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Because Language - a podcast about linguistics, the science of language.: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Daniel Midgley, Ben Ainslie, and Hedvig Skirgård
A podcast about linguistics, the science of language.
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- 3 days ago2h 1m
146: Beyond Words (with Karen Stollznow)
How do children learn language, and why can't other animals? Why are false friends between languages always naughty? And how is public perception of language changing? Dr Karen Stollznow is taking us through a tour of psycholinguistics, taboo language, and linguistic skepticism with her new book Beyond Words: How We Learn, Use, and Lose Language. We're also taking a look at Bitch: The Journey of a Word. Timestamps 00:00 Start 00:32 Intros: Do you use Y'ALL? 06:46 New patron shoutout 08:07 News: Strathfield Council trying to control shop signage 17:37 News: Claude introduces watermarking 25:43 News: Welsh joins the Star Wars club 29:30 Related or Not: Theme from Hugh 30:25 Related or Not 1: cute and acute 34:48 Related or Not 2: skip 42:22 Related or Not 3: tribe, tribute, & tributary 46:51 Karen Stollznow on psycholinguistics 50:36 Language and animal communication 53:37 Skepticism in linguistics 59:48 Getting a book done 01:02:09 The attraction of taboo words 01:08:18 Daddy diaries and child language acquisition 01:15:00 False friends 01:19:09 Best way to learn a language? 01:22:05 Public awareness of linguistics 01:26:58 Word of the Week: forever war 01:29:56 Word of the Week: aegyo 01:31:20 Word of the Week: meat proxy 01:33:46 Word of the Week: Cyberno de Bergerac 01:37:31 Comment: vague v ambiguous 01:39:24 Comment: Okay if languages die? 01:41:59 Comment: Sudoku pronunciation in Japanese 01:43:20 The Reads 01:56:02 Outtake: Hedvig watches an eclipse 02:00:18 Outtake: Glottle
- 2 weeks ago1h 33m
145: Face With Tears of Joy (live with Keith Houston and friends)
Emoji, once regarded as some kind of frivolous nonsense, have become an important way we communicate online. But how did these little pictures come to our devices? What is the Unicode Consortium, and how did they get involved? And who is the Levitating Suit Guy? Fear not; author Keith Houston is here to give us the whole story in front of a live audience. Keith is the author of Face With Tears of Joy: A Natural History of Emoji. Timestamps 00:00 Start 02:21 Introducing Keith Houston, author of Face With Tears of Joy 03:28 Put your top five emoji in chat 08:03 What's the state of emoji now? 10:11 How did the Unicode Consortium get involved? 22:30 The strange history of Levitating Suit Guy 27:37 The latest emoji in v17.0 30:12 Changes to some emoji 38:22 What gives an emoji staying power? 47:12 Related or Not: Theme by David 48:10 Related or Not 1: orchard and hoard 52:46 Related or Not 2: belle, bell, ball, & ball 59:01 Related or Not 3: Italian aceto (vinegar) & Spanish aceite (oil) 01:03:45 Why don't they use emoji on Reddit? 01:05:26 Are emoji now more acceptable in serious contexts? 01:08:34 Do speakers of some languages use emoji more? 01:13:00 Any languages where they just don't use emoji? 01:13:59 Does everyone call them "emoji"? 01:16:13 Sociolinguistic trends in emoji? 01:22:12 The reads: Which emoji is closest to your name? 01:33:06 Afterparty
- 4 weeks ago1h 8m
144: Sociophonetics Deep Dive (with Jennifer Nycz, Lauren Hall-Lew, and Kelly Wright)
Why don't we all sound the same? Are some accents easier to learn? And are there reasons for the differences in how people sound and sign, or is it just random? We use sound and sign to encode information about our age, place, gender, sexuality, and so much more. Sometimes we're not even aware of how we do it. But we're fixing that on this episode with Jennifer Nycz and Lauren Hall-Lew, editors of Sociophonetics: Implications for Phonological and Phonetic Theory. Timestamps 00:00 Start: Introducing Jennifer Nycz and Lauren-Hall Lew 01:57 What is sociophonetics? 03:01 What's in our own sociophonetic background? 10:10 Why is it always vowels, vowels, vowels? 13:03 Why don't we all just sound the same? 15:09 You can hallucinate accents by seeing a photo 16:00 Sound encodes gender and sexuality 20:57 Chronolects, Boomerlects, and GenX-lects 22:04 Tweens to teens: What to expect sociophonetically? 27:33 Are there reasons for sound variation and change? 34:16 Why does a community change faster than an individual? 38:37 Does media have an influence on accent? 42:17 How much are we consciously aware of? 44:52 Are some accents easier? 48:39 What are the sociophonetic hot spots? 50:54 Are American women more nasal? 52:09 Persistent misconceptions 54:49 Fight linguistic discrimination, or teach marginalised people to "pass"? 01:03:03 The sociophonetics of signed languages
- Aug 11, 20262h 16m
143: How to Kill a Language (with Sophia Smith Galer)
How does it feel to be isolated from a language and a culture that could have been yours? There are many paths to language loss, but there are also many ways back. Language revitalisation is now happening for communities and individuals. We're talking about it with journalist and lingToker Sophia Smith Galer, author of How to Kill a Language: Power, Resistance, and the Race to Save Our Words. Timestamps 00:00 Start 00:34 Intros: How are you "going"? 05:54 News: A font that can poison data for GenAI 13:51 News: A lost Golden Age of language in the Holocene 27:33 News: New language support for Netflix, Disney+ 33:59 Related or Not: Theme from Gordon 34:37 Related or Not: ramshackle 41:39 Related or Not: nap 48:57 Related or Not: adder, deer, natter, otter, hydra 54:12 Chat with Sophia Smith Galer: Her language background 01:00:31 The pain of separation from one's own language 01:05:01 Attacks on multicuturalism 01:07:34 Is all language death language murder? 01:09:41 The role of parents in language transmission 01:16:52 Factors influencing language survival 01:26:50 Will GenAI help or harm minority languages? 01:35:33 Challenging monoglossic language ideology 01:40:36 Sophia encourages linguistic curiosity 01:43:11 Responding to a review: Is it okay if languages die? 01:53:21 Word of the Week: slop zombie 01:55:29 Word of the Week: eternity leave 01:56:24 Word of the Week: spherical bastard 01:58:10 Word of the Week: the butter's penthouse 02:01:47 Word of the Week: Jimothy 02:04:42 Comments: Ingressive speech 02:08:33 The Reads 02:15:40 Outtakes: Hedvig's plant
- Jul 28, 20262h 2m
142: If This Be Magic (with Daniel Hahn)
Translating Shakespeare takes a knowledge of language, culture, and poetry — both in English and in the target language. There are tradeoffs and pitfalls, but a skilled translator can bring Shakespeare closer to our age, not just to another language. We're talking with translator Daniel Hahn, author of If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation. Also, we're answering listener questions. Send us yours! Timestamps 00:00 Start 00:21 Intros: Shakespearean insults 07:33 Pronouncing SUDOKU: Why so variable? 15:58 Ingressive speech 20:46 Nonplussed 26:59 Related or Not: Theme from Hugh 28:13 Related or Not: pooch, pouch, pocket, and poach 38:14 Related or Not: caddy and caddie 42:47 Related or Not: hemi-, demi-, and semi- 49:30 Chat with Daniel Hahn: Keeping everything but the words 52:51 Spanish as a language of translation 58:59 Translation closes the distance: Shakespeare in contemporary English 01:07:02 Poetic meter and when to break it 01:11:07 Punctuating the translation 01:16:08 Archaic words and the feel of Shakespeare 01:18:23 Hardest language to translate Skakespeare into? 01:20:43 Staying true to time and culture 01:26:05 Having fun 01:31:12 Monosyllables 01:34:32 The impact of GenAI on translation 01:37:38 Getting people to care about translation 01:40:37 Should multi-line highway word markings start near to us or start far? 01:47:48 Gender and the -ster suffix 01:56:12 Comment from Allyson: Soo-ee! 01:58:03 The Reads 02:02:01 Outtake
- Jul 17, 20262h 24m
141: Why Q Needs U (with Danny Bate and Caitlin M. Green)
Each letter in our Latin alphabet tells a story. But what about spaces? Or writing direction? Should we get rid of some letters, or could we even do with more? Here to answer all these questions is Dr Danny Bate, author of Why Q Needs U: A History of Our Letters and How We Use Them. Timestamps 00:00 Start 00:44 Intros: Special letters 05:46 News: Spanish okay at World Cup? 09:30 News: Forgetting is helpful in language acquisition 21:18 News: Bluey in Yolŋu 25:41 Related or Not theme by Jo 27:21 Related or Not: prodigy, prodigal, and prodigious 34:19 Related or Not: vice, device, divide 43:09 Related or Not: gauntlet and gaunt 49:48 Interview with Danny Bate, author of Why Q Needs U 50:16 About Danny's podcast: A Language I Love Is… 52:24 The Alphabet: greatest innovation since sexual reproduction 56:08 The case against boustrophedon 58:51 Letters flipped over time 01:02:40 Why are some letters more common than others? 01:06:14 Why does H get used in so many digraphs? 01:10:52 Thoughts on spelling reform 01:18:07 Why are L and R so squirrelly? 01:28:53 The evolution of spaces in written language 01:31:46 What letters can we get rid of? 01:35:15 Actually, no, we need a new letter 01:36:53 Communicating linguistic ideas to the public 01:44:02 Word of the Week: monoculture 01:53:43 Word of the Week: algae-TBQ agenda 02:00:15 Word of the Week: hobbylos 02:03:14 Word of the Week: tokenmaxxing 02:06:27 Word of the Week: Claudeonomics 02:11:21 The Reads 02:18:18 Outtakes: Back on our Bluey nonsense + On being a Dan
- Jun 30, 20262h 1m
140: These Strange New Minds (with Christopher Summerfield and Caitlin Green)
We created software that could generate human-like text output quickly and easily. Now we're dealing with the societal upheaval it's caused. What are the risks and rewards, and what can we learn about language from these large language models? Daniel — joined by Caitlin Green — has a chat with Dr Christopher Summerfield, author of These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means. Timestamps 00:00 Start 00:46 Intros: Generative A.I. concerns 04:15 Shout out to our patrons! 05:03 News: AP Style Guide defines COUPLE 10:35 News: Men do vocal fry more 14:59 News: Uptalk from 1890 16:01 News: Is Singlish up? 22:22 Related or Not: Bonkers Mélange editon, theme from Ste 23:41 Related or Not: population, discombobulate, bobbin 29:09 Related or Not: goggle, goo-goo, agog 36:09 Related or Not: once, ounce, pounce, lynx 41:55 Interview with Christopher Summerfield: Do you like A.I.? 44:21 Consequences of AI: Will we know nothing, or know everything? 47:03 Are LLMs just spicy autocorrect? 48:44 Are LLMs simply regurgitating their training data? 49:51 LLMs are getting better fast 52:33 On consciousness and intentionality 55:58 Do LLMs (or humans) understand? 58:58 The Chinese Room 01:01:00 Should we avoid anthropomorphising language around LLM behaviour? 01:04:02 Why we dismiss LLMs 01:07:26 Accelerationists, anti-hypers, and X-risk: Which are you? 01:09:49 Safety, privacy, and security 01:14:29 The magic wand of policy 01:20:18 Fixing the hallucination problem 01:27:36 Goals of the book 01:31:18 Word of the Week: liminal 01:39:59 Word of the Week: pink slime journalism 01:44:44 Word of the Week: waste colonialism 01:48:13 Quick words: hot-washing, eppy, shoulder surgfing, news-jacking, bio-break 01:51:37 Word of the Week: wario 01:55:02 The Reads 02:01:06 Outtake: That time when a siren went off in Hedvig's Parisian hotel, mid-recording Video for this episode: https://youtu.be/94SbeM0KpWw
- Jun 9, 20262h 47m
139: Magpie Syntax (with Stephanie Mason)
Australian magpies are even cleverer birds than we thought. New research from Dr Stephanie Mason shows that they do two language-like things we used to think only humans could do: learn their calls socially, and combine their calls in a way that looks a lot like syntax. So are we calling this language? If so, how are the linguists taking it? Stephanie joins us to talk about magpies, media, and the territoriality of linguists. Timestamps 00:00 Start 00:54 Intros: Your favourite bird 07:10 What's coming up: Magpies 09:34 Join us! Patreon spruikery 11:32 News: Jamaican MP shut down for speaking Jamaican in Parliament 19:35 News: Whale phonology 31:46 News: Unicode to include new genderless pronoun for Mandarin 36:37 News: China and the Rubio Workaround 38:16 Related or Not: New theme from Hugh! 40:05 Related or Not 1: SLAP, SMACK, and SWAT 45:45 Related or Not 2: SOUND 56:13 Related or Not 3: SPECK, SPECKLE, SPECTRE, and SPECTRUM 01:00:36 Talking about magpies with Stephanie Mason 01:03:38 About Australian magpies 01:06:17 The problem of anthropomorphism 01:15:21 What's the semantic content? 01:22:52 Linguists can be territorial about language 01:34:48 Social complexity drives new behaviours 01:45:19 Magpies learn their calls socially 01:49:42 Magpies combine their calls 01:58:44 Magpies learn calls across the lifespan 02:05:36 Finding those birds 02:08:10 Doing public engagement: Are metaphors actually helping? 02:17:26 Words of the Week: mog 02:24:54 Word of the Week: pied-à-terre 02:27:48 Word of the Week: dummymander 02:33:03 Word of the Week: Sooooo-ee! 02:39:22 Etymology of Guacamole 02:39:35 Comment: guacamole = testicle sauce? 02:41:28 The reads 02:46:28 Outtake
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A podcast about linguistics, the science of language.
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