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A podcast about linguistics, the science of language.
What goes on in our minds when we construct an utterance? Linguists often use syntax trees to represent the structure of sentences, but are...
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...
"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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
We've asked linguists about how language began, but what would an evolutionary biologist tell you? Prof Madeleine Beekman says it's part of...
Among so many great word games, crosswords still reign supreme. How have they survived — and even expanded — in our digital age? What goes i...
The "Oh" show was an experimental linguistics performance lecture. It happened in June 2025 at Creative Time HQ in New York City. Actors, mu...
Martha Barnette is one half of the linguistics podcast A Way With Words , and author of the new book Friends With Words: Adventures in Langu...
Creators have to be mindful of what to say and what not to say in their content. This affects the language we're exposed to — and what we sa...
We've all seen style guides that tell us what to say and what not to say. Has a style guide ever asked you what you wanted to say? Or challe...
How did language start? What do all languages have in common? How does language really work? Many answers have been posed to these questions...
How do large language models (LLMs) do their thing, and it is anything like how we do our thing? What can we learn about human language from...
Gesture is everywhere. We wave our hands when we talk, even if we're alone. Signed languages are, of course, full languages that use gesture...
It's Eurovision season! We love to talk about what we can learn about language from this international song contest, but even we didn't real...
Artificial intelligence (so-called) is typified by its boom and bust cycles, and we're in a boom now. But as more and more money pours in wi...
Video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/wxGeXMzlwng If you repeat something twice, how many times did you do it? Can more than one d...
Spelling reform in English: a constant failure? Or a secret success? Waves upon waves of optimists have tried to make English spelling refle...
First words and last words get a lot of attention. But how did words get to have such a place of prominence? What would we see if we focused...
Breaking news: The president of the United States intends to sign an executive order designating English the official language of the USA. I...
What really goes on behind the scenes at the biggest Word of the Year vote in linguistdom? Are we really going to stick with sanewashing for...
It's our Words of the Year episode, where we do a vibe check on all the words and name one of them our Because Language Word of the Year. We...
What's in the linguistic news? Diego knows. He's been tracking down stories and words for us all year long, and now he's curated an entire s...
Minority languages are under threat everywhere, but Tibet represents a particularly difficult challenge. The Tibetan language family is unde...
We're joined for the first time by Douglas Harper , proprietor of the world-renowned Online Etymology Dictionary (etymonline.com). He's here...
Language is a lot like love. You can enjoyably lose yourself in both. They can both be dangerous. And they both entail a responsibility to k...
What one thing explains the most about language? Here to answer that question is linguist and friend of the pod Dr Mark Ellison — and many o...
For our 500th episode, we got together with our great listeners for their words, stories, and inspiration. It's a look back at the show, a l...
Can you hear them? Only if you're meant to. Political dogwhistles exploit lack of knowledge in one group to send a coded message to another...
There are lots of Englishes out there, but the way we approach varieties of English sets learners up to fail. How do we combat language ideo...
What do signed languages have in common? How do oral languages influence signed languages? How do they influence each other? Here to answer...
Noam Chomsky is one of the world's foremost thinkers, and his impact on linguistics is incalculable. Yet many people are only familiar with...
A hundred episodes already? To celebrate, we're doing our favourite kind of episode: a Mailbag. Why is it a BLOW JOB when there's no blowing...
What's going on in Germany? How are people talking about gender in the German language, and how is freedom of expression being handled? We h...
How much can we really know about the words we use? What are the facts behind some of the most tangled etymologies in English? And is our "R...
What's the difference between a KINK and a FETISH? Does it matter if you ASSUME or PRESUME? English is full of these close groups of words,...
New York City is home to a lot of languages! Sometimes a sizeable language community can live on just a couple of floors of an apartment bui...
Language authorities. Right-wing politicians. White supremacists and feminists. What do they have in common? They're all working together to...
Dr Kelly Wright is helping us understand the link between public health and language maintenance. And she's helping us with our voluminous M...
In honour of Grammar Day (4 March), we are joined live by special guest Ellen Jovin , who regularly dispenses grammar advice and wisdom from...
What are your eyes doing when you describe a scene? It may depend on your language. New research from Dr Rachel Nordlinger and team shows th...
We're climbing back into the linguistic time machine and taking a look at language in the long view. We'll find out what language was like 1...
We're talking words, and no one has a way with words like Grant Barrett . He's here to tell us what it's like at Dictionary.com , and what w...
The public has voted, and a winner has been decided! We're looking all the words chosen by the various dictionary bodies, and counting down...
What was language like a year ago? Ten years ago? A hundred? What about before that? We're climbing into the Linguistic Time Machine and fin...
What is a woman? Or a man? Or a chair, or a sandwich? Or anything, really? "Gender critical" people are making language into a vector to att...
We've got mail, and linguistic MVP Dr Nicole Holliday is here to help us sort some things out around here. And we chat about the state of li...