Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics

119: Irregularity is all over the place

Talk, talked. Walk, walked. Go...went? In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about the many ways that languages are irregular

118: Using tech to chat with bonobos, dogs, and whales

Can we teach dogs to express their needs better by pressing buttons? What about the studies trying to teach bonobos and other primates to communicate through buttons or s

117: What makes for beautiful writing, scientifically speaking - Interview with Julie Sedivy

Sometimes, a phrase seems to leap off the page and lodge into your mind, crisp and shining like a precious jewel. Other times, you're reading something and it just won't

116: Cross-cultural communication (in space!)

Sometimes, you're talking with someone and you just seem to click. Other times, you just can't seem to get comfortable: they're standing too close or too far away for com

115: The long shadow of Daisy Bates with This Guy Sucked

What do you do when the only records that remain of a language were made by someone who had absolutely horrendous views of the people who spoke it? In this episode, you

114: Begonia, average coral, and sea pink - Defining colour terms with Kory Stamper

begonia: a deep pink that is bluer, lighter, and stronger than average coral (see ‘coral’ 3B), bluer than fiesta, and bluer and stronger than sweet William, called also ‘

113: Why "it's a diglossia!" explains so many social dynamics

In some communities, everyone regularly uses two languages or varieties according to the social situation, with one of them being more prestigious (and more likely to be

112: When language become-s(3SG) linguistic example-s(PL)

Language is all around us. This sentence right here, is language! But between the raw experience of someone saying something and a linguistic analysis of what they've sai

111: Whoa!! A surprise episode??? For me??!!

Wait, surprise is associated with a particular intonation!? Oh, you can see surprise by measuring electricity from your brain!? Hang on, some languages have grammatical m

110: The history of the history of Indo-European - Interview with Danny Bate

Before there was English, or Latin, or Czech, or Hindi, there was a language that they all have in common, which we call Proto-Indo-European. Linguists have long been fas

109: On the nose - How the nose shapes language

We often invoke the idea of language by showing the mouth or the hands. But the nose is important to both signed and spoken languages: it can be a resonating chamber that

108: Highs and lows of tone in Babanki - Interview with Pius Akumbu

Linguistic research has its highs and lows: from staging a traditional wedding to learn about ceremonial words to having your efforts to found a village school disrupted

107: Urban Multilingualism

When we try to represent languages on a map, it's common to assign each language a zone or a point which represents some idea of where it's used or where it comes from. B

106: Is a hotdog a sandwich? The problem with definitions

We asked you if a burrito was a sandwich, and you said 'no'. We asked you if ravioli was a sandwich and you said 'heck no'. We asked you if an ice cream sandwich was a sa

105: Linguistics of TikTok - Interview with Adam Aleksic aka EtymologyNerd

TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are an evolving genre of media: short-form, vertical videos that take up your whole screen and are served to you from an algor

104: Reading and language play in Sámi - Interview with Hanna-Máret Outakoski

When we talk about language reclamation, we often think about oral traditions. But at this point, many Indigenous languages also have considerable written traditions, and

103: A hand-y guide to gesture

Gestures: every known language has them, and there's a growing body of research on how they fit into communication. But academic literature can be hard to dig into on you

102: The science and fiction of Sapir-Whorf

It's a fun science fiction trope: learn a mysterious alien language and acquire superpowers, just like if you'd been zapped by a cosmic ray or bitten by a radioactive spi

101: Micro to macro - The levels of language

When we first learn about nature, we generally start with the solid mid-sized animals: cats, dogs, elephants, tigers, horses, birds, turtles, and so on. Only later on do

100: A hundred reasons to be enthusiastic about linguistics

This is our hundredth episode that's enthusiastic about linguistics! To celebrate, we've put together 100 of our favourite fun facts about linguistics, featuring contribu