For hundreds of years, people living in Louisiana’s bayou country have spoken French. But rising sea levels are submerging entire communities, forcing people to abandon their homes. As native French speakers move away, will the language...
They’re not in American dictionaries yet, but the terms, ‘punching up’ and ‘punching down’ are on the lips of many comedians. With the help of linguist and journalist Ben Zimmer and British comedian Richard Herring, we...
In this episode, we tell the inspiring, heartbreaking story of Radio Haiti. For several decades, the station broadcast not just in French, spoken by Haiti’s elite, but also in Kreyòl, spoken by rich and poor alike. The Kreyòl-language programs...
Does your grandmother call a chest of drawers a dresser? Or a bureau? Or perhaps a chiffonier? Over the years and across regions, Americans have favored many different words for furniture—and much else. Since 1929, the Linguistic Atlas Project has...
If you’ve ever set boundaries, taken up a gratitude practice or manifested, you’re already well-versed in the language of self-help. Over its long history, self-help has acquired its own lexicon, often repurposing words along the way. Nowadays, the...
Why do so many of us laugh at a word like ‘poop’ but not at, say, ‘treadmill’? Is it all down to their meaning? Or are we also responding to the sound of these words? Psycholinguist Chris Westbury set out to discover the...
When Julie Sedivy was four, her Czech family emigrated to Canada. In this episode we hear how Julie became estranged from her native Czech, only to rediscover it after the death of her father. Julie Sedivy’s linguistic memoir is Memory Speaks:...
Is it easier to sing than speak in another language? Artist Wen-hao Tien is putting that idea to the test. She has invited friends from around the world to teach her a song in their mother tongue. Patrick listens in on a few of the lessons and also...
Some people have origin stories. Pardis Mahdavi has a hyphenation story. Her Iranian family was the target of a hate crime in Minnesota. She was stripped of her citizenship in Iran. Eventually she embraced the hyphen between the words...
In our upcoming season, we’ll have stories on people who have “lost” their mother tongue, the language of self help, why certain sounds make us laugh, and much more. The first episode drops December 15. Subtitle is a production of...
Gwich’in is among Alaska’s most threatened languages. but Princess Daazhraii Johnson is determined to change that. Her mother, she says, was of “that boarding school generation that was hit for speaking Gwich’in.” Today, more Gwich’in people...
Who writes the fortunes in fortune cookies? Why are so many of them not really fortunes at all? Why did some fortunes turn ominous for a while? (“After today, you shall have a deeper understanding of both good and evil.”) And who was behind the...