conceivably turn into "orc".Kind of thing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mmm ಠ_ಠ
• linkBen Ainslie - Right, like if we were to take…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mmm ಠ_ಠ
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mmm ಠ~ಠ
• linkBen Ainslie - No?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mmm ಠ~ಠ
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think it's…mmm ಠ_ಠLAUGHSWait, maybe it is!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Maybe!
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, isn't that the same thing?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Maybe it is!Maybe the idiot's onto something.
• linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHSGee, thanks, Hedvig!
• linkDaniel Midgley - I feel like the beginning of the word is a little different.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, that's what I was thinking, too, yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Hang on, hang on hang on hang on.Just for the sake of…the reason I gave that nonsense example is not…just because I'm stupid, but because Ellis is five now, which means he's learning how to read in school, which means one of the things they do now…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - …is talk about orcs?
• linkBen Ainslie - …with phonics is they give them nonsense words.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ah, yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right?They deliberately construct non-real words to just, like, see how the kids are going at, like, constructing the rules in their heads, kind of thing, about how different phonemes sound when you put them in different parts of the word and all that kind of stuff.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Aha.
• linkBen Ainslie - And…that's what I was doing.basically!
• linkDaniel Midgley - There you go.There you go.We are moving along!Thanks, Ryan.
• linkBen Ainslie - OKAY, FINE.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's go on to to Grant Barrett, who along with Martha Barnette, hosts the incredibly popular podcast A Way with Words.
• linkGRANT BARRETT - I'm Grant Barrett of A Way with Words, an American radio show and podcast about language.My favorite thing about language is polysemy.That is, that a word can have more than one meaning.For example, the word 'mango' can mean a fruit, but 'mango;, in parts of the United States along the Ohio River Valley, can also mean a green bell pepper.And the story of how it got that way is really interesting.It involves the British in India and hundreds of years of subjugation of those people, and it involves the British encountering strange fruit and the pickling techniques that were required to bring it back to the UK and picking techniques being used for other things like melons and cucumbers and of course peppers.And then those pickling techniques being brought over to the US and in the United States somehow that pickling technique became transferred by name to just one thing:to green bell peppers.And it stayed.And even now in Ohio and Kentucky and Indiana and other places, you will still find people who call green bell peppers mangoes!Congratulations to Because Language!I wish you all the best.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Thanks, Grant.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, he's so nice.
• linkDaniel Midgley - He's lovely.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - This reminded me of, in Samoan — I've told you about this before, right?Pisupu?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I don't remember.
• linkBen Ainslie - No.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Aaaa!!!Okay!It's my favorite thing!So, when…
• linkBen Ainslie - Wait, we've got a sting from Hedvig!Hedvig, what's your favorite language thing?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, but it's like the mango thing.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So, when canned food arrived in Sāmoa, the first, like, predominant canned food that arrived was pea soup.
• linkBen Ainslie - SHUDDERSWow, in the world of cans, that is a real bum steer.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Can be good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So the word for canned food became pisupo.The most prominent canned food became corned beef.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hm.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So then it shifted.So corned beef in Samoan is pisupo.
• linkDaniel Midgley - WHAT!!That's bananas!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Isn't that great?
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So if you're having dinner, and you're going to give me some corned beef, you'll say, Hey, have some pisupo.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah yeah yeah!That's still an entirely, you know, common way to refer to corned beef.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Meaning jumps!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah
• linkDaniel Midgley - Meaning jumps.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And the mango — I didn't know about the mango one, but that was a really fun one, too.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I didn't either.
• linkBen Ainslie - That makes…that would deeply weird me out if I was in that part of America, right?Like if I was just cruising through Ohio, and I went to a shop and I really wanted to make— I don't know —some gumbo or something else that needs a green bell pepper…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Capsicum.
• linkBen Ainslie - And there were and they were like, "Have this mango!"LAUGHTERI would be properly weirded out.I would feel like I was being punked.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You know, my English students used to complain about polysemy because every word meant like eight things, and it was hard to remember.But polysemy is great, because do you really want to have to memorise an entirely new word for every concept?
• linkBen Ainslie - Now is polysemy the same thing as senses?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
• linkBen Ainslie - So is all the different ways we can say "bank" the same thing?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, that is polysemy.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It just makes sense to pick up and use an existing word for a similar concept.
• linkBen Ainslie - 100 percent.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But you're right, Ben, that there's sort of two kinds, right?So, "bank", the bank of a river, and where you put your money are etymologially unrelated.
• linkBen Ainslie - There's like ten more, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yep.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, but then there's things that are actually related.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, I see what you mean, so like those two words came from totally different…they're like squid eyes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, exactly.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Actually, no.Bank and bank, the river bank and the money bank come from the same place;that is, a bench.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, you conducted your bank business on a bench, and then also a river bank resembles a bench.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, really?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Darn it!
• linkDaniel Midgley - They are the same.
• linkBen Ainslie - I would have thought that the river bank one would not have been the same.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'll tell you one that doesn't come from…these two words are unrelated:ear and hear.Not related.
• linkBen Ainslie - Wait, but they're different words.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They're not integral, though.But that is weird.
• linkDaniel Midgley - They look similar, they kind of relate to the same thing, but they're not related.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's weird.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ear and hear!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And because of regular sound correspondences, that's also really…so in Swedish, it's höra and öra.They're also similar.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah!I love when that happens, when you're just like:Clearly, aliens created the universe!Because there are these really weird parallels between different languages that shouldn't really be there!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, we've heard some super specific things that our friends love about language, but now let's get back on the wide view.We're going to talk to Jane Solomon, who wrote The Dictionary of Difficult Words.I loved that chat with her.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh!I read this so…like, this is on high rotation in my house.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Me, too!My daughter, 3 years old, says— this is at the dinner table —"Dad, I'm masticating my food!"
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, god.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, wow.That is 100 percent the child of a linguist.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Uh, yeah.Here's a chat I had with Jane.(to JANE SOLOMON) Tell me about what you love about language as a lexicographer, or just as a person who uses language.
• linkJANE SOLOMON - Well, right now I think my appreciation for language is very very based in this new experience I'm going through.I have a very young baby who doesn't speak yet, and I just am really appreciative of the fact that language helps us communicate, and take all the thoughts in our head and put them out in the world and make connections with other people, because right now I'm sort of interpreting cries and trying to figure out what they mean.So I'm really really excited for my baby to start using actual words.And so that's where I am with language right now, and this is a completely new experience for me.It's interesting, because I think that before I had a baby I was like:I'm not going to be able to handle all the crying.I'm going to find it really annoying.I'm going to get really angry when the baby cries, like…I don't know…I don't know how I'm going to deal with this, because I've never really been around infants before, not for a prolonged period.And it turns out, because I know that's his only way of communicating, I'm really appreciative when he cries.I'm like:oh, you're trying to tell me something!You're reminding me that I should feed you, or change you, or that you're tired, or all these things.So it's…yeah, even the language of crying is something that I'm new to, but I'm excited to start decoding.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think it's interesting that, as a lexicographer, someone who studies and catalogues words, your response to this question about your favorite thing about language is not really about words at all!Are you exploring some new frontier here, I think?
• linkJANE - Oh, yeah.I mean, I guess I could say my favorite thing about language is that it's better than crying.Right now, that just happens to be where I am right now.But I mean — yeah, just being able to take abstract thoughts in your head and and express them…that's huge!
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's magic!
• linkJANE - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's sorcery.
• linkJANE - And I can't wait to, like…right now, sort of trying to get at:what is the personality of this very very young human?I mean, I fully expected to not really fully enjoy having a small child around until we could have a conversation, but luckily it's been great so far.
• linkDaniel Midgley - (to BEN and HEDVIG) Jane Solomon there.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, I do feel for her.I mean, I'm really jazzed for her that she has found, like, a way to approach infantdom that isn't like a drill boring into your head.That's good for her.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - I will say this though:Man oh man, when they do start speaking — so much better!
• linkDaniel Midgley - I do.I enjoy kids who can talk.You know, somebody tweeted once:animals know how to do animalness, but human babies come out with a spot on their head that isn't done yetLAUGHTERand the communication skills of an alarm clock.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - LAUGHSYeah, you can say that about language:it is better than crying.
• linkBen Ainslie - That is such a great take away!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Better than crying.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And as we were saying — like Nicole earlier on the show was talking about how language is more than communication.It's also all this, like, unconscious indexing of your social identity and everything going on, but it is also information transfer, you know?But it is really really useful.I'm desperately trying to get my niece here that one of her first words is my name.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yes!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm working very hard on it.
• linkBen Ainslie - As in you're trying to make that happen, not it has happened.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Can't really force these things.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You'd be surprised!
• linkBen Ainslie - Daniel, that's fucking quitter talk!LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - Don't you listen to him, Hedvig!You give it a red hot go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So it's going okay.She is more on theabanamantrack…
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, boo.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - …but she's doinghed,hedi,het̪things, and…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, yeaaaah!
• linkBen Ainslie - Do you know what, I would almost take that as a win!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I am basically, yes.It's great.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Supplant those parents!
• linkBen Ainslie - But then, abdicate your responsibility completely!LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - Our next clip comes from Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch from Lingthusiasm.Great friends of the pod.
• linkGRETCHEN MCCULLOCH - Hi, I'm Gretchen McCulloch, author of Because Internet and co-host of Lingthusiasm.a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics.
• linkLAUREN GAWNE - And I'm Lauren Gawne, also co-host of Lingthusiasm.
• linkGRETCHEN - I'm really enthusiastic about how people are changing language online to communicate our emotions and intentions better with each other.
• linkLAUREN - And I'm really enthusiastic about all the bits of language we don't always notice, like how people's gestures are a really important part of communication.
• linkGRETCHEN - We were actually having a conversation about this a while back, and we realized that emoji and gestures have a lot of similarities.
• linkLAUREN - It's amazing how technology is making writing better by making it more like speaking to someone face to face by using things like emoji.
• linkGRETCHEN - Philosophers have been proposing ironic punctuation marks for over five centuries, and internet people have finally figured out how to make irony possible in writing.
• linkLAUREN - We got so excited by this idea that we did a whole analysis of how people use emoji, and we ended up writing a whole academic paper about our theory of emoji as digital gestures.
• linkGRETCHEN - And we also did a whole Lingthusiasm episode about it.
• linkLAUREN - Online language is so great, whether that's using emoji, chatting with long distance friends, or podcasts like this one.
• linkGRETCHEN - We hope you enjoy this brand new episode, and congrats on the shiny new name!
• linkDaniel Midgley - (to HEDVIG and BEN) Lauren and Gretchen from Lingthusiasm.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm sensing a real throughline here and I feel really comfortable saying this as the non-linguist on the show:Clearly, what all you linguists like is dicking around!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes?Was that ever in doubt?LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - I think some people probably come to this podcast thinking that, like, linguistics is a serious important field.And then, like, even a cursory listen to any of our shows will reveal some linguist being like:I made a graph about shitgibbon!I wrote an academic paper about irony marks!And I want to be clear:I don't think that's the bad stuff.I'm not knocking that.I'm just — I'm calling a spade a spade on this one.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think you're right.I think, however, that some things that look a bit silly can hide something more interesting and serious?
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, fine!Be all serious about it!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now remind me — what are our ways of communicating sarcasm?Was it the…
• linkBen Ainslie - We had the sarc mark.Ugh!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ugh.The tongue-out emoji?Was that what they're suggesting?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think just any emoji.
• linkBen Ainslie - I don't find the tongue out emoji denotes sarcasm.Do you guys find that?Like when you use it, it's not saying:I'm being sarcastic.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No,it's not sarcasm.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, it's more a gentler fire.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think what happened was that for decennia, and maybe hundreds of years, there was no way of really marking irony without, like, really knowing the other reader and being able to hear their voice and figure it out.And then they try to make one marker of irony and of tone in written language and they, you know…what was it…sarcasi-bang?
• linkDaniel Midgley - It was the reverse question mark.That was the one.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Reverse question mark.Yeah.But now that we have emojis, what's happened is we have so many more, and we can do more nuances.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So like, the difference between an upside down smiley and the tongue-out emoji.And not only are there more and they have different meaning, they're also changing around.So like, the tongue-out probably doesn't mean the same thing now that it did five years ago.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Don't forget also the slash s (/s) for sarcasm, and also the aLtErNaTiNg UpPeR aNd lOwEr CaSe.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, like Spongebob.Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, god.Oh nah, hard pass on that one for me.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Which I don't do.I don't do.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's…that's a no.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It is a really good point about just mediums, you know?That written and spoken language are very different things.They have different capabilities.Now that I…I'm the kind of person who likes to talk more than I like to write, and I've been trying to write my thesis and I'm like, why can't I just beam my things in my head to my supervisor?Why can't…why do I have to put it in words?
• linkBen Ainslie - When will they invent DownloadShitToYourBrain.com?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, exactly!
• linkBen Ainslie - And UploadShitFromYourBrain.com?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And my supervisor commented something on my thing, and I'm like, I know that!I just didn't write it!and like yeah.LAUGHTERSo how would they know?
• linkBen Ainslie - Just get inside my head!!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah!So now I really appreciate writing as well, because one of the great things about writing is that you can go back and change it afterwards, so I can go…you know, I can't go back in time and change what I said, but I can change what I put on a piece of paper, which is great textually.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's finish up our discussion with a chat between me and Ellen Jovin of Grammar Table.Remember her?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - She's the one that carts a table around…
• linkBen Ainslie - I think she 100 percent…it's not even close.She's my favorite guest of all time.A hundred percent.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We don't play favorites around here, but she's…
• linkBen Ainslie - I a hundred percent play favorites, and she's mine.
• linkDaniel Midgley - She's awesome.Let's hear what she's got.(to ELLEN JOVIN) So language does a lot for you, otherwise you wouldn't be taking a grammar table out there and soliciting questions from people that you meet.What is it about language that makes you do this?
• linkELLEN JOVIN - Well, I get a kick out of everything relating to words.So we could be talking about spelling, pronunciation, writing effectively, writing creatively, like anything…learning a language— I don't know, I just get such a kick out of all of that. So the process of concentrating on a question with a stranger that tickled their fancy —you know, because they're the ones that bring the content to me, I don't come up with quiz questions.Although I guess if people wanted that in the future, I could try it as a fun alternative.But anyway, they come with their own content, and then we concentrate on this thing that connects us, and it's just delightful.It warms my heart, it warms my spirit — I really miss it a lot right now!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hm.Because I noticed on Twitter, you're always cranking out these grammar surveys.What's one that tickled your fancy recently, that you noticed?
• linkELLEN - I just want to point out that they often don't have much to do with grammar, but they do have to do with words, so I like the one that I put up the other day about sounds people make, such as mmm or hmm, or whatever in conversation, where they think the other person is going to understand that sound the same way they do, and they don't.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh!
• linkELLEN - Like for instance, I have a sound…yes, so the listener gets totally confused.So I have a sound that I make, and I'm going to try it on you, if you don't mind.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Sure.
• linkELLEN - So if you're talking along, and I say "Hmm."FALLING INTONATION
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh!
• linkELLEN - Like that.Hmm!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh.
• linkELLEN - What does that mean to you?
• linkDaniel Midgley - That sounds like you slightly disagree with something that I said, or that it's new information.
• linkELLEN - LAUGHSInteresting!Because, see, if I disagree, I tend to be very verbal about it!So you're likely to have a lot more material than that!So usually, I think— I would need to audit myself very carefully with the objective help of a linguist —but I believe that when I say "Hmm", that normally I'm just kind of encouraging more information.I'm acknowledging…It's like an email receipt.I'm acknowledging receipt, and I'm waiting for more to happen.And I have found that…yeah, the interpretation doesn't seem to go my way sometimes.So I'm going to work on this.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That is interesting.Now, I think that if somebody is doing an encouraging thing, that would be "mhm" with intonation that goes up.And if you really disagree, then it would be like "mmm" (SLIGHTLY FALLING INTONATION).
• linkELLEN - Well, you do have a point, so maybe I do…maybe I do the other thing more.
• linkDaniel Midgley - This is just my feels.
• linkELLEN - But I have been told— and I won't name the teller of the information —I've been told that I sometimes say "Hmm" in a way that is unclear.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's one thing that I love about lang…'cause we're talking about the one thing we love about language.One thing that I just love about language is that it's so subtle.We are so sensitive to differences, or to even just mild differences in prosody or intonational contour, even if we're saying just something like "mmm".
• linkELLEN - Right.LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's amazing!
• linkELLEN - Yeah.Yeah, those are often really difficult too, those murky little things.You know?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkELLEN - Yeah.It's really…they take some work.Especially if you cross national borders.Then anything could happen!
• linkDaniel Midgley - So it sounds like what you're saying is that the thing about language you love is — there's a few things:that it brings people together to enjoy this thing that we do mutually…
• linkELLEN - Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Would that be it?
• linkELLEN - I think so, but also there's something about the concentration on a small detail that is therapeutic, I think.You know, this whole— I think I mentioned to you when I spoke to you before —just that not everyone's in, you know…feeling very agreeable about other people right now.There's a lot of conflict, I mean, there's a lot of conflict here, and there's something therapeutic about taking something very specific and examining it.I mean, I didn't get into any fist fights at all on the road.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Amazing.
• linkELLEN - I know!LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - They're not violent people, they're just…you know, the prescriptivists will just look at you snippily.
• linkELLEN - No arrests at all.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, good.
• linkELLEN - We did get the police in one…I had nothing to do with this, this was my husband Brant.He got the police in one city to go…to yell out "We love grammar!" And he taped that, which I think is pretty funny.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, very nice.
• linkELLEN - The grammar police!See?Now they can be the grammar police.LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - Of course they were!Of course.Ellen, how can people find out what you're doing?
• linkELLEN - I'm most active at the moment on @grammartable on Twitter.That's my handle.But then also increasingly I have things going on grammartable.com, including videos from some of our travels to the corners…all the corners of the US, except for Alaska and Hawaii, because we did not get there before the pandemic.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And it can remind you of the happier times.
• linkELLEN - I'm actually really enjoying that right now.After we talk, I'm going to go look at some footage.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Awesome.Ellen, thanks so much for talking with me today.
• linkELLEN - Thank you.
• linkDaniel Midgley - (to BEN and HEDVIG) Lovely.Ellen Jovin.
• linkBen Ainslie - SIGHSYeah, she is my fave.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - She did mention something that I think also came up in some of the other ones, which is this sort of like…the pragmatics things.So she talked about intonation in agreement sounds, and I just wanted to mention a study I think we talked about before.The study about HUH?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, yes.With Mark Dingemanse.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, Mark Dingemanse, Francisco Torreira, and Nick Enfield studied words that you use in order to get your interlocutor to repeat what they said.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And they looked at a bunch of languages, and in most of them there is a rising intonation, like HUH?But in some languages it actually falls, like Cha'palaa in Ecuador.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Which like Ellen was saying, when you when you switch language or something, something that you think is like entirely iconic— and like, of course it should be rising intonation! —can actually be the dramatic opposite.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, now it's time for our favourite things.I'll tell you my favourite thing about language.Well, for today, anyway.There are loads of little tiny differences in the way we talk.Differences in sounds, and words, and in the way we put words together.Just a thing like "This house needs to be painted" versus "This house needs painted", you know.Just a difference like that, or even just the U in a word like "favourite".But there's no difference so small that it won't be picked up and used as, like, some kind of social identifier.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mhm.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I mean, maybe that's the bad side of language, but it's also really cool that we have so much sensitivity to such tiny details.That's very special.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - My favorite thing about language is that it's just hell fun!Like, not necessarily the nerdy stuff that we do.I think that's slightly more bespoke field of interest, and certainly the more professional and comprehensively you construct your life around linguistics, as you two have, I would say the more bespoke that comes.But for me it's just like, fat chats are just real good, you know?
• linkDaniel MidgleyHedvig Skirgård - Fat chats?
• linkBen Ainslie - I just…yeah!You know, like just having fat chats.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, okay!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Having good conversations?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, basically!Yeah, like you just…you sit down, you talk or you write, or whichever sort of channel or channels, plural, of communication you want to engage in, and it's just good!Like, I just really like making people laugh, and without language, that would be super hard.Like, we'd be stuck with clowning.Ughh.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, slapstick.I bet that you're decent at slapchick.Slapstick.
• linkBen Ainslie - Don't get me wrong;there is nothing like a good pratfall, right?Like, someone falling on their ass is inherently hilarious to all humans universally, but if that's all we had…I mean, that's what French comedy looks like, and it's not fun.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, Hedvig.Your favorite thing?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, I thought about this, and I thought listening to all these people would make me realise what is my favorite thing, and I think I'm a little bit on— McWhorter and Ryan and a couple of people said this thing about variation and changeability. I find it fascinating that we are able to deal with so much variation. Like, every human, the way they speak, even when they speak the same language and the same dialect, will have different things in, like, the acoustic vibration that come out of their mouth will be a bit different. And our brains are just like: Fine, whatever! Like, I'll just entirely shift the way I understand you 200 Hz up or down. And that's just bonkers. And that's just the acoustics. Then there's like the particular words we choose and like, what different speakers will mean with particular words, and we just like accommodate all of that. And that's why it's so hard for computers to do this, because —trust me — we're so varied and we deal with this so well.In fact, we could probably deal with more variation.Like, English could easily be more varied than it is now.People are capable of so much variation, and that's the key to like why languages how diversified so much, because we're just so fine and chill with it.Our brains are fine with it, and that's just fascinating to me.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, we are very grateful to our friends Nicole Holliday, Ben Zimmer, John McWhorter, Carrie Gillon, Ryan Paulson, Grant Barrett, Jane Solomon, Lauren Gawne, Gretchen McCulloch, and Ellen Jovin for giving us their wonderful insights on what they love about language, and for welcoming us back to the podcast scene.Thanks, all.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Thank you.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - TRANSITION MUSIC
• linkBen Ainslie - All righty!Well, I think that means that it's…it's time.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's time?
• linkBen Ainslie - I think it's time.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's time.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's time.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You thought changing a name and a brand and a logo and an intro would change this, Ben?You really thought so?
• linkBen Ainslie - No, I, like…Do you know what?For just a second, yeah, I kind of did.LAUGHTERI kind of did.And yet here we are.And do you know the worst part, right?I was like, you know what?This will be a good opportunity to just allow me to drop this sort of, like, somewhat hammed-up hatred of Word of the Week.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Hammed up‽
• linkBen Ainslie - And then we did the questionnaire, and then everyone was just like:Ha ha!Sucked in, Ben!I love Word of the Week, and I love how much you hate it.And I was like:well, looks like that's here to stay.Yay!So yeah, like a person returning home to find that their house has been burned to the ground, we once again come to the smoking crater that is Word of the Week.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Our first Word of the Week is "non-optical allyship".
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I really like this one.
• linkBen Ainslie - I think I can infer what this is, based on what's been going on.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Go on.
• linkBen Ainslie - Basically, how to just be a active ally at the moment in the current context to people of colour specifically, and not just do it so that it looks like you are.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.Because there's a very real desire for me as a White person to be a "good White person".
• linkBen Ainslie - There is a fascinating— and we'll chuck it on the show notes page, I'm sure one of you to have probably come across it —titled "I Don't Know What to Do with My Good White Friends".
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mhm.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, I haven't.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'll send that through.So that's like an interesting one about it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What did they say?
• linkBen Ainslie - It's exactly the same thing.It's basically saying like:Great!You're not a dick.Now what?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I noticed this on a Twitter thread by Mireille Cassandra Harper.She says "For people who actively want to be support and be an ally right now, I have written a thread:10 Steps to Non-Optical Allyship.So looking like an ally, but not really being one, just to make yourself look good.Then she gives tips like • check in with people • deal with your privilege • read up on anti-racist works…I've put the thread up on our website, becauselanguage.com, and you can check that out.
• linkBen Ainslie - I like it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And we were talking about this on top of the show as well and yeah, I feel conflicted because I feel like I want to do…I want to do something good and like, everything you do when you do something good, I'm sure there's always, you know, a little bit that is like:I want to feel like I am a good person.I like to feel like I'm a good person.I don't want to be a bad person.I also don't want to burden…I don't think it's up to…it's not other people's jobs to educate me.I should be educating myself.At the same time, I want to know what is the best thing to do, and I don't think I'm the best person to know what to do.It's a conflicting time, but it's also like, it's a trivial problem, like my…what are…oh, words in English.My…
• linkBen Ainslie - What, you only speak four languages, Hedvig?Come on, get with the program!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Three, but…I also think that my worries of this kind aren't particularly important or interesting.Like me being, like:ooh, I don't know what to do as a white person!It's like:Okay, who cares.
• linkBen Ainslie - I think…look, no;I think that we need to answer that question.Right?Like, that's what our job is, right?Rather than to…and I'm not digging at all.Like, I agree with you 100 percent.I'm in a similar boat.Like, no one is interested in a white person going:~uh i dont know what to do~.But I think the "and then", or the "if this, then that" is basically like:Cool.So I'm gonna do a bunch of reading and come back with something, basically.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right?Instead of going~i dont know what to do~, like coming back and going:Based on heaps of reading that I've done, this by all accounts seems like a pretty solid thing that you could start doing.Kind of like the article that Daniel's sharing, or kind of like the one that I mentioned, right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like finding a bunch of those and then being like:Hey, I was having this question and then I found these resources, and I found them really helpful.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, so if you follow the thread, you will see some specific things to read.I'm going to give it a try.And not let this disappear.So many issues are like:a bad thing happened and then everything just moved on.I don't…I don't want this to move on.It's easy for me as a white person to treat this issue as remote, because it's one of many issues:race relations, nuclear war, you know…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - …climate change…
• linkDaniel Midgley - …the Pacific Garbage Patch.But people of colour do not have the luxury of letting this issue disappear.Every time they walk into a shop…
• linkBen Ainslie - You can't take your skin off.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Nope.You know.It's a thing.So yeah, I don't want this to move on.I want to sink into it.So I guess the education process must be ongoing.
• linkBen Ainslie - And we will do our level best to share all of the really good awesome resources, and also not let it drop off the radar.So if you're thinking to yourself,~Oh, I can't wait until everyone like, muh, just like stops having a big ol' fuckin' deal about this~we'll be like:Well, you should find a different podcast to listen to!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Sorry!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - A different world to live in.Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, please.Next one!Doomscrolling.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ohh — I want to take a guess.I don't feel anywhere near as confident, but I hope that I'm right.
• linkBen Ainslie - This is a good one.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Is it something that some of my family members are doing, where it's just like, you're just like reading about preppers and dystopian things constantly, and feeling paralysed?
• linkBen Ainslie - I think it's probably a little bit closer to, like, digital self-harm.So basically like:shit's fucked;I'm going to just scroll and scroll and scroll and get completely overwhelmed and sunken down by how fucked shit be.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You've both got it;it's just reading your social media feed, looking for news about the latest catastrophe, even though you know there's never going to be anything good in there because of the hellscape we are all living in now!Yay!
• linkBen Ainslie - Yay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The term burst onto the scene in March;that's when Google Trends caught it, and also there's the first Urban Dictionary entry but Twitter user Callamitys has the first instance on Twitter from October 2018.October 2018!
• linkBen Ainslie - There we go.Back in time.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And I have to say:Kid, you had no idea, past Callamitys.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah yeah yeah!You thought it was bad before!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, man.
• linkBen Ainslie - I like it because it sounds like a black metal album.
• linkDaniel Midgley - DOOOOMSCROLLING
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Hundred percent.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Last one!Nigel suggested this one:getting memed.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh!Is that when you get pulled out of your context, and made into a meme?
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, it doesn't.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - WHAT??
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, really?That was definitely going to be my guess — like, when some person who just got snapped, like, waiting at a bus stop becomes the poster child for, like, white privilege or something?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ah, no.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Or like, every performance of Nicolas Cage.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Surprisingly not.So I guess you could say that though the Karen that called the police on the bird watcher in Central Park…
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, so like the opposite of what we said — getting memed for the right reasons.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I guess she kind of did get memed.But in this case, in the usage that Nigel has pointed us to, you can get pwned, you can get rekt.Getting memed is getting rekt so hard that someone could make a meme about you.Ohh— he got memed! Your plight is relatable and yet somehow the best —the platonic ideal of getting rekt in the way that you got rekt.That's getting memed.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wow.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.That sounds brutal.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It does.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ah, that video.Yeah, sorry.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Were you doomscrolling?
• linkBen Ainslie - The bit that I shared on our socials about that was really really good, and if you guys didn't listen to it, you totally should.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It was.
• linkBen Ainslie - Cause it was pretty…like it was…like I said, linguistics adjacent.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.So those are our three Words of the Week:non-optical allyship, doomscrolling, and getting memed.Now ordinarily, this will be the place where we read people's reactions to the show, but we haven't got any yet, so we would love to hear them.We're also doing a Mailbag episode next;that's going to be a bonus episode, so get onto Patreon and get those questions to us.All right.It's…
• linkBen Ainslie - Let's do the reads.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's do the reads.
• linkBen Ainslie - "END BIT:Here's the bit we read at the end of the show.Feel free to put this in your own words!Ben:Send your reactions and ideas to us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon, and Patreon.Our handle is becauselangpod in all of those places.Or you can email us at hello@becauselanguage.com." Hello?You went with hello?Anyway, moving on.
• linkDaniel Midgley - What?What should I have gone with?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, hello's good!
• linkBen Ainslie - Just…okay!
• linkDaniel Midgley - What about hey?
• linkBen Ainslie - No no no, it's fine!Two v one!That's fine!If you like Because Language, and you want to help promote good language science podcasting, you can tell some friends about us, you can also leave us a review on your podcast app of choice, on Facebook, or on…wherever else you can leave a review.I don't know where all those places are.You find some.You leave a review, and then you show us where you left that crazy bespoke review, geocaching style.Under a waterfall in, like, Fiji somewhere for all I care.I love it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Give us a treasure map.Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - D&D GATEKEEPER VOICEYou will find my review when you answer me these questions three!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ugh!Why do I have you read these things?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So we're back in your podcast feed, but we are also going to be putting out bonus episodes.If you become a patron, you won't miss a single episode.You can sign up at patreon.com/becauselangpod.We have already got some wonderful patron Patreons.Kinda hard to do patron and Patreon…pei p pa p p p…We've got patrons!
• linkBen Ainslie - You are kicking the thoroughest goals ever right now.It is exceptional.LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Just read the list of people!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - :Yeah, okay!Reading names now!Ah!I actually practice-read this;I don't think that's going to help me!
• linkBen Ainslie - Really?I couldn't tell.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Shut up.
• linkDaniel Midgley - This is fun.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, so we've got some lovely people who have decided to give us money for doing this, which is, you know, unbelievable.Some of them are:Lyssa, Kate, Termy, Chris, Carolin, Anna, Helen, Christelle, Andy, Jack, Kristofer, Kate, Michael, Nasrin, Binh, Elías, Jen, Dustin, Kitty, Lord Mortis?, Larry, Whitney, Matt, Nigel, Damien, and Bob.Thank you, all of you, from my little heart.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Our music is written and performed by Drew Krapljanov, and you can hear him in at least two great Perth bands, Ryan Beno and Didion's Bible, maybe even more.Thanks for listening.We will catch you next time.Because Language.