Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics

Discover the science behind small talk in this enthusiastic podcast episode. Learn about the art of media references, strategies for avoiding awkward questions, and the cultural differences in small talk. Explore the role of small talk at conferences and in navigating social interactions. Get insights into the challenges of small talk and strategies for navigating them. Dive into the functions of small talk as a starting point for deeper conversations and maintaining social connections.

The hosts explore the pattern of how sounds fit together in different languages, known as sonority. They discuss syllable structures, pronunciation variations, and unconventional syllables. They also touch on the presence and distribution of high and low tones in language sounds. A bonus episode focuses on the creation of Crash Course Linguistics.

In this episode, the hosts discuss the translator's relationship with the text, including translating Beowulf and the Tale of Genji, translating conlangs in fiction, and mistranslation on the Scots Wikipedia.

Dr. Shivonne Gates, a linguist and Senior Researcher at NatCen Social Research, discusses Multicultural London English and accents in the UK. They cover collaborative research with young people, linguistics research jobs outside of academia, and the linguistic dynamics of high school students. The episode also touches on class attitudes in the UK, the impact of research on government policy, and transitioning from academic to non-academic research.

In this podcast, hosts Lauren and Gretchen discuss the fascinating world of adjectives. They explore how different languages categorize adjectives, the quirks of adjective usage in English, and the question of whether grammatical categories like adjectives are valid in all languages. They also share tips on how to do linguistics communication on a budget in their bonus episode.

How are you? Thanks, no problem. Stock, ritualistic social phrases like these, which are used more to indicate a particular social context rather than for the literal meaning of the words inside have a name in linguistics -- they’re called phatics! In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about the social dance of phatic expressions. We talk about common genres of phatics, including greetings, farewells, and thanking; how ordinary phrases come to take on a social meaning versus how existing phatic expressions can become literal again; and how phatics differ across languages and mediums, including speech, letters, email, and social media. This month’s bonus episode is about music and linguistics! Both speech and music can involve making sounds using the human body, but they also have differences. Different cultures highlight the similarities and differences between music and language in various ways, which we’ve received lots of questions about! In this episode, we talk about how languages with tone deal differently with matching up those tones to musical pitches, mapping drums and whistles onto language sounds in order to communicate across long distances, using linguistics to analyze genres of music like opera and beatboxing, and that time Gretchen went on holiday and actually ended up getting a demonstration of the whistled language Silbo Gomero. Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to get access to this and 40 other bonus episodes, and to chat with fellow lingthusiasts in the Lingthusiasm patron Discord. Announcements: Gretchen’s book about internet language, Because Internet, is available in paperback! It includes a section on phatic expressions in email and social media as well as lots of other things about how we talk to each other online, including emoji, memes, what internet generation you belong to, a small cameo from Lauren and Lingthusiasm, and more! You can also still get the audiobook version, read by Gretchen herself (no Lauren though, sorry). It also makes a great gift for anyone you communicate with online. For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/623851629729464320/lingthusiasm-episode-46-hey-no-problem-bye-the

Language is much older than writing. But audio and visual cues from sounds and signs don’t leave physical traces the way writing does. So when linguists want to figure out how people talked before history started being recorded, we need to engage in some careful detective work, by comparing two or more similar, known languages to (potentially!) reconstruct a hypothetical common ancestor. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about these prehistoric languages that historical linguists have reconstructed, known as proto-languages. We dive into some of our favourite proto-languages (Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Algonquian, Proto-Pama-Nyungan, and Proto-Bantu), look at their characteristic grammatical signatures, and explain what we can and can’t know about the people who spoke them based on their vocabularies. --- This months bonus episode is about doing linguistics with kids! Child language acquisition is a perennial source of entertainment for the linguistically-inclined – and so is helping any young people in your life develop an interest in linguistics. In this episode, we talk about some of our favourite things to observe about how kids are learning language as well as linguistically-relevant books for children, middle grade, and young adult. Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to get access to this and 39 other bonus episodes, and to chat with fellow lingthusiasts in the Lingthusiasm patron Discord. Announcements: We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2020 LingComm Grants. Here are the project titles for the 4 grantees, and there’s more information about each project on the LingComm website, as well as two honourable mentions. We’re very excited to share more with you as they develop. https://lingcomm.org/ The Black Language Podcast (Anansa Benbow) Nonbinary Linguistics youtube channel (Nina Lorence-Ganong) Jazicharnica (Јазичарница) blog (Nina Tunteva and Viktorija Blazheska) War of Words podcast (Juana de los Santos; Angela Makeviciuz; Antonella Moschetti; Néstor Bermúdez) We had over 75 applications from around the world and we'd like to thank all applicants for making the job of deciding extremely difficult! New masks By popular demand, our IPA, Tree and Esoteric Symbol designs are now available on these new non-medical grade reusable fabric masks from Redbubble. On our store you’ll find the white IPA characters on black, red or navy, and the esoteric symbols in white on black or green on black. If you fancy another colour, or the tree design, we’ve made masks available on all of the scarf pages. https://www.redbubble.com/people/lingthusiasm --- For links to everything mentioned in this episode visit our shownotes page: https://lingthusiasm.com/

This podcast episode explores the versatility of schwa, a vowel sound found in words like about, broken, council, potato, and support. The hosts discuss the uniqueness of schwa having its own name, its role in English pronunciation and spelling, and its presence in different languages. They also mention a bonus episode on numbers available to Patreon supporters.

In this episode, linguist Kirby Conrod discusses their research on the grammar of singular they. Topics include social attitudes conveyed by pronouns, specific vs generic singular they, and the process of changing mental grammars. The podcast also explores synesthesia, including Gretchen's unique attitude-texture synesthesia.

This podcast explores the concept of language difficulty and factors that contribute to it, such as existing language knowledge and starting point. It discusses the differences between language acquisition in children and adults, and the impact of motivation on language learning. The importance of incorporating personal interests and identities in language learning experiences is emphasized, along with the value of any amount of learning.