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100 episodes
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Date created
2011/05/05
Latest episode
2026/10/11
Average duration
116 min.
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16 days
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A podcast about linguistics, the science of language.
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Check latest episodes from Because Language - a podcast about linguistics, the science of language. podcast
148: On the Mark (with Florence Hazrat)
2026/10/11
Commas, em dashes, apostrophes, and interrobangs. We use them for timing, for grammar, and even for social purposes. But these little marks didn't just arise overnight. Dr Florence Hazrat fills us in on the history and meaning of these symbols. Florence is the author of On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World.
Timestamps
00:00 Start
01:48 Intros and hot punctuation takes
(5:21) On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World
06:13 Patreon plug: It's OnlyFans for your brain
11:37 News: Irish citizenship test
17:35 News: Bonobo compositionality maybe not a thing
22:36 Side note: How does disconfirmation feel?
26:26 News: Analogies increase fidelity in language transmission
36:34 News: The Internet Archive is saving news footage
39:30 Related or Not: Theme from Camden
40:14 Related or Not 1: stick
44:32 Related or Not 2: vacation, vaccine, vacuum
46:10 Related or Not 3: Spot the pair
52:57 Interview with Florence Hazrat, author of On the Mark
55:09 Getting into punctuation
56:44 Punctuation is about prosody and…?
01:02:26 Misconceptions and playfulness in punctuation
01:04:45 Who were the heavy hitters in punctuation?
01:08:36 Punctuation as a democratising force
01:11:38 Hyphens and identity
01:14:59 English puts hyphens and spaces everywhere
01:20:14 How is digital communication changing punctuation?
01:23:57 Of dashes both em and en
01:30:33 Which punctuation marks have disappeared?
01:35:48 What punctuation should we be using, but don't?
01:38:15 Does punctuation help reading comprehension?
01:46:11 Conscious punctuation
01:49:19 Word of the Week: parachute
01:54:34 Word of the Week: Lake America
01:56:09 Word of the Week: doom trolling
02:05:44 Word of the Week: Naoero
02:06:46 Comment from Scott: Soo-ey! and Shakespeare
02:08:42 The Reads
Show notes
Why does French have circumflex letters?
https://thelanguagecloset.com/2022/05/21/french-circumflex-circonflexe/
Citizenship rules to be tightened with longer residency and language test
https://www.thejournal.ie/irish-citizenship-residency-changes-7154915-Sep2026/
White Australia policy | National Museum Australia
https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/white-australia-policy
Dictation test passages used in 1925 | National Archives of Australia
https://www.naa.gov.au/students-and-teachers/learning-resources/learning-resource-themes/society-and-culture/migration-and-multiculturalism/dictation-test-passages-used-1925
[PDF] Aspects of Racism in the Australian Context: Issues of Definition and Action
Minister for External Affairs Atlee Hunt, in a 1903 memo to his staff: "It is not desirable that [coloured] persons should be allowed to pass the test . . . and before putting it to anyone the Officer should be satisfied that he will fail. If he is considered likely to pass the test if put in English, it should be applied in some other language of which he is ignorant."
https://www7.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AUJlHRights/1994/9.pdf
Structure without semantics: no evidence for bonobo compositionality in Berthet et al. (2025)
https://peerj.com/articles/21651/
Holding, Thomas, Paul E. Smaldino, and Charlotte O. Brand. "Analogies Evolve by Increasing Transmission Fidelity in the Communication of Complex Information." Evolutionary Human Sciences 8 (2026): e32.
https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2026.10063.
TV News Search & Borrow | Internet Archive
https://archive.org/details/tv
Jethro Tull - Aqualung (Instrumental)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVcsLJ3mixQ
Catherine the Great was inoculated against smallpox in a risky experiment. It changed Russia's history
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-22/catherine-the-great-russian-empress-inoculation-thomas-dinsdale/101405692
On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World, by Florence Hazrat
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/florence-hazrat/on-the-mark/9781541606494/?lens=basic-books
(01:39:46) All over me
On the Mark: Apple Books link
https://books.apple.com/us/book/on-the-mark/id6755950089
Richard Artschwager, Exclamation Point (Yellow), 2001
http://www.dreamideamachine.com/?p=81116
Broken Swedish words (split by accidental spaces) breaking translations
https://forum.readlang.com/t/broken-swedish-words-split-by-accidental-spaces-breaking-translations/5256
Tear Drops and Roses: Persian Punctuation by Florence Hazrat
https://mindthegap1.substack.com/p/tear-drops-and-roses-persian-punctuation
Irony punctuation | Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation
Mind the Gap | Florence Hazrat on Sunstack
https://mindthegap1.substack.com
Florence Hazrat on Instagram (@thepunctuationlady)
https://www.instagram.com/thepunctuationlady/
Labor's Secret Harbour by-election loss is ominous
https://redflag.org.au/article/labors-secret-harbour-by-election-loss-is-ominous/
Political Parties, book by Duverger | Brittanica
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Political-Parties
Political parties : their organization and activity in the modern state, by Duverger, Maurice, 1917- | Internet Archive
https://archive.org/details/politicalparties0000duve/page/n9/mode/2up?q=parachuting
History of a concept: 'Parachute' candidates, an old electoral practice of politics taking precedence over roots
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/history/article/2022/06/17/history-of-a-concept-parachute-candidates-an-old-electoral-practice-of-politics-priming-over-roots_5987200_157.html
Parachute candidate | Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parachute_candidate
Trump signs order to rename Lake Ontario 'Lake America' amid Canada trade war
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/27/trump-canada-lake-america-ontario.html
Coxon tweet
https://x.com/hilbertspaess/status/2097476196791709843
Google engineer claims AI technology LaMDA is sentient
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-13/google-ai-lamda-sentient-engineer-blake-lemoine-says/101147222
OpenAI IPO will not happen in 2026 amid AI safety fears, Sam Altman says
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/12/openai-delays-ipo-sam-altman-ai-safety-concerns
Timnit Gebru tweet
https://x.com/timnitGebru/status/2098289939217846660
Dear AI Companies: Stop the "Doom Trolling"
https://calnewport.com/dear-ai-companies-stop-the-doom-trolling/
Cal Newport: Dear AI Companies: Stop the "Doom Trolling"
https://youtu.be/aHxwZEXHwps?si=7K5dLhu34NIRPRqm
The Thrill of Wanting AI to Destroy the World
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/09/ai-destroy-world-apocalypse/688575/
Nauru officially changes its name to Naoero
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/03/nauru-officially-changes-its-name-to-naoero
Shakespeare in the Bush
Bohannon, Laura (1971), from Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology, eds. James P. Spradley and David W. McCurdy Boston: Little Brown and Company.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060613143803/http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/~idris/Essays/Shakes_in_Bush.htm
List of typographical symbols and punctuation marks | Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_typographical_symbols_and_punctuation_marks
147: The Language Beat (with Michael Erard)
2026/09/23
Michael Erard has been covering language in major publications for a good long while. What has he learned, and what can linguistic communication take from his work? Michael sits down for a chat with Daniel and Hedvig to talk about his new book The Language Beat: Essays and Reporting on Language and Life.
Timestamps
00:00 Start
01:21 Getting the book together: Save your contracts!
04:22 Getting into lingcomm
06:38 Popular things v things you're interested in
10:48 Getting the Spidey sense
19:30 Public reactions and book tour insights
23:22 Lingcomm involves a little bit of pastoral care
26:55 How has the lingcomm landscape changed?
34:05 Persistent misunderstandings
39:48 Are we seeing a lingcomm explosion?
47:37 Are we doing any good?
57:07 Thanks and closing
146: Beyond Words (with Karen Stollznow)
2026/09/17
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
145: Face With Tears of Joy (live with Keith Houston and friends)
2026/09/03
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
144: Sociophonetics Deep Dive (with Jennifer Nycz, Lauren Hall-Lew, and Kelly Wright)
2026/08/22
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
143: How to Kill a Language (with Sophia Smith Galer)
2026/08/11
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
142: If This Be Magic (with Daniel Hahn)
2026/07/28
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
141: Why Q Needs U (with Danny Bate and Caitlin M. Green)
2026/07/17
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
140: These Strange New Minds (with Christopher Summerfield and Caitlin Green)
2026/06/30
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
139: Magpie Syntax (with Stephanie Mason)
2026/06/09
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
138: Pop-Up Gaeltacht (live with Laura Pakenham and friends)
2026/05/12
Wherever Irish speakers in the world get together, you can have a "pop-up Gaeltacht"! And we're having one on this episode. We've got author and TG4 presenter Laura Pakenham taking us through the history and orthography of this great and resilient language. Laura is the author of Irish: History and Culture Through Language.
Timestamps
00:00 Start
00:24 Introducing Laura Pakenham
10:12 About Laura: Getting the gig
15:01 Navigating "correct" usage v. common usage
21:05 Different Irish voices on TG4
21:56 Getting feedback from Gaeilge speakers
24:33 Gaeilge as it is today
30:15 Irish is fun and cool, not so much a duty anymore
37:55 On coming to Irish as a learner
41:30 Related or Not: Theme
42:49 Related or Not: JIG, GIGUE, and JOG
49:51 Related or Not: HEATH, HEATHER, and HEATHEN
56:31 Related or Not: SCRAP and SCRUPLES
01:01:10 Gaeilge orthography and phonology
01:08:37 Gaeilge words and idioms
01:13:36 Why are things often referred to as "she"?
01:15:43 Favourite Irish words?
01:17:40 Irish diaspora and its linguistic impact
01:21:30 Advice for language advocates
01:23:59 The reads
137: Are Trees Real? (with Yngwie Nielsen and Morten Christiansen)
2026/05/01
What goes on in our minds when we construct an utterance? Linguists often use syntax trees to represent the structure of sentences, but are they psychologically real? Yngwie Nielsen and Dr Morten Christiansen have found evidence for something else: we can recognise patterns in strings of words, even when they don't form coherent "treelets". They're giving us a walkthrough of their latest work.
Timestamps
00:00 Start
00:31 Introductions: Yngwie and Morten
05:19 Insights into linguistics communication
07:45 What are syntax trees?
09:13 Why linguists love syntax trees
14:15 Treelets vs chunks: Looking beyond hierarchical structure
17:46 Wanna and gonna: Words that cross treelet boundaries
22:43 How to prime someone
28:18 Priming in this experiment: People do recognise chunks
32:26 Are people just filling in the treelet blanks?
35:23 Were they accidentally smuggling in treelets?
38:47 Do we process both treelets and chunks?
42:23 DensiTrees: A way of representing fuzzy networks
44:01 What are we doing mentally when we make an utterance?
47:20 What is language for?
49:29 Grammatical glue: How do we connect chunks?
53:23 Being able to language is bonkers
56:30 Should we be studying language differently?
01:01:09 Wrap-up and goodbyes
136: These Languages Are Anchors (with Mary Walworth)
2026/04/25
What will happen to the languages of climate refugees? Dr Mary Walworth has been working with the small island community of Nusi in Papua New Guinea, which was recently featured in an episode of Pole to Pole with Will Smith. What's it like doing media for a large audience, and more importantly, how do we help speakers hold onto their language? Dr Walworth joins us for this episode.
Timestamps
00:00 Start
00:45 Intros
04:00 What's coming up on this episode
06:58 New patron shoutout and spruik
09:05 News: Air Canada CEO resigns over English communication
14:34 News: Banning foreign language election information in the UK
23:54 News: Can LLMs pass the Wug Test?
34:03 News: Does closing your eyes help you hear better?
39:48 Related or Not: Theme
40:23 Related or Not: GORGE, ENGORGE, and GORGEOUS
48:09 Related or Not: ANY and MANY
51:54 Related or Not: GUAVA, GUACAMOLE, GUARANÍ, GUARANÁ
01:00:20 Interview with Mary Walworth
01:45:52 Word of the Week: bimbofication
01:54:00 Word of the Week: glottophobia
01:55:50 Word of the Week: liveness check
01:57:54 Comment from Colin: CLAN and PLANTA
01:59:03 Comment from Lauren: crash blossoms
02:02:49 The Reads
02:08:09 Outtake
135: Linguistic Illusions (with Dan Parker)
2026/04/03
"More people have listened to this episode than you have." Why does this sentence look so right, but feel so wrong? When your grammar says one thing, but your brain says another, you may have found a linguistic illusion. We're talking to Dr Dan Parker, author of Linguistic Illusions: A Case Study on Agreement Attraction.
Video for this episode: https://youtu.be/_9BcmMZrH7s
Timestamps
Start: 0:00 Intros: 0:27 News: 6:30 Related or Not: 34:22 Interview with Dan Parker: 49:53 Words of the Week: 1:38:00 Comment: 1:54:16 The Reads: 1:58:19 Outtakes: 2:05:39
134: True Colour (with Kory Stamper)
2026/03/13
How do you define what blue is? What even IS colour? Turns out, the quest to define colours was happening along with a standardisation crisis and a dictionary crisis at the venerable Merriam-Webster. Lexicographer and author Kory Stamper tells us all about it, and about her new book True Color.
Timestamps
Start: 0:00 Intros: 1:17 News: 12:40 Related or Not: 33:34 Chat with Kory Stamper, author of True Color: 50:43 Words of the Week: 1:41:58 Comment from Lauretta: 2:04:57 The Reads: 2:08:14 Outtakes: 2:16:48
Podcast reviews
Read Because Language - a podcast about linguistics, the science of language. podcast reviews
Jennifer GK 2026/10/02
Love the podcast!
I started listening just over a year ago on episodes as far back as I could and was so bummed when I caught up! It’s such a great podcast that I have ...
W Nelly 2025/11/19
Excellent!
I’ve loved this podcast for a long time! So much fun
TimmyD253 2025/06/16
Juvenile Nonsense
I could barely make it through half an episode of this drivel. The host is embarrassingly uninformed and seems more worried about virtue signaling tha...
AAMC544 2024/10/11
I adore this podcast!
I teach linguistics and recommend it to my students who also love it! The Patreon community is fantastic! This is my nerd tribe. 🤓
Nati (nɑtɪ) 2024/08/14
Best Sci Coms on the Internet
Now that I am out of college but pre-grad school, I found it hard to keep up with the state of the field. I felt as if y’all were heaven sent when I s...
Jeffthemartin 2024/06/19
Off and on my favorite podcast
Because Language is the first podcast I ever fell in love with, and while others briefly supplant it as my favorite, I keep coming back to this gem. T...
EYEBALL HATRED 2024/04/30
Likable
It's good!
debs-wilmette 2024/02/20
Shed your pet peeves!
If you are weary of cringing at the inevitability of ever-evolving language, and if you want to cast off that over-worked nerve, this Podcast is for y...
ChrisLott 2023/01/31
Undeniably Excellent; Undeniably Infuriating
I listen/have listened to seemingly all the linguistics podcasts and BL is top-tier. It features a truly wide variety of topics, a pleasing blend of t...
Elspeth Wiggins 2021/05/20
This is my favourite podcast by far
The three co-hosts — two linguists, Daniel and Hedvig, and the far-from-everyman teacher, Ben — play off each other wonderfully, full of humor, self-...
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