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 even do with more? Here to answer all these questions is Dr Danny Bate, author of Why Q Needs U: A History of Our Letters and How We Use Them.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Start
• 00:44 Intros: Special letters
• 05:46 News: Spanish okay at World Cup?
• 09:30 News: Forgetting is helpful in language acquisition
• 21:18 News: Bluey in Yolŋu
• 25:41 Related or Not theme by Jo
• 27:21 Related or Not: prodigy, prodigal, and prodigious
• 34:19 Related or Not: vice, device, divide
• 43:09 Related or Not: gauntlet and gaunt
• 49:48 Interview with Danny Bate, author of Why Q Needs U
• 50:16 About Danny's podcast: A Language I Love Is…
• 52:24 The Alphabet: greatest innovation since sexual reproduction
• 56:08 The case against boustrophedon
• 58:51 Letters flipped over time
• 01:02:40 Why are some letters more common than others?
• 01:06:14 Why does H get used in so many digraphs?
• 01:10:52 Thoughts on spelling reform
• 01:18:07 Why are L and R so squirrelly?
• 01:28:53 The evolution of spaces in written language
• 01:31:46 What letters can we get rid of?
• 01:35:15 Actually, no, we need a new letter
• 01:36:53 Communicating linguistic ideas to the public
• 01:44:02 Word of the Week: monoculture
• 01:53:43 Word of the Week: algae-TBQ agenda
• 02:00:15 Word of the Week: hobbylos
• 02:03:14 Word of the Week: tokenmaxxing
• 02:06:27 Word of the Week: Claudeonomics
• 02:11:21 The Reads
• 02:18:18 Outtakes: Back on our Bluey nonsense + On being a Dan

We created software that could generate human-like text output quickly and easily. Now we're dealing with the societal upheaval it's caused. What are the risks and rewards, and what can we learn about language from these large language models? Daniel — joined by Caitlin Green — has a chat with Dr Christopher Summerfield, author of These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means.

Timestamps

00:00 Start 00:46 Intros: Generative A.I. concerns 04:15 Shout out to our patrons! 05:03 News: AP Style Guide defines COUPLE 10:35 News: Men do vocal fry more 14:59 News: Uptalk from 1890 16:01 News: Is Singlish up? 22:22 Related or Not: Bonkers Mélange editon, theme from Ste 23:41 Related or Not: population, discombobulate, bobbin 29:09 Related or Not: goggle, goo-goo, agog 36:09 Related or Not: once, ounce, pounce, lynx 41:55 Interview with Christopher Summerfield: Do you like A.I.? 44:21 Consequences of AI: Will we know nothing, or know everything? 47:03 Are LLMs just spicy autocorrect? 48:44 Are LLMs simply regurgitating their training data? 49:51 LLMs are getting better fast 52:33 On consciousness and intentionality 55:58 Do LLMs (or humans) understand? 58:58 The Chinese Room 01:01:00 Should we avoid anthropomorphising language around LLM behaviour? 01:04:02 Why we dismiss LLMs 01:07:26 Accelerationists, anti-hypers, and X-risk: Which are you? 01:09:49 Safety, privacy, and security 01:14:29 The magic wand of policy 01:20:18 Fixing the hallucination problem 01:27:36 Goals of the book 01:31:18 Word of the Week: liminal 01:39:59 Word of the Week: pink slime journalism 01:44:44 Word of the Week: waste colonialism 01:48:13 Quick words: hot-washing, eppy, shoulder surgfing, news-jacking, bio-break 01:51:37 Word of the Week: wario 01:55:02 The Reads 02:01:06 Outtake: That time when a siren went off in Hedvig's Parisian hotel, mid-recording

Video for this episode: https://youtu.be/94SbeM0KpWw

Australian magpies are even cleverer birds than we thought. New research from Dr Stephanie Mason shows that they do two language-like things we used to think only humans could do: learn their calls socially, and combine their calls in a way that looks a lot like syntax. So are we calling this language? If so, how are the linguists taking it? Stephanie joins us to talk about magpies, media, and the territoriality of linguists.

Timestamps

00:00 Start 00:54 Intros: Your favourite bird 07:10 What's coming up: Magpies 09:34 Join us! Patreon spruikery 11:32 News: Jamaican MP shut down for speaking Jamaican in Parliament 19:35 News: Whale phonology 31:46 News: Unicode to include new genderless pronoun for Mandarin 36:37 News: China and the Rubio Workaround 38:16 Related or Not: New theme from Hugh! 40:05 Related or Not 1: SLAP, SMACK, and SWAT 45:45 Related or Not 2: SOUND 56:13 Related or Not 3: SPECK, SPECKLE, SPECTRE, and SPECTRUM 01:00:36 Talking about magpies with Stephanie Mason 01:03:38 About Australian magpies 01:06:17 The problem of anthropomorphism 01:15:21 What's the semantic content? 01:22:52 Linguists can be territorial about language 01:34:48 Social complexity drives new behaviours 01:45:19 Magpies learn their calls socially 01:49:42 Magpies combine their calls 01:58:44 Magpies learn calls across the lifespan 02:05:36 Finding those birds 02:08:10 Doing public engagement: Are metaphors actually helping? 02:17:26 Words of the Week: mog 02:24:54 Word of the Week: pied-à-terre 02:27:48 Word of the Week: dummymander 02:33:03 Word of the Week: Sooooo-ee! 02:39:22 Etymology of Guacamole 02:39:35 Comment: guacamole = testicle sauce? 02:41:28 The reads 02:46:28 Outtake

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 and TG4 presenter Laura Pakenham taking us through the history and orthography of this great and resilient language. Laura is the author of Irish: History and Culture Through Language.

Timestamps

00:00 Start 00:24 Introducing Laura Pakenham 10:12 About Laura: Getting the gig 15:01 Navigating "correct" usage v. common usage 21:05 Different Irish voices on TG4 21:56 Getting feedback from Gaeilge speakers 24:33 Gaeilge as it is today 30:15 Irish is fun and cool, not so much a duty anymore 37:55 On coming to Irish as a learner 41:30 Related or Not: Theme 42:49 Related or Not: JIG, GIGUE, and JOG 49:51 Related or Not: HEATH, HEATHER, and HEATHEN 56:31 Related or Not: SCRAP and SCRUPLES 01:01:10 Gaeilge orthography and phonology 01:08:37 Gaeilge words and idioms 01:13:36 Why are things often referred to as "she"? 01:15:43 Favourite Irish words? 01:17:40 Irish diaspora and its linguistic impact 01:21:30 Advice for language advocates 01:23:59 The reads

What goes on in our minds when we construct an utterance? Linguists often use syntax trees to represent the structure of sentences, but are they psychologically real? Yngwie Nielsen and Dr Morten Christiansen have found evidence for something else: we can recognise patterns in strings of words, even when they don't form coherent "treelets". They're giving us a walkthrough of their latest work.

Timestamps

00:00 Start 00:31 Introductions: Yngwie and Morten 05:19 Insights into linguistics communication 07:45 What are syntax trees? 09:13 Why linguists love syntax trees 14:15 Treelets vs chunks: Looking beyond hierarchical structure 17:46 Wanna and gonna: Words that cross treelet boundaries 22:43 How to prime someone 28:18 Priming in this experiment: People do recognise chunks 32:26 Are people just filling in the treelet blanks? 35:23 Were they accidentally smuggling in treelets? 38:47 Do we process both treelets and chunks? 42:23 DensiTrees: A way of representing fuzzy networks 44:01 What are we doing mentally when we make an utterance? 47:20 What is language for? 49:29 Grammatical glue: How do we connect chunks? 53:23 Being able to language is bonkers 56:30 Should we be studying language differently? 01:01:09 Wrap-up and goodbyes

What will happen to the languages of climate refugees? Dr Mary Walworth has been working with the small island community of Nusi in Papua New Guinea, which was recently featured in an episode of Pole to Pole with Will Smith. What's it like doing media for a large audience, and more importantly, how do we help speakers hold onto their language? Dr Walworth joins us for this episode.

Timestamps

00:00 Start 00:45 Intros 04:00 What's coming up on this episode 06:58 New patron shoutout and spruik 09:05 News: Air Canada CEO resigns over English communication 14:34 News: Banning foreign language election information in the UK 23:54 News: Can LLMs pass the Wug Test? 34:03 News: Does closing your eyes help you hear better? 39:48 Related or Not: Theme 40:23 Related or Not: GORGE, ENGORGE, and GORGEOUS 48:09 Related or Not: ANY and MANY 51:54 Related or Not: GUAVA, GUACAMOLE, GUARANÍ, GUARANÁ 01:00:20 Interview with Mary Walworth 01:45:52 Word of the Week: bimbofication 01:54:00 Word of the Week: glottophobia 01:55:50 Word of the Week: liveness check 01:57:54 Comment from Colin: CLAN and PLANTA 01:59:03 Comment from Lauren: crash blossoms 02:02:49 The Reads 02:08:09 Outtake

"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 one thing, but your brain says another, you may have found a linguistic illusion. We're talking to Dr Dan Parker, author of Linguistic Illusions: A Case Study on Agreement Attraction.

Video for this episode: https://youtu.be/_9BcmMZrH7s

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 0:27
• News: 6:30
• Related or Not: 34:22
• Interview with Dan Parker: 49:53
• Words of the Week: 1:38:00
• Comment: 1:54:16
• The Reads: 1:58:19
• Outtakes: 2:05:39

How do you define what blue is? What even IS colour? Turns out, the quest to define colours was happening along with a standardisation crisis and a dictionary crisis at the venerable Merriam-Webster. Lexicographer and author Kory Stamper tells us all about it, and about her new book True Color.

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 1:17
• News: 12:40
• Related or Not: 33:34
• Chat with Kory Stamper, author of True Color: 50:43
• Words of the Week: 1:41:58
• Comment from Lauretta: 2:04:57
• The Reads: 2:08:14
• Outtakes: 2:16:48

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 on with the accents we hear? Are we losing some accents, or are they just changing? Dr Valerie Fridland is the author of Why We Talk Funny, and she joins us for this episode.

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 0:30
• News: 6:25
• Related or Not: 17:59
• Interview with Valerie Fridland: 36:53
• Words of the Week: 1:50:34
• The Reads: 2:21:21
• Outtakes: 2:26:14

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 prestigious Word of the Year event, and she was there when the 2025 WotY votes came in. She's talking us through all the words we missed. Plus we get to some listener feedback.

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 0:41
• The ADS WotYs for 2025: 7:12
• Related or Not: 1:00:51
• Listener comments: 1:09:53
• The Reads: 1:20:28
• Outtakes: 1:27:01

Video version of this episode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXpfrXdWEW8

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! In the time-honoured tradition, we gathered them all up from our 2025 shows, and let everyone vote. And we're going to give a mention to everyone else's words as well. We're joined by our friends and patrons, so come see them in chat!

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 1:31
• Everyone else's words: 5:57
• Related or Not: 34:34
• Our Words of the Week of the Year: 51:35
• Comments: 1:22:04
• The Reads: 1:26:36
• Outtakes: 1:30:50