A Yankee Dime - 4 July 2011

SUMMARY

Remember misunderstanding certain words as a child? Maybe you figured "cat burglars" only stole cats, or assumed guerrilla fighters must be angry apes. Martha and Grant discuss childhood misunderstandings about language. Also this week, Yankee dimes, culch piles, hanging crepe, educational rubrics, and whether the language you speak influences the way you think.

FULL DETAILS

There's a point when children understand just enough of their native language to be confused by homophones and metaphors. What misunderstandings do you remember? Maybe you thought cat burglars stole only cats, or that you might be swept out to sea by the undertoad? The hosts discuss childhood misunderstandings about language.

Some business owners give their establishments names like "Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe." What most people don't realize is that the letter Y in this case is a vestige of a letter we no longer use, and has a "th" sound. More about this letter here.

http://bbc.in/9Vy8Ba

A woman from upstate New York says her stepfather used to keep small dishes in various rooms to collect small odds and ends like paper clips and rubber bands. He called them culch piles. Martha has the story on this term.

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a puzzle based on the candy called "Mentos." It's called Mento Stimulation. Example: What kind of minty candy would be appropriate for musicians?

A North Carolina man says he was surprised as a child when he did a chore for his grandmother, and the Yankee dime she promised him turned out to be a peck on the cheek.

A Texas caller says her child's middle-school teacher insists that students should never begin a sentence with a preposition. The hosts are shocked, shocked.

Martha describes a funny linguistic misunderstanding she had while trying to read Harry Potter in Spanish.

Predictive text on cellphones can result in some amusing accidental substitutions. The word for that: textonym.

Does the language you speak shape how you think? The hosts discuss an essay on that topic adapted from the new book "Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages," by Guy Deutscher.

http://nyti.ms/chDUjO

Reading Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, an Indiana listener is stopped short by the sentence "She carried a tray of charlotte." Who or what is charlotte?

Someone who paints a negative or pessimistic picture is said to be hanging crepe. Martha has the origin.

The word rubric derives from a Latin word for "red." Originally, it referred to red letters used as section headings in religious texts and the like. Rubric has since become a term used in modern educational jargon, as in grading rubric.

What's the connection?

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