Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics

Maps of languages of the world are fun to look at, but they’re also often suspiciously precise: a suspiciously round number of languages, like 7000, mapped to dots or coloured zones with suspiciously exact and un-overlapping locations. And yet, if you’ve ever eavesdropped on people on public transit, you know that any given location often plays host to many linguistic varieties at once. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about the complications that come with trying to map languages and dialects. We talk about the history of how people have tried to map out linguistic varieties, and how geopolitical factors like war, colonialism, migration, education, and nationalism influence which languages are considered to exist and where, in the context of Inuktitut, French, BANZSL (British, Australian, and New Zealand Sign Languages), and the Faroe Islands. We also talk about sprachbunds, aka how languages and dialects are more like gradients of colour rather than patchwork pieces. This episode was updated with a corrected definition of sprachbund [14:54 - 16:08] on 23/10/2022. Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/698676202821566464/transcript-lingthusiasm-episode-73-the-linguistic Announcements: November is our anniversary month and this year we’re celebrating 6 months of Lingthusiasm! We invite you to celebrate with us by sharing your favourite Lingthusiasm episode by sharing a link to your favourite episode, or just sharing your lingthusiasm. Most people still find podcasts through word of mouth, and lots of them don’t yet realise that they could have a fun linguistics chat in their ears every month (or eyes, all Lingthusiasm episodes have transcripts!). If you share Lingthusiasm on social media, tag us so we can reply, and if you share in private, we won’t know but you can feel a warm glow of satisfaction - or feel free to tell us about it on social media if you want to be thanked! We're also doing a listener survey for the first time! This is your chance to tell us about what you're enjoying about Lingthusiasm so far, and what else we could be doing in the future - and your chance to suggest topics! And we couldn’t resist the opportunity to add a few linguistic experiments in there as well, which we’ll be sharing the results of next year. We might even write up a paper about the survey one day, so we have ethics board approval from La Trobe University for this survey. Take the survey here! http://bit.ly/lingthusiasmsurvey22 In this month’s bonus episode we interview Liz McCullough (no relation), of Lingthusiasm production manager fame, about linguistics and science communication. We talk about how Liz got interested in linguistics through science and music, her varied career path going back and forth between museums and universities, and how she's worked with us on the intersection between linguistics and science communication. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 60+ other bonus episodes, access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. For all the links mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/698675918395277313/episode-73-the-linguistic-map-is-not-the

What’s the “it’s” in “it’s three pm and hot”? How do you write a cough in the International Phonetic Alphabet? Who is the person most likely to speak similarly to a randomly-selected North American English speaker? In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about absurd hypothetical linguistic questions with special guest Randall Munroe, creator of the webcomic xkcd and author of What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. We only wish that there was a little more linguistics in the book. So Randall came on to fill the gap with all his most ridiculous linguistics questions! One of our unresolved questions that we can merely speculate about is our predictions for what the future of English might be like. Are you listening to this episode from more than two decades in the future? Please write in from 2042 or later and let us know how accurate we’ve been! Read the transcript here: Announcements: We’ve teamed up with linguist/artist Lucy Maddox to create a fun, minimalist version of the classic International Phonetic Alphabet chart, which you can see here (plus more info about how we put together the design). It looks really cool, and it’s also a practical reference tool that you can carry around with you in a convenient multi-purpose format: lens cloths! We’re going to place ONE (1) massive order for aesthetic IPA chart lens cloths on October 6, 2022. If you want one, be a patron at the Lingthusiast tier or higher on October 5th, 2022, timezone: anywhere in the world. If you’re already a patron at that tier, then you’re set! (That’s the tier where you also get bonus episodes and the Discord access, we’ve never run a special offer at this tier before but we think this time it’ll be worth it!). www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm In this month’s bonus episode we chat with Lucy about redesigning the IPA! We talk about how Lucy got interested in linguistics, how she got into art, how we started working with her, and the many design considerations that went into making a redesigned IPA chart. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 60+ other bonus episodes, access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds, as well your exclusive IPA chart lens cloth! www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm Click here for the full show notes, which includes links to things mentioned in this episode:

The hosts of this podcast talk about the various types of vibrations you can make with your vocal folds, such as aspiration, whisper, falsetto, breathy voice, and creaky voice. They also discuss how different languages use these vibrations to distinguish between words and for stylistic effect. The podcast explores the function of vocal folds, the perception of voicing distinction in various sounds, the linguistic significance of creaky voice, the use of vocal fry in different languages, and the influence of voicing distinction on the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Your brain is where language - and all of your other thinking - happens. In order to figure out how language fits in among all of the other things you do with your brain, we can put people in fancy brain scanning machines and then create very controlled setups where exactly one thing is different. For example, comparing looking at words versus nonwords (of the same length, on the same background) or listening to audio clips of a language you do speak vs a language you don’t speak. In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch talks with Dr Evelina Fedorenko, an associate professor of neuroscience at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, USA about figuring out which parts of the brain do language things! We talk about how we can use brain scans to compare language with other things your brain can do, such as solving visual puzzles, math problems, music, and inferring things about other people’s mental states, as well as comparing how the brains of multilingual people process their various languages. We also talk about the results of the fMRI language experiments that Gretchen got to be a participant in: which side is doing most of her language processing and how active her brain is for French compared to English. For links to things mentioned in this episode, including an image of Gretchen's brain:

In this episode, the hosts discuss modals in language, including the nine common modals in English and the use of quasi-modals. They explore the ambiguity and multiple interpretations that can arise from their usage. The speakers also discuss the challenges of translating modals and modality, highlighting variations in different languages. They delve into the use of double modals in English, share personal experiences, and discuss the difficulties of studying modals. They also discuss the significance of achieving a Guinness World Record and provide details on promotions.

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 episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about borrowing and loanwords. There are lots of different trajectories that words take when we move them around from language to language, including words that are associated with particular domains, like tea and books, words that shift meaning when they language hop, like “gymnasium” and “babyfoot”, words that get translated piece by piece, like “gratte-ciel” (skyscraper) and “fernseher” (television), and words that end up duplicating the same meaning (or is it...?) in multiple languages, like “naan bread” and “Pendle hill”. We also talk about the tricky question of how closely to adapt or preserve a borrowed word, depending on your goals and the circumstances. Announcements: The LingComm grants have been announced! Thank you so much to everyone who made this possible, and congratulations to all our grantees. Go check out their projects as they keep rolling out over the rest of this year for a little more fun linguistics content in your life. https://lingcomm.org/grants/ In this month’s bonus episode, originally recorded live through the Lingthusiasm Discord, we get enthusiastic about your sweary questions! We talk about why it's so hard to translate swears in a way that feels satisfying, how swears and other taboo words participate in the Euphemism Cycle, a very ambitious idea for cataloging swear words in various languages, and more. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm Join us on Patreon to listen to this and 60+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can play and discuss word games and puzzles with other language nerds! www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/684727483493384192/episode-68-tea-and-skyscrapers-when-words-get

The Rosetta Stone is famous as an inscription that let us read Egyptian hieroglyphs again, but it was created in the first place as part of a long history of signage as performative multilingualism in public places. Choosing between languages is both very personal but it’s not only personal -- it’s also a reflection of the way that the societies we live in constrain our choices. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about language policy and how organizations and nation-states make language decisions that affect people’s everyday lives. We also talk about the excellent recent lingcomm book Memory Speaks by Julie Sedivy, the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (currently ongoing!), and many ways of unpacking the classic quote about a language being a dialect with an army and a navy. Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/682191718408388608/transcript-episode-67-what-it-means-for-a Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode we’re getting enthusiastic about word games and puzzles with Nicole Holliday and Ben Zimmer of Spectacular Vernacular! We talk about patron questions, including lots of Wordle content: what Ben and Nicole learned from interviewing the creator of Wordle, our favourite Wordle variants such as IPA Wordle and Semantle, and comparing our Wordle solving strategies with a demo game on air. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm Join us on Patreon to listen to this and 60+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can play and discuss word games and puzzles with other language nerds! www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to all the things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/682191350734667776/episode-67-what-it-means-for-a-language-to-be

Let’s say we have the set of words “Lauren”, “Gretchen”, and “visits” and we want to make them into a sentence. The way that we combine these words is going to have a big effect on who’s packing their bags and who’s sitting at home with the kettle on. In English, our two sentences look like “Gretchen visits Lauren” and “Lauren visits Gretchen” -- but that’s not the only word order that’s possible. In theory, we could also use other orders, like “Lauren Gretchen visits” or “Visits Gretchen Lauren”, and in fact, many languages do. The only thing that really matters is that for any given language, we all agree on which order means what. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about how languages put words in a particular order. There are many possibilities, but a few of them show up a lot more than others: “I <3 linguistics” (as in English and Indonesian) and “I linguistics <3″ (as in Turkish and Japanese) are the most common word orders for conveying who did what to who. Another common strategy is using some other way of marking the actor and the acted-upon, which frees up word order for other functions, like indicating the topic of the sentence first (and what you want to comment about it afterwards) -- in English, this might be akin to “Linguistics, I <3 it”. We also look at how Yoda maintains his unique approach to word order across a variety of languages, including Hungarian, Japanese, Romanian, and Czech. Announcements: We’re doing another online Lingthusiasm liveshow on April 9th (Canada) slash 10th (Australia)! (What time is that for me?) It will be a live Q&A for patrons about a fan fave topic: swearing! We’ll be hosting this session on the Lingthusiasm patron Discord server. Become a patron before the event to live-react in the text chat, and it will also be available as an edited-for-legibility recording in your usual Patreon live feed if you prefer to listen at a later date. In the meantime: tell us about your favourite examples of swearing in various languages and we might include them in the show! https://www.patreon.com/posts/62707367 LingComm Grants are back in 2022! These are small grants to help kickstart new projects to communicate linguistics to broader audiences. There will be a $500 Project Grant, and ten Startup Grants of $100 each. Apply here by March 31, 2022 or forward this page to anyone you think might be interested, and if you’d like to help us offer more grants, you can support Lingthusiasm on Patreon or contribute directly. We started these grants because a small amount of seed money would have made a huge difference to us when we were starting out, and we want to help there be more interesting linguistics communication in the world. https://lingcomm.org/grants/ If you want to help keep our ongoing lingthusiastic activities going, from the LingComm Grants to regular episodes to fun things like liveshows and Q&As, join us on Patreon! As a reward, you will get over 50 bonus episodes to listen to and access to our Discord server to chat with other linguistics nerds. In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about how linguistic research topics come together! We talk about where our own research came from, figuring out spaces for new questions in the existing literature, and bridging gaps between multiple subject areas and communities. Listen here! https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/679022541013155840/episode-66-word-order-we-love-lets-say-we-have

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The pen is mightier than the sword. Knowledge is power, France is bacon. These, ahem, classic quotes all have something linguistically interesting in common: they’re all formed around a particular use of the verb “be” known as a copula. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about copulas! This is a special name for a way of grammatically linking two concepts together that’s linguistically special in a lot of different languages: sometimes it’s a verb that’s super irregular (like be/is/was in English, Latin, and many other languages), sometimes it’s several verbs (like ser and estar in Iberian and Celtic languages), sometimes it’s a form of marking other words (like in Nahuatl, Auslan, and ASL), and sometimes it’s not even visible or audible at all (like zero copula in Arabic, African American English, and Russian). We also talk about some of the fun things you can do with copulas in English, such as the lexical gap that’s filled by “ain’t”, the news headline null copula, and the oddball philosophical experiment known as E-Prime. Announcements: We're doing another online Lingthusiasm liveshow on April 9th (Canada) slash 10th (Australia)! (What time is that for me?) It will be a live Q&A for patrons about a fan fave topic: swearing! We'll be hosting this session on the Lingthusiasm patron Discord server. Become a patron before the event, and it will also be available as an edited-for-legibility recording in your usual Patreon live feed if you prefer to listen at a later date. In the meantime: tell us about your favourite examples of swearing in various languages and we might include them in the show! https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm LingComm Grants are back in 2022! These are small grants to help kickstart new projects to communicate linguistics to broader audiences. There will be a $500 Project Grant, and ten Startup Grants of $100 each. Apply here by March 31, 2022 or forward this page to anyone you think might be interested, and if you’d like to help us offer more grants, you can support Lingthusiasm on Patreon or contribute directly. We started these grants because a small amount of seed money would have made a huge difference to us when we were starting out, and we want to help there be more interesting linguistics communication in the world. https://lingcomm.org/grants/ For links to things mentioned in this episode:

This podcast delves into the fascinating topic of making speech visible through spectrograms and waveforms. It explores the challenges of analyzing speech sounds and the importance of unlearning automatic sound processing. The podcast also discusses the field of acoustic phonetics and the popular software used by linguists for analyzing sounds. Additionally, it covers the evolution of spectrogram machines and their diverse applications beyond human speech, such as analyzing bird songs. Overall, this episode provides an entertaining and informative exploration of linguistics and sound analysis.