: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com The German word “Volk” usually translates as “people,” but it means a whole lot more than that. In 1989 as Germans tore down the Berlin Wall, they chanted...
In 2012, a children’s book in Sweden sparked a nationwide debate— not about the book’s content but a three-letter word used by the main character. Hen was a relatively new, gender-neutral pronoun which challenged Swedish grammar norms. The use of...
If you’re under the impression that encyclopedias and dictionaries in the West were always organized from A to Z, think again. We have chosen to classify knowledge in many ways, each reflecting the values of the age. Patrick Cox speaks with Judith...
Japan is an ethnically homogenous nation where everyone speaks Japanese, right? Not exactly. Other groups including the Ainu also have called Japan home, perhaps for longer than the Japanese themselves. Today, the Ainu language is spoken by only a...
Will technology make Braille obsolete as a primary reading tool for blind people? Will talking apps and audiobooks win out over embossed dots? It's possible, but Braille has been written off before; each time, it has come back stronger. We trace...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com You may not have heard of Frisian, but it’s spoken by about 500,000 people. Once upon a time, an older form of the language was barely distinct from Old English. We take you to...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com Digital consultant Ivanka Majic was such an early user of Twitter that she was able to snag the handle @Ivanka. Which was great, until the rise of another Ivanka caused confusion...
In our upcoming season, we have stories on notorious names, the future of Braille, a history of alphabetical order and much more. Look out the first episode with Patrick and Kavita on March 17.
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com Here’s a guest episode from our friends at A Better Life?, a podcast from Feet in 2 Worlds about the immigrant experience in the time of COVID-19. The episode follows two US...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com Tina Tobey was born and raised in Texas. She’s used to non-Texans expecting her to know all about oil-drilling and ranching. And of course to speak “like a Texan.”...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com Why doesn’t Ciku Theuri sound Black? Her friends wanted to know. Eventually, she wanted to know. Ciku tells the story of how she came to speak the way she does—and how others...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com Verónica Zaragovia lives in Miami but she was born in Colombia. Although she has a Colombian passport, her Spanish doesn’t sound Colombian— at least that’s what people...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com We are how we speak, right? Well, it’s complicated— enough so to spend Subtitle’s next four episodes on this question. We’ll tell the stories of a diverse...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com In 1986, Nicaraguan officials invited American linguist Judy Shepard-Kegl to observe a group of Deaf children. The kids were using an unrecognizable signing system. Over the...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com Finland has been named the happiest country in the world. So why is sisu the word that best describes Finns? Associated with war and endurance, sisu means stoic...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com In unsettled times, we reach for metaphors. They help us make sense of the nonsensical—or at least that’s what we tell ourselves. In this episode, we hear from linguist Elena...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com Joe Wong is a brilliant bilingual comedian. In the US, he does standup. In his native China he hosts a popular TV game show. Recently his comedy has become more political: he is...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com Bilingual comedian Joanna Hausmann (pictured with her mother Ana Julia Jatar-Hausmann) is sitting out the lockdown at her Venezuelan parents’ New England home. She tells us of...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com In this episode, we talk with American medical student Esther Kim (pictured). She’s trying to overcome her suspicion of people with a particular accent, one that she’s...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com We can’t travel. We can’t hug or visit loved ones. But we can talk our way through this pandemic — and we’re doing just that, in most of the world’s languages...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com Hassnae Bouazza was born in Morocco. She didn’t speak a word of Dutch when she immigrated to the Netherlands, though today it’s effectively her mother tongue. The Dutch...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com If there are extraterrestrials out there, what kind of messages might they be sending us? How might we decipher those messages? And should we hit reply? Image by Mike Licht via...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com In 2005, Hurricane Katrina displaced tens of thousands of New Orleanians. Many never returned to the city. Others have since moved in, bringing with them different languages and...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com In folklore and fiction there’s a rich tradition of trees that talk, from Greek mythology to The Wizard of Oz. But that’s make-believe, right? Well, maybe. Many...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com Susanna Zaraysky, speaker of nine languages, is one of those people who seem able to pick up French or Portuguese almost overnight. In reality, it’s not so effortless—but is...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com Stereotypes about Mormon missionaries tend to overshadow their great success in foreign language learning. Why is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints so skilled at...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com There’s a new language class on offer at Harvard. Gullah Geechee is a creole language developed by enslaved Africans and still spoken today. As far as anyone knows, it’s...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com ‘Real’ or ’synthetic’? ‘Authentic’ or ‘lab-grown’? ‘Bloodstained’ or ‘green’? The highly-regulated words that describe diamonds define their narrative —...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com Are you repelled by certain words? Do you get that fingernails-on-chalkboard feeling when someone says ‘moist,’ ‘dollop’ or ‘fascia’? In this...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com Want to say or write something anonymously? Or pretend you’re someone else? Good luck. Linguists are using evermore sophisticated means to figure out who you really are. In...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com Coming up in the first season of Subtitle with Patrick Cox and Kavita Pillay: Words we love and hate. Words that solve crimes. Words we lose and find. Words that resist translation...
: Acast | Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Himalaya.com Ever wondered why language simultaneously unites and divides us? Mystifies and delights us? Patrick Cox and Kavita Pillay tell the stories of people with all kinds of linguistic...