148: On the Mark (with Florence Hazrat)
Commas, em dashes, apostrophes, and interrobangs. We use them for timing, for grammar, and even for social purposes. But these little marks...
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Because Language - a podcast about linguistics, the science of language.
A podcast about linguistics, the science of language.
Episodes
20 of 111 episodes147: The Language Beat (with Michael Erard)
Michael Erard has been covering language in major publications for a good long while. What has he learned, and what can linguistic communica...
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 perce...
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 pictur...
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, o...
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 a...
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...
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...
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....
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...
138: Pop-Up Gaeltacht (live with Laura Pakenham and friends)
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...
137: Are Trees Real? (with Yngwie Nielsen and Morten Christiansen)
What goes on in our minds when we construct an utterance? Linguists often use syntax trees to represent the structure of sentences, but are...
136: These Languages Are Anchors (with Mary Walworth)
What will happen to the languages of climate refugees? Dr Mary Walworth has been working with the small island community of Nusi in Papua Ne...
135: Linguistic Illusions (with Dan Parker)
"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 o...
134: True Colour (with Kory Stamper)
How do you define what blue is? What even IS colour? Turns out, the quest to define colours was happening along with a standardisation crisi...
133: Why We Talk Funny (with Valerie Fridland)
We all have an accent — or several! And we use them to communicate things about us, and highlight aspects of our identity. So what's going o...
132: WotY 2025, the Final Word (with Kelly Wright)
We're talking to Dr Kelly Wright , friend of the show and data czar for the American Dialect Society. They run the biggest and most prestigi...
131: Words of the Week of the Year 2025 (live with friends)
Video for this episode: https://youtu.be/Mqf05kN-TaI It's Word of the Year season, and we're counting down our Words of the Week of the Year...
130: Back to the FTR (with Séan Roberts, Cole Robertson, and Annemarie Verkerk)
You know the story. The language you speak doesn't determine your savings. If your language has a future tense, there's no impact on the way...
129: They Started It: Children and Language Evolution (with Madeleine Beekman)
We've asked linguists about how language began, but what would an evolutionary biologist tell you? Prof Madeleine Beekman says it's part of...