When societies of humans come into contact, they’ll often pick up words from each other. When this is happening actively in the minds of multilingual people, it gets called codeswitching; when it happened long before anyone alive can remember, it’s more likely to get called etymology. But either way, this whole spectrum is a kind of borrowing.
In this epis ... Show More
Nov 20
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 fascinated by the quest to get a glimpse into what Proto-Indo-European must have looked like through careful comp ... Show More
1 h
May 2017
145 - Do You Have The Balls To learn English?
Like any other language, English is filled with so many slang expressions and rude terms, most revolving around human genitalia. Humans tend to find lots of interesting ways to use sexual organs to describe how they are feeling, from anger to extreme joy and delight. Although thi ... Show More
51m 29s
Oct 2023
Hair on Your Tongue (Rebroadcast) - 23 October 2023
If you speak both German and Spanish, you may find yourself reaching for a German word instead of a Spanish one, and vice versa. This puzzling experience is so common among polyglots that linguists have a name for it. • The best writers create luscious, long sentences using the s ... Show More
53m 45s