Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics
A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. "A fascinating listen that will change the way you see everyday communications." –New York Times. "Joyously nerdy" –Buzzfeed. Weird and deep half-hour conversations about language on the third Thursday of the month. Listened to all the episodes here and wish there were more? Want to talk with other people who are enthusiastic about linguistics? Get bonus episodes and access to our Discord community at www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm Shownotes and transcripts: www.lingthusiasm.com
Show episodes
We often invoke the idea of language by showing the mouth or the hands. But the nose is important to both signed and spoken languages: it can be a resonating chamber that air can get shaped by, as well as a salient location for the hand to be in contact with. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Ga
Linguistic research has its highs and lows: from staging a traditional wedding to learn about ceremonial words to having your efforts to found a village school disrupted by civil war. Linguistic research can also be about highs and lows: in this case, looking at how high and low tones in Babanki words affect their mean
When we try to represent languages on a map, it's common to assign each language a zone or a point which represents some idea of where it's used or where it comes from. But in reality, people move around, and many cities are host to hundreds of languages that don't show up on official records. In this episode, your hos
We asked you if a burrito was a sandwich, and you said 'no'. We asked you if ravioli was a sandwich and you said 'heck no'. We asked you if an ice cream sandwich was a sandwich and things...started to get a little murky. This isn't just a sandwich problem: you can also have similar arguments about what counts as a cup,
TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are an evolving genre of media: short-form, vertical videos that take up your whole screen and are served to you from an algorithm rather than who you follow. This changes how people talk in them compared to earlier forms of video, and linguists are on it! In this episode, yo
When we talk about language reclamation, we often think about oral traditions. But at this point, many Indigenous languages also have considerable written traditions, and engaging with writing as part of teaching these languages to children is important for all of the same reasons as we teach writing in majoritarian la
