Linguistics After Dark

Wherein we KISS-FIST linguistics.

Jump right to:

• 3:15 Linguistics Thing Of The Day: Garden path sentences
• 25:05 How do [in/formal] registers change over time; do they stairstep as we invent new informal registers and then everything bumps up a notch and the old formal registers fall off as “staid”, or is it nonuniform?
• 37:21 Audio question! Is linguistics a science? Is it a prestigious science? Why or why not?
• 58:03 What are your favorite words that don’t have an English equivalent or cannot be translated into English?
• 1:16:20 Listeners, what are your favorite words that haven't been fully un-italicized into English yet?
• 1:18:18 The puzzler: Think of an informal term for a beverage. Now say it in pig Latin, and you'll have an informal term for another beverage. What two beverages are these?

Covered this episode:

• The beverage fandom
• The euphemism treadmill
• Real-time language processing
• How Sarah likes syntactic ambiguity more than most people
• Linguists are not (necessarily) translators
• Linguistics is not physics
• Yoinking words from language to language
• Are toilets pieces of furniture?

Links and other post-show thoughts:

Wherein we spin a shitpost question into linguistics gold.

Jump right to:

• 0:58 Mailbag; revisiting our treatment of linguistic typology
• 12:14 Language Thing of the Day: The Comparative Method
• 32:32 Question 1: Is English a creole?
• 40:34 Question 2: Are Old English and Modern English the same language?
• 51:07 Question 3: Is there any part of language that isn’t just slang and jargon that’s made it into the mainstream?
• 1:07:47 Last week’s puzzler answer
• 1:08:33 The puzzler: Take the name of an old communication technology, add a letter, and mix the letters around. You should get the name of a new communication technology — what is it?

Covered in this episode:

• How a language's words and syntax can fall into different places on the typology spectrum
• We're not Fractions After Dark, but we do like PIE
• Why Grimm's Law should be called Rask's Rule
• Star Wars spoilers via linguistic sound changes
• A linguistics hot take with merit
• The deterioration of the institution of marriage via etymology
• Time is the cement mixer of language
• A defense of business jargon

Links and other post-show thoughts:

Wherein we find an excuse to recommend a bunch of music to you.

Jump right to:

• 2:26 Language Thing of the Day: Filler words
• 14:17 Question 1: How did we get nicknames that don't seem to make sense? Like how did "Peggy" come out of "Margaret"?
• 25:26 Question 2: Why do singers' accents almost always become less intense in their singing voices as opposed to their speaking voices?
• 37:30 Question 3: How do we change the meaning of a sentence just by changing vocal pitch? Typed-out transcripts can lose the information conveyed by vocal pitch.
• 1:04:32 Answer to last week's puzzler
• 1:07:39 The puzzler: (Too long for Spotify! Check the post on our site!)

Covered in this episode:

Wherein we #GiveLinguistsSwords. (Please note that this recording cut out a lot of background noise and claps/cheers, so if there is a weird volume jump up or down, that might be why.)

Jump right to:

• 00:04:42 Is syntax fake?

• 00:10:14 Favorite and least favorite words

• 00:23:48 How has profanity evolved with language?

• 00:34:40 What are the rules for onomatopoeia and how do they differ across languages?

• 00:41:13 What is lenition?

• 00:47:56 How do puns work in other languages?

• 01:02:15 What are fricatives?

• 01:02:33 The LxAD backstory

• 01:06:19 The first time we bring up L’Académie

• 01:08:12 Dead languages work poorly on the internet

• 01:12:44 Best stories of word mix-ups

• 01:18:12 How do colors work in different languages?

• 01:29:01 “It’s all Greek to me”

• 01:29:55 Where did the word orange come from?

• 01:31:36 Dialect-dependent homophones

• 01:34:56 What’s the most useless part of language?

• 01:40:29 Why is English spelling wonderful?

• 01:59:42 Sarah has to pronounce the hardest IPA sounds

• 02:07:30 The Thing At The End

Covered in this episode:

Wherein we #GiveLinguistsSwords. (Please note that this recording cut out a lot of background noise and claps/cheers, so if there is a weird volume jump up or down, that might be why.)

Jump right to:

• 00:04:42 Is syntax fake?

• 00:10:14 Favorite and least favorite words

• 00:23:48 How has profanity evolved with language?

• 00:34:40 What are the rules for onomatopoeia and how do they differ across languages?

• 00:41:13 What is lenition?

• 00:47:56 How do puns work in other languages?

• 01:02:15 What are fricatives?

• 01:02:33 The LxAD backstory

• 01:06:19 The first time we bring up L’Académie

• 01:08:12 Dead languages work poorly on the internet

• 01:12:44 Best stories of word mix-ups

• 01:18:12 How do colors work in different languages?

• 01:29:01 “It’s all Greek to me”

• 01:29:55 Where did the word orange come from?

• 01:31:36 Dialect-dependent homophones

• 01:34:56 What’s the most useless part of language?

• 01:40:29 Why is English spelling wonderful?

• 01:59:42 Sarah has to pronounce the hardest IPA sounds

• 02:07:30 The Thing At The End

Covered in this episode:

Hello, and welcome to Linguistics After Dark! I'm Sarah, and this not really an episode—it's another teaser for next week's live show at CrossingsCon: Slipping Sideways. At 7pm New York time, Tuesday August 3rd, we'll be doing a live episode with real questions from real audience members! That's you!

The convention is free to attend, and throughout the rest of the week, your beloved podcast team (that's us!) will be participating in several other cool events as well!

On Wednesday August 4th, at 8pm New York time, Eli will be running a pub-quiz-style general knowledge trivia game for anyone who wants to attend.

On Friday August 6th, at 6pm New York time, Eli will also be joining writers CB Lee, Ursula Vernon, and Cat Valente to play Baron Munchausen, a wild and ridiculous semi-cooperative story-telling game.

Then I'll be hosting and Jenny will be appearing on a panel about the creation and use of conlangs, currently scheduled for 8pm New York time on Friday August 6th. That one might change, so keep an eye on the website.

And finally, as promised in our last live show, Eli and I will join our friend Dash to talk about the linguistics and archaelogy of the game Heaven's Vault. We'll be doing that on Saturday August 7th, at 7pm New York time.

Hi everyone! We have two big Linguistics After Dark announcements for you.

The first announcement is: we're still here! We have two episodes that are in fact recorded and waiting to be edited, so look for those in the next little bit.

Wherein we talk a LOT.

• 1:50 The International Phonetic Alphabet
• 30:59 Corrections
• 36:08 Question 1: Computer languages: Are they languages (in a linguistic sense)? They have rules, syntax, even dialects. They can express certain complex ideas better than English, but they cannot (easily) express arbitrary ideas.
• 44:50 Question 2: What causes a compound word like ‘bluebird’ (a bird that is blue) to become bahuvrihi like ‘Blackbeard’ (not a beard that is black, but someone who has a black beard)?
• 58:31 Question 3: If you could snap your fingers and know a new language, what would it be? (Like taking a point in D&D linguistics, you know the language as if you were a native speaker.) No rules, no restrictions (unless you want to pick one per category: real, commonly used; real, uncommonly used; real, dead; fake movie language; conlang).
• 1:10:55 Last week’s puzzler’s answer
• 1:12:50 The new puzzler: Three incandescent lightbulbs in a room, three lightswitches outside the room. You can look inside the room once and only once, after which you must decide which lightswitch controls which lightbulb.

• The IPA (developed by the IPA) ≠ an IPA, although Eli occasionally enjoys the latter too
• ɹ, ə, æ, ʃ, Ʒ, ŋ, œ
• Apple’s consistent failing of linguists
• Cursive IPA, which apparently exists
• How to learn IPA
• “Bendy banana vowels”
• Diphthong? Dip-thong? Dip-tong? It’s up to you, really
• Computer languages have semantics but not pragmatics
• A return of Gricean maxims having relevance (so to speak)
• Compound words in Dutch versus in English
• The gradual squishing-together of English compound words
• “Website” is a single word, congrats to the AP style guide on finally joining the 21st century
• Grilled cheese is not made on a barbeque
• Agglutinative vs polysynthetic mostly means “where do you put the spaces”
• Producer Jenny with the LOTR linguistic hot take
• Producer Jenny with the (basic) elvish linguistic history
• Zulu is neat and has interesting noun classes/gender-that-isn’t-gender
• Sign languages are awesome and should have more research done on them!!
• Also ASL is just a very useful second language in the US
• This podcast exists because of Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series on multiple levels and y’all should read it (or listen! The audiobooks are so good!)

Wherein we frequently get off topic and get angry at Les Immortels.

• 1:08 Things Sarah Is Mad About Once She Did the Show Notes
• 3:39 Linguistic Thing of the Day: Borrowing!
• 8:00 L’Académie Française is annoying
• 22:27 Are there languages other than Irish that have the concept of helping vowels?
• 33:51 How do linguistic rules emerge?
• 51:36 Canadian raising! What actually is it?
• 1:09:00 The puzzler: Why are these birds flying in from different directions?

• A very hardcore church named All Souls Parish
• Calques vs loanwords
• Sarah mispronouncing the Spanish word for “avocado”
• Epenthetic schwa and syllabic consonants
• Should linguists get swords?
• L’Académie Française does not know how language works
• Anglish
• Languages are not mathematical constructs
• How phonetic inventories and stress patterns differ between languages
• Lenition isn’t lazy, it’s economical!
• Pidgins are not pigeons (though neither has syntax)
• Linguistic redundancy
• Adopting children and/or giving them piggyback rides
• Vowels are like a shopping cart, or maybe a trombone
• Whitney Houston
• Emordnilaps

​Wherein we make wugability happen and invoke rule three.

• 3:40 The Part Where We Say The Title
• 20:22 Are clicks consonants?
• 30:22 Why do people like some words and hate others?
• 43:53 An uncharacteristically serious discussion about conversational styles and their relation or lack thereof to gender
• 65:18 The puzzler: What do the words ASSESS/BANANA/DRESSER/GRAMMAR/POTATO/REVIVE/UNEVEN/VOODOO have in common?

• The parts of linguistics we secretly don’t like
• The ablaut of yeet
• An inadvertent All The Stations shoutout
• Jenny just says Walrus
• Send us law questions!
• The official LxAD Linguistics Hot Takes
• Clicks, Ingressives, Ejectives, and... the other ones
• Aaron/Erin is the new Mary/marry/merry
• Phonesthemes
• Bubu and Kiki
• Our show notes have research!
• Words are fake, but there’s a spectrum of reality
• It’s like chai, but coffee
• Meta language is important even for laypeople!
• High school teachers know the dank memes of today—sometimes
• If you say the food "herb" with an "h" you're wrong but valid
• Optimality theory easter egg?

Wherein we discuss how linguistics is everywhere but linguists are nowhere, and introduce the concept of the unsolicited etymology swear jar.

Jump right to:

• 01:33 “Universal” word lists, bad puns, and university “field work” stories
• 07:25 What composes an accent? What counts as a dialect? What about “little kid speak”?
• 24:16 What are the most valuable ways linguistics can improve society?
• 45:45 Favorite ridiculous etymologies
• 54:31 The puzzler: What do the words JOB, POLISH, and HERB have in common?

Covered in this episode:

• We love Car Talk
• Dialects and accents often overlap but are not the same thing
• Dialects and registers also often overlap but are not the same thing
• Obligatory “A language is just a dialect with an army and a navy.”
• Linguistics After Dark has no official positions on contentious geopolitical issues
• Understanding the value of descriptivism and the reality of language evolution
• Hot takes on regional identity in the UK vs North America vs California
• Why don’t journalists know that linguists exist?
• A story that has nothing to do with financial advising, and everything to do with geese
• OK is the only acronym etymology that’s all correct

Links and other post-show thoughts:

Our very first episode, answering real language questions from real listeners! And boy do we live up to our no-research policy. (What is the truth about bubblers? TEACH THE CONTROVERSY!)

Jump right to:

• 00:43 Thing of the Day: Ambiguity (...or is it?)
• 04:28 In the English word ⟨scent⟩, is the ⟨s⟩ or the ⟨c⟩ silent?
• 11:50 Has our study of linguistics caused us to consciously change how we talk?
• 25:48 How should you pluralize superhero names?
• 34:37 Can "informal" mean "giving information to the reader" along with "not formal"?
• 39:30 The Puzzler: Can you find a word that has three double letters in a row?

Covered in this episode:

• Fun with affixes!
• English “soft c” spelling rules
• Awkward teenage spelling reform phases
• A hot take not taken
• Obligatory (incorrect) citation of the Martha’s Vineyard accent study
• How to tell if you should study linguistics
• Obligatory mention of “bubbler”
• Why is “bubbler” localised SO SPECIFICALLY?
• Everyone needs to see Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse
• Hot takes on Spider-Men, the Toronto Maple Leafs, and the Attorney General
• In-laws and Sinlaws
• Obligatory Latin-based explanations
• ⟨bassoon⟩ and ⟨balloon⟩ are basically the same word

Links and other post-show thoughts: