Because Language – a podcast about linguistics, the science of language.

Who wrote the Oxford English Dictionary? Sure, James Murray had a very important role as editor, but a small army of volunteers submitted hundreds of thousands of words on slips of paper to get the project off the ground. What were their stories, and why did they have such a relentless sense of mission for the OED?

Dr Sarah Ogilvie is sharing her research into their lives and times, and it's startling and wondrous. She's a lexicographer and author of The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary.

What’s happening with signed language in Argentina? How are terms for gender changing in the Spanish language? And are Zoomers making work language more casual?

Listener and friend of the pod Diego Diaz has put together a terrific bunch of language news and words for our edification and enjoyment.

Our accents are great! They represent our origins, our languages, our community, and our identity. But too many of us feel like we can't speak with our authentic voice. Accent prejudice is real.

Linguist and author Dr Rob Drummond joins us to explain all about accent and accentism. He's the author of a new book You're All Talk.

And Dr Robbie Love is joining us with his research about how the word fuck is changing in the speech of British teens. Spicy!

Our patrons are joining us live to give us their news, words, and stories. That's right, it's a Potluck episode! What's a "girl dinner"? What's the other name of India? And how is AI helping translate an ancient language?

Thanks to all our great patrons, and especially those who joined us for this episode.

Women's bodies, women's occupations, women's experiences. So often in history, the discourse about women has been by men, about women. And that means that women's words have been lost.

Dr Jenni Nuttall has charted the lost history of women's words in her new book Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women's Words, and she joins us for this episode.

Listeners have once again sent us some great questions, and we have answers!

• Why do we TALK SHIT and not SPEAK SHIT?
• Do we KEEP OUT, or STAY OUT?
• Why are so many acronyms three letters long?
• How do we break young people out of the prescriptivist mindset?
• Isn’t “folk etymology” just… etymology?
• Can you think of any anagrams that are also synonyms?

Plus our favourite game, Related or Not!

Daniel Midgley, Ben Ainslie, and Hedvig Skirgård

For decades, forensic linguists have been pushing back on harmful language ideologies, and fighting for better representation for linguistic minorities in the legal domain. We're talking to three legendary linguists who have written the definitive record of how the discipline has developed in Australia.

Also: why do male characters get more dialogue in video games? And how can this situation improve? The authors of a pioneering new study share their insights.

How do we make the discipline of linguistics — and our world — a more just, diverse, and equitable place? Why does our personal history and personal perspective matter when doing science? How do we build community? And what happens if we do nothing?

This episode is really kind of a mini-conference. We found some new work from linguists we admire, so we put out the word to our patrons and piled into a room!

We're hearing work from Dr Aris Clemons, Dr Caitlin Green, and Dr Rikker Dockum on this episode.

Why does everyone say OOO! when they see someone fall down? Why do we say YUM when we feed a baby? And what's the deal with fillers like UM?

For this episode we're talking about non-lexical vocalisations with Dr Eleonora Beier and Dr Emily Hofstetter. 

Also: linguists are diving into Grambank, a database with detailed information about grammatical features in over 2,500 languages. With its release, we're talking to project leaders Dr Russell Gray and our own Dr Hedvig Skirgård.

Also, Hedvig gives us our yearly Eurovision language update. Ben's not here, so he won't complain.

How can you tell if a news story is intended to deceive? In one well-known case of journalistic deception, there were tells that required machine learning to trace. We’re talking to author and computational linguist Jack Grieve about his new book, The Language of Fake News.

We're going deep into our Mailbag, and we're going to answer all your questions.

• Why do we say "here you go" when we give something to someone?
• Why can we reduce something to /sʌmʔ/?
• The thing is is, there are two IS there. Why?
• Some contractions seem to've appeared, and they look strange in writing. What other ones're out there?

When language was innovated, what happened next? How did it change our abilities — and our responsibilities — to each other? Dr Nick Enfield shares ideas from his new book, Consequences of Language.

Plus: Have large language models (like GPT) disproven a key tenet of the innateness of language? Dr Morten Christiansen takes us through the implications for nativism and language learning.

Here’s an entire show, curated by one of our most prolific contributors — newly minted speechie PharaohKatt!

She’s got news. She’s got words. She tries to stump us on Related or Not.

She even teaches us how to roll our R’s. Wow.

But best of all, she answers all our questions about speech and language pathology.

For this special live LingFest23 episode, we’ll again be voting on tricky language issues, and our votes will be binding on all English users for all time because that’s how language works.

• If you had to walk 10 kilometres “there and back”, how far away is the place?
• How many holes does a straw have?
• And if “Floyd and the chickens are outside”, is Floyd also a chicken?

And many more!

We all have freedom of expression, but what are its limits — social and legal? And how have governments tried to curtail it? We’re talking through the implications of free speech with Dennis Baron. He’s the author of You Can’t Always Say What You Want: The Paradox of Free Speech.

The American Dialect Society Word of the Year has been chosen — and it’s a wonderful and terrible pick! Depending on who you’re talking to. In this episode, we’re talking about -USSY and all the words.

And we’re getting to our Mailbag, with our most intriguing research project ever: can you spot the pattern in the way Ben pronounces EITHER and NEITHER? Is there one?

In what was meant to be a casual chat, cognitive scientist Dr Mark Ellison answers galaxy-brain-level questions about how language works.

• Why aren't we more efficient with language?
• How do we know when something has gone wrong in a conversation?
• Why don't we just talk in a flat monotone all the time?
• Why do fairy tales start a certain way?
• Why is it so tiring to speak another language?

Fortunately, he helps us keep our eyes on the ball for this episode.

We're counting down our Words of the Year, as voted by you! We're joined by our friends and patrons, and they've brought us some words we missed. And we'll go through all the Words of the Year from dictionaries and language lovers, English and not.

Thanks to all our friends who joined us for this show, and to all our great patrons who have supported our work.

Video here: https://youtu.be/z1BmUixVNlY

ChatGPT has just landed. It can generate text that seems fluid, plausible, and (surprisingly) not total nonsense. It's got a lot of people wondering what's left for humans — and for the field of Natural Language Processing. Here to help us is computational linguist Daan van Esch.

Many expressions we use come from the nautical domain. But are they nautical? Are they really? We’ve got Chase Dalton from the US Naval History Podcast to shine a light on some of these expressions, and in some cases reveal the secret nautical origins of words we use every day.

US Naval History Podcast on Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts 

A chat with Dr Kelly Wright, who’s been working on… well, really a lot. Kelly is at the juncture of a lot of areas we’re keen on.

Oxford’s effort to document African-American English? She’s been there.

Doing lexicography with the American Dialect Society? She’s on it.

The LSA’s social media committee? She… was on it.

And she’s been looking into a new unexplored area: people’s ideas about their own language knowledge.

But it’s not all easy. And Kelly is here to tell us about her view of linguistics… from the struggle pile.

Just two words, but they do so much. But what exactly? Here to answer that question is Dr Isabelle Burke, who has studied yeah-no in depth. She’s also going to help us with these Mailbag questions.

• Why is LIKE so resilient?
• Why can we say “I very much enjoy…” but not “I much enjoy…” or “I very enjoy…”?
• When is a loanword not a loanword?
• Do word processors have a problem with singular THEY?
• Why doesn’t English have diacritics?

Yes, linguistics is all through the world of sci-fi, but science fiction has had a surprising impact on linguistic research as well. Dr Hannah Little is cataloguing the ways in a new book, and she joins us for this episode.

It’s Ben, Hedvig, and Daniel all together in the same place for the first time. We’re talking about the state of the show, the state of linguistics communication, and where we are after all these years.

Language isn’t just for communication — it’s fun. For over a hundred years, crosswords have served as entertainment, and even been blamed for society’s ills. Turns out crosswords are serious business.

Author and illustrator of Letters to Margaret and crossword enthusiast Hayley Gold takes us into the history and the discussions happening in the world of crosswords — the Crossworld.

You can buy Hayley’s book Letters to Margaret at this link: https://shop.lonesharkgames.com/collections/letters-to-margaret

In which we get together for a chat, talk about stuff we like, and — oh, yeah — answers a few questions from our great listeners.

• Other languages have a word for late morning, before noon. Why doesn’t English have one?
• Why is EW the sound some English speakers make when disgusted?
• Why can you have potatoes, but not broccolis?
• Who started calling the YouTube description the DOOBLEYDOO?
• Is it WHOA or WOAH?
• Why do we use capital i for the pronoun I?

Today, we communicate. But once, we didn’t. What had to happen in our brains to make communication possible? And why don’t other animals do it like we do? We talk to Dr Thom Scott-Phillips about his new work in the social and cognitive origins of communication.

And game creator Joshua Blackburn is going to test Daniel’s linguistic prowess with questions from the hottest game on Kickstarter, League of the Lexicon.

Our friends, listeners, and patrons give us so many great stories, news, and words, so for this live episode, we’re having them tell these language stories in their own words.

Thanks to PharaohKatt, Lord Mortis, Ariaflame, seejanecricket, Aristemo, O Tim, Ditte, Rodger, and Ben (not the host one).

Our listeners and patrons send in so many great ideas, stories, and words. For this episode, listener and prolific contributor Diego has put together an entire show for our edification.

• ASL may have changed to include copular BE
• What’s going on with French-only laws in Quebec?
• Why is an Indian airport broadcasting covid information in Sanskrit?
• And more.

Everyone’s favourite tabletop grammarian is back! It’s Ellen Jovin, proprietor of the Grammar Table. She dispenses grammar advice around New York City and the world, and now she’s written a book about her grammar adventures. Ellen is the author of Rebel With a Clause, and she joins us for this big episode.

It’s crude. It’s rude. And it’s a lot of fun. Slang has been with us for as long as people didn’t want others to understand what they were about. But what exactly is it? And has the nature of slang changed in our internet age?

Daniel is talking to eminent slang lexicographer Jonathon Green on this episode of Because Language.

Language titan Tiger Webb is helping us with our voluminous Mailbag. Hedvig is giving her annual Eurovision language roundup. And we’re sorting through the lexicon of the 2022 Australian election.

• Is MAYBE a compound word? What about ANOTHER, or GARBAGE?
• Are GONNA and WANNA portmanteaus?
• What does it take to be a linguist?

How is language like a game of charades? According to a new book, quite a lot. Charades players and language users improvise and work together to create meaning in a situation, and they get better at it as they reuse elements and build up patterns.

Drs Morten Christiansen and Nick Chater explain their vision of language to Daniel and Hedvig on this episode of Because Language.

We had the pleasure of an interview with two up-and-coming linguists, wanting to find out more about the show and linguistic communication. It was such a fun chat that we wanted to share it with you. Here's Daniel and Hedvig with Kitty Liu and Romany Amber.

Part of this chat also appears in magazine form (along with a lot of other really good articles) : https://issuu.com/u-lingua/docs/issue_8_forweb 

Thanks to Kitty and Romany for thinking of us, and thanks to U-Lingua for letting us make this audio public.              

Linguistics is what we all love, but how do we make it pay? Turns out there are more ways than you might have thought of, and a new book is here to help. Dr Anna Marie Trester joins Daniel for an uplifting and hopeful chat.

And how do we make the online experience better for Blind people? Friend of the pod Ellen is here with some do’s and some do-not-do’s.

Lingcomm legend Mignon Fogarty (Grammar Girl) joins us to answer all the questions in our Mailbag! And we have to ask her about National Grammar Day. How do we bring out descriptive grammar, and tone down the policing?

• Why do some people say “She text me”?
• Why are some people convinced it’s the Flinstones and not the Flintstones?
• Are some people saying “I finished mines”?
• Is technology making us forget how to spell and write?
• And why does “going to Kong Kong” have a naughty meaning in Korean?

Anacostia is a rapidly gentrifying suburb in Washington DC, and as Anacostia changes, so does the language. How do the original Black residents use language to establish their cred? What about the language of the new Black gentrifiers?

Dr Jessi Grieser has been listening. She’s the author of The Black Side of the River, and she joins Daniel for a chat.

Every Linguistics 101 student knows about HP Grice and his famous Maxims. They state that dialogue is usually cooperative — and when it doesn't appear to be, they explain how we manage to work out meaning anyway.

But linguists are questioning the applicability and universality of these rules. Is it time for a reappraisal of Grice? We're joined by Rikker Dockum on this episode of Because Language.

Can dictionaries create a more fair world? One language observer sees that dictionaries, far from being a neutral chronicle of language, are capable of promoting social justice.

Daniel speaks with Dr Rebecca Shapiro, author of Fixing Babel: An Historical Anthology of Applied English Lexicography.

The Words of the Year are out! And we’re talking about ’em.

We’re answering all the questions in our voluminous Mailbag.

• We have here, there, and where. We also have that and what. Was there ever a hat? Why are we friends with someone? Is the distribution of emoji Zipfian? If you study linguistics — the science of language — are you a STEM major?

And Hedvig springs a game on us.

Our listeners have voted, and here are all the words! Which were our top Words of the Week? Which were the worst? And what did all the dictionary people pick?

We’re joined by our very special guest (and lingopod pal) Dr Lauren Gawne for this very cheugy episode of Because Language.

Our friends and listeners bring us lots of great stories, questions, and words. So for this episode, we've invited them to present them themselves! All patrons have been invited to join us for this live episode, and many have brought pets.

Also, Dr Hadas Kotek has examined the sentences used in linguistic textbooks and examples. How are people represented in our discipline?

The sciences are facing a replicability crisis. Some landmark studies were once considered settled, but then failed when they were retested. So have any linguistic experiments been toppled? And how do we fix this problem?

Dr Martine Grice and Dr Bodo Winter have contributed to a special issue of Linguistics, and they join us for this fun episode.

Here to help us answer our voluminous Mailbag is the tireless Dr Caitlin Green, Vice Cancellor of Caitlin University. Among our questions:

• NON-BINARY or NONBINARY?
• What’s behind coffee names?
• Why is there an L in WOULD?
• Could swearing get in the way of persuasion?
• When is it time to stop supporting a minority language?
• What’s with the D in TIDDIES?
• Fee fi fo… fun? Why doesn’t it rhyme with ENGLISHMAN?
• Where does TUCKER come from?

Dialect is a role-playing game about language and how it dies. Over the course of a game, players form an isolated community, create a private language, and watch it fade away as the community’s isolation is breached.

We’re very pleased and honoured to play a game of Dialect, with game creator Hakan Seyalıoğlu of Thorny Games leading us through it.

You probably communicate with your friends using media references all the time. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But why do we include media references, when we could just talk? Turns out it has a lot to do with identity, building social relationships, and communication — all the stuff that language normally does.

We’re having a media-heavy discussion with Dr Sylvia Sierra about her book Millennials Talking Media: Creating Intertextual Identities in Everyday Conversation.

This is the second of a two-parter on generativism, the linguistic school of thought originated by Noam Chomsky. This time, it's from the perspective of early-career researchers. How is generativism relevant to them, and how do they regard its claims?

We ask:

• What importance does linguistic theory have on day-to-day research?
• How does generativism relate to nativism, the idea that at least some language is innate?
• Is there a conflict between generativism and functionalism today?
• What's the next step in the generative enterprise?

We’re doing a deep dive into generativism, the linguistic school of thought championed by Noam Chomsky. It’s had an enormous impact on the direction of linguistics, and even those who disagree with the generative programme will be at least somewhat conversant with its claims and the debate around it. Here, we’ll try to answer questions such as:

• What is generativism, and what are its claims?
• What does generativism help you to do in linguistics?
• What is the relationship to nativism, the idea that some aspects language are inborn?
• How does generativism relate to functionalism?
• What should the next generation of generative linguists keep in mind?

The Because Language team are talking through some of the most interesting research around, and you get to listen!

• Valuable medical information gets lost when Indigenous languages are wiped out
• When it comes to learning languages, multilinguals have the edge over bilinguals
• A generativist argues that languages don't adapt to their environment. What's behind this?
• And it's iconicity turned up to 11: some experiments that explore how language began.

Linguistics as a discipline throws up challenges to Indigenous linguists. At the same time, they're the ones called upon to fix it. It can't stay like this. How do we make linguistics a safe place to work?

Daniel, Hedvig, and very special co-host Ayesha Marshall are having a yarn with Lesley Woods and Dr Alice Gaby about their work in changing linguistics for the better.

OzCLO is the Australian Computational and Linguistic Olympiad. It gets students together to compete and solve linguistic problems. It’s also a gateway to further linguistic study.

We’ve brought some of the winning students to compete in a linguistic quiz with Ben and Hedvig. Will it go well for them?

All it took was a tweet. Last week, linguists refocused their attention on a paper about humidity and tone. Was it bad linguistics? Environmental determinism? The reaction said a lot about linguistics and the nature of linguistic communication in the digital age.

What we call sometimes Chinese is really a gigantic family of languages. They’re somewhat divided in mutual intelligibility, and somewhat united in their writing system. How are they different, and how are they maintaining themselves? Two Chinese researchers, Wu Mei-Shin and Ye Jingting, join us.

And what’s going on in the Cantonese lingopod world? We’re joined by Israel Lai of Rhapsody in Lingo.

Words of the Week are coming out of the woodwork, and who better to work through them with us than Grant Barrett of A Way with Words? Wowee.

Our Mailbag is once again full of questions, and podcasting luminary Helen Zaltzman is here to help us answer them!

• Why is the raspberry sound (PBTPBBBBT) not a speech sound in any language? Or is it?
• How can sounds in a language change so much over time?
• Am I BURNED OUT? Or BURNT OUT?
• Why are they called metaphysicians and not metaphysicists?
• What can we call something besides LAME?
• Why is AMPHI- so infrequently used in English?

Blog post with show notes: http://becauselanguage.com/29-cultish/

Support the show on Patreon: http://patreon.com/join/becauselangpod/

Language helps us build and maintain social relationships. Cults — however we define them — exploit this function and subvert it for their own ends. Amanda Montell is the author of the new book Cultish, and she joins us for this show.

And researcher Jared Holt explains why QAnon conspiracy catch phrases seem to be dropping off in popularity from the mainstream web.

Show notes: http://becauselanguage.com/28-the-cutting-edge/

Become a patron and support the show: http://patreon.com/join/becauselangpod/

We're taking over Pint of Science (or are they taking over us?) for this episode! Three researchers are presenting their work in language, and they'll also tell us what they're learning about public science communication.

Blog post with show notes and video episode: http://becauselanguage.com/27-its-all-semantics/

Become a patron yourself:  http://patreon.com/join/becauselangpod/

Are fish wet? What is bi-weekly? And which Monday is next Monday? We’re solving some of the thorniest problems in semantics by voting, because that’s how language works! 👍

Our great Patreon patrons join us for this episode, along with Christy Filipich on Auslan interpretation. Part of #LingFest.

It joins, it divides. It’s disappearing in some places, but it’s stronger than ever in others. For this episode, we’re talking to Professor Pardis Mahdavi, author of Hyphen, an exploration of identity and self as it concerns this confounding little mark.

Who listens to the show more closely than anyone (except possibly Daniel)? It's Maya Klein, who transcribes every word we say in excruciating detail. What goes into the process of transcription, and is a word-for-word approach really the best? And what quirks and habits do we have on the show?

Maya roasts us on this episode of Because Language.

For many students, university opens up new frontiers of learning — and new ways to be marginalised for their language use. A new book explores the problem of linguistic discrimination in higher education, and how to work toward fixing it.

Also: Danish presents an unusual challenge for those who try to learn it — even babies. Why is Danish like this, and what does it tell us about language?

We're tackling these Mailbag questions with the help of our special guest and star of TikTok, the Layman's Linguist!

• Where do they say CHUBE instead of TUBE?
• When did contractions come into English, and why don't characters in period dramas use them?
• Did Hebrew displace Yiddish when it was revitalised?
• Do bilingual children have delays in syntax?
• When did the word APOLOGY move from a defence to an expression of contrition?
• Did linguistics affect your religious faith?

What’s a corpsicle? How old is the word hyperspace? Who was the first writer to use the term warp drive?

These and many other terms can be found in the landmark work The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, and with us is the editor, lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower.

There's so much news and research coming out, we can hardly address it all! But we're giving it a try on this episode of Little Words Newsblast Journal Club.

• Uzbek is romanising
• Honesty / certainty has a prosodic profile
• People with "gay-sounding" voices anticipate rejection and discrimination
• Language patterns emerge in protactile communities
• Gesture shows patterns

Kamala Harris is the first woman — and woman of colour — to be Vice President of the United States. In the campaign, she had to pull off a tricky task: stay true to her voice and multiple aspects of her identity by employing features of African-American English that would resonate with Black voters, but that wouldn’t alienate white voters. How did she do it?

Dr Nicole Holliday joins Ben, Hedvig, and Daniel on this episode of Because Language.

More great questions from our Mailbag!

• How did we get from SUSS (suspect) to SUSS OUT (find out)?
• Is the J in JORTS part of a portmanteau, or a real live prefix?
• Why do PEEP, PEEK, and PEER resemble each other?
• Which acronym etymologies aren't bunk?
• Why do we add a SCHM- to words to signify derision?
• Are Mormon missionaries supernaturally good at learning languages?

There's a new show on Netflix, and it's The History of Swearing, featuring Nicolas Cage. Backing him up is a team of researchers, comedians — and one of our favourite lexicographers, Kory Stamper.

Kory tells us all about the show on this episode of Because Language.

On this momentous episode, we look back on all the words that made our year. Like, all of them. Including some from other languages.

Many words were discussed in the context of the annual vote of the American Dialect Society, but the greatest were voted on by you, the listeners. Ready? Let’s talk words!

Our Mailbag is at capacity! Time to get to these questions.

• We have pronouns and proverbs. So why don’t we have proadjectives and proadverbs?
• Is it on accident, or by accident?
• What’s the past tense of speedrun?
• When has a loanword become just another word?
• Why do we say we’re going ham?
• Why do people pronounce dynasty differently?
• When we talk about accents, why is so much of the discussion about vowels?

If you love language, and you also love role-playing games with a sci-fi flair, then you're going to want to check out the new game Xenolanguage. It allows players to make first contact and decipher alien messages while working through their tangled personal relationships.

Kathryn Hymes of Thorny Games joins us for this episode.

Schools are banning words and policing language. It may be a well-meaning attempt to encourage good language habits, but it also perpetuates troubling language ideologies that may be harming the very students that schools are committed to educate.

Linguist Ian Cushing tells us about his findings.

The definition of white supremacy: is it expanding, or are we just getting better at recognising it and its reach? How does white supremacy show itself in language and in linguistics? Kelly Wright talks about her work in sociolinguistics, and how we all can do better.

The questions keep coming! Let’s answer them.

• Why is “Live Laugh Love” in that order?
• Why do we talk about “getting out the vote”?
• Why is the L sound creeping into some words?
• What can computer languages tell us about human languages?
• Is there a word for turning a label into an insult, like Dumbocrats or Repuglicans?

Aboriginal English has been around a long while, but linguists have not taken the opportunity to really listen to the voices of Aboriginal people.

Two researchers are changing that. They're gathering stories to find out what Aboriginal English is like, and how it's changing. Daniel sits down with them for a wicked long yarn on this episode of Because Language.

These cute critters, once part of a pioneering study in child language acquisition, have become an unofficial mascot of linguistics. But now they’re part of a tussle over intellectual property. We do our best to talk through the Wug test and the surrounding struggle.

OzCLO is the Australian Computational and Linguistics Olympiad, where Australian high school students compete with others around the world by solving language puzzles.

This week, we've invited some of Australia's best students to test their linguistic knowledge against us! Who will prevail?

Language and culture are intertwined, and a new research project discovers that the meanings of words diverge as culture does.

But this big-data experiment is attracting the ire of anthropologists. Why the friction? Researcher Gary Lupyan joins us for this episode.

Our ever-popular Mailbag is bursting with questions, so let’s get to them!

• How do you communicate expressively with a mask on?
• Which was the first language with a set spelling?
• Why is the word caterpillar so long? Did it come later?
• Why are some news outlets writing “since the pandemic begun“?
• As prescriptive linguists, can we reasonably disagree with someone’s definition of a word, if that definition is being used by people?

Linguistics as a discipline has some work to do when it comes to examining and eliminating the legacy of colonialism. How do we do it? And how do we feel about the overtly evangelical agenda of a lot of linguistic work? Dr Hannah Gibson joins us.