Podcasts · Science

Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics

Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne

121 episodes

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.

More about the show

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

Episodes page 1 of 3

  1. 121: Vampires, ghosts, imposters and more linguistic monsters

    · 42 min

    Vampires, werewolves, witches, ghosts, zombies, imposters, and frankenstein have something in common: they're all possessed by the spirit of linguistics! In this silly spooky episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and…

  2. 120: How (not) to kill a language - Interview with Sophia Smith Galer

    · 41 min

    Narratives about smaller languages often focus on the death and endangerment sides of the story. There's generally less on the social and political reasons why some languages are favoured at the expense of others, and…

  3. 119: Irregularity is all over the place

    · 46 min

    Talk, talked. Walk, walked. Go...went? In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about the many ways that languages are irregular in their patterns! We talk about sound and…

  4. 118: Using tech to chat with bonobos, dogs, and whales

    · 46 min

    Can we teach dogs to express their needs better by pressing buttons? What about the studies trying to teach bonobos and other primates to communicate through buttons or signs? What have we learned about whale…

  5. 117: What makes for beautiful writing, scientifically speaking - Interview with Julie Sedivy

    · 49 min

    Sometimes, a phrase seems to leap off the page and lodge into your mind, crisp and shining like a precious jewel. Other times, you're reading something and it just won't stick, your eyes wandering away no matter how…

  6. 116: Cross-cultural communication (in space!)

    · 32 min

    Sometimes, you're talking with someone and you just seem to click. Other times, you just can't seem to get comfortable: they're standing too close or too far away for comfort, making too much or too little eye contact,…

  7. 115: The long shadow of Daisy Bates with This Guy Sucked

    · 1 h 01 min

    What do you do when the only records that remain of a language were made by someone who had absolutely horrendous views of the people who spoke it? In this episode, your host Lauren Gawne gets enthusiastic about a…

  8. 114: Begonia, average coral, and sea pink - Defining colour terms with Kory Stamper

    · 54 min

    begonia: a deep pink that is bluer, lighter, and stronger than average coral (see ‘coral’ 3B), bluer than fiesta, and bluer and stronger than sweet William, called also ‘gaiety’. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen…

  9. 113: Why "it's a diglossia!" explains so many social dynamics

    · 49 min

    In some communities, everyone regularly uses two languages or varieties according to the social situation, with one of them being more prestigious (and more likely to be written down) than the other. This particular…

  10. 112: When language become-s(3SG) linguistic example-s(PL)

    · 49 min

    Language is all around us. This sentence right here, is language! But between the raw experience of someone saying something and a linguistic analysis of what they've said, there are certain steps that make it easier…

  11. 111: Whoa!! A surprise episode??? For me??!!

    · 51 min

    Wait, surprise is associated with a particular intonation!? Oh, you can see surprise by measuring electricity from your brain!? Hang on, some languages have grammatical marking for surprise!? In this episode, your…

  12. 110: The history of the history of Indo-European - Interview with Danny Bate

    · 1 h 01 min

    Before there was English, or Latin, or Czech, or Hindi, there was a language that they all have in common, which we call Proto-Indo-European. Linguists have long been fascinated by the quest to get a glimpse into what…

  13. 109: On the nose - How the nose shapes language

    · 46 min

    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…

  14. 108: Highs and lows of tone in Babanki - Interview with Pius Akumbu

    · 51 min

    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…

  15. 107: Urban Multilingualism

    · 39 min

    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…

  16. 106: Is a hotdog a sandwich? The problem with definitions

    · 34 min

    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…

  17. 105: Linguistics of TikTok - Interview with Adam Aleksic aka EtymologyNerd

    · 44 min

    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…

  18. 104: Reading and language play in Sámi - Interview with Hanna-Máret Outakoski

    · 48 min

    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…

  19. 103: A hand-y guide to gesture

    · 48 min

    Gestures: every known language has them, and there's a growing body of research on how they fit into communication. But academic literature can be hard to dig into on your own. So Lauren has spent the past 5 years…

  20. 102: The science and fiction of Sapir-Whorf

    · 51 min

    It's a fun science fiction trope: learn a mysterious alien language and acquire superpowers, just like if you'd been zapped by a cosmic ray or bitten by a radioactive spider. But what's the linguistics behind this idea…

  21. 101: Micro to macro - The levels of language

    · 49 min

    When we first learn about nature, we generally start with the solid mid-sized animals: cats, dogs, elephants, tigers, horses, birds, turtles, and so on. Only later on do we zoom in and out from these charismatic…

  22. 100: A hundred reasons to be enthusiastic about linguistics

    · 41 min

    This is our hundredth episode that's enthusiastic about linguistics! To celebrate, we've put together 100 of our favourite fun facts about linguistics, featuring contributions from previous guests and Lingthusiasm team…

  23. 99: A politeness episode, if you please

    · 56 min

    If it wouldn't be too much trouble, if you have a spare half hour, could we possibly suggest that you might enjoy listening to this episode on politeness? Or, if you'd prefer a less polite version, "Listen! Now!" In…

  24. 98: Helping computers decode sentences - Interview with Emily M. Bender

    · 56 min

    When a human learns a new word, we're learning to attach that word to a set of concepts in the real world. When a computer "learns" a new word, it is creating some associations between that word and other words it has…

  25. 97: OooOooh~~ our possession episode oOooOOoohh 👻

    · 45 min

    Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog... In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic and ~spooky~ about possession! We talk about how the haunting type of…

  26. 96: Welcome back aboard the metaphor train!

    · 35 min

    We're taking you on a journey to new linguistic destinations, so come along for the ride and don't forget to hold on! In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about metaphors!…

  27. 95: Lo! An undetached collection of meaning-parts!

    · 44 min

    Imagine you're in a field with someone whose language you don't speak. A rabbit scurries by. The other person says "Gavagai!" You probably assumed they meant "rabbit" but they could have meant something else, like…

  28. 94: The perfectly imperfect aspect episode

    · 39 min

    When we're talking about an activity -- say, throwing teacups in a lake -- we often want to know not just when the action takes place, but also what shape that action looks like. Is this a one-time teacup throwing…

  29. 93: How nonbinary and binary people talk - Interview with Jacq Jones

    · 45 min

    There are many ways that people perform gender, from clothing and hairstyle to how we talk or carry ourselves. When doing linguistic analysis of one aspect, such as someone's voice, it's useful to also consider the…

  30. 92: Brunch, gonna, and fozzle - The smooshing episode

    · 50 min

    Sometimes two words are smooshed together in a single act of creativity to fill a lexical gap, like making "brunch" from breakfast+lunch. Other times, words are smooshed together gradually, over a long period of…

  31. 91: Scoping out the scope of scope

    · 30 min

    When you order a kebab and they ask you if you want everything on it, you might say yes. But you'd probably still be surprised if it came with say, chocolate, let alone a bicycle...even though chocolate and bicycles…

  32. 90: What visualizing our vowels tells us about who we are

    · 48 min

    On Lingthusiasm, we've sometimes compared the human vocal tract to a giant meat clarinet, like the vocal folds are the reed and the rest of the throat and mouth is the body of the instrument that shapes the sound in…

  33. 89: Connecting with oral culture

    · 55 min

    For tens of thousands of years, humans have transmitted long and intricate stories to each other, which we learned directly from witnessing other people telling them. Many of these collaboratively composed stories were…

  34. 88: No such thing as the oldest language

    · 42 min

    It's easy to find claims that certain languages are old or even the oldest, but which one is actually true? Fortunately, there's an easy (though unsatisfying) answer: none of them! Like how humans are all descended…

  35. 87: If I were an irrealis episode

    · 35 min

    Language lets us talk about things that aren't, strictly speaking, entirely real. Sometimes that's an imaginative object (is a toy sword a real sword? how about Excalibur?). Other times, it's a hypothetical situation…

  36. 86: Revival, reggaeton, and rejecting unicorns - Basque interview with Itxaso Rodríguez-Ordóñez

    · 47 min

    Basque is a language of Europe which is unrelated to the Indo-European languages around it or any other recorded language. As a minority language, Basque has faced considerable pressure from Spanish and French, leading…

  37. 85: Ergativity delights us

    · 46 min

    When you have a sentence like "I visit them", the word order and the shape of the words tell you that it means something different from "they visit me". However, in a sentence like "I laugh", you don't actually need…

  38. 84: Look, it's deixis, an episode about pointing!

    · 39 min

    Pointing creates an invisible line between a part of your body and the thing you're pointing at. Humans are really good at producing and understanding pointing, and it seems to be something that helps babies learn to…

  39. 83: How kids learn Q’anjob’al and other Mayan languages - Interview with Pedro Mateo Pedro

    · 41 min

    Young kids growing up in Guatemala often learn Q’anjob’al, Kaq’chikel, or another Mayan language from their families and communities. But they don’t live next to the kinds of major research universities that do most of…

  40. 82: Frogs, pears, and more staples from linguistics example sentences

    · 44 min

    Linguists are often interested in comparing several languages or dialects. To make this easier, it’s useful to have data that’s relatively similar across varieties, so that the differences really pop out. But what…

  41. 81: The verbs had been being helped by auxiliaries

    · 38 min

    In the sentence “the horse has eaten an apple”, what is the word “has” doing? It’s not expressing ownership of something, like in “the horse has an apple”. (After all, the horse could have very sneakily eaten the…

  42. 80: Word Magic

    · 37 min

    The magical kind of spell and the written kind of spell are historically linked. This reflects how saying a word can change the state of the world, both in terms of fictional magic spells that set things on fire or…

  43. 79: Tone and Intonation? Tone and Intonation!

    · 41 min

    Spoken languages can change the pitch or melody of words to convey several different kinds of information. When the pitch affects the meaning of the whole phrase, such as rising to indicate a question in English,…

  44. 78: Bringing stories to life in Auslan - Interview with Gabrielle Hodge

    · 29 min

    Communicating is about more than the literal, dictionary-entry-style words that we say -- it’s also about the many subtle ingredients that go into a message, from how you keep your audience in mind to how you portray…

  45. 77: How kids learn language in Singapore - Interview with Woon Fei Ting

    · 44 min

    Singapore is a small city-state nation with four official languages: English, Mandarin, Tamil, and Malay. Most Singaporeans can also speak a local hybrid variety known as Singlish, which arose from this highly…

  46. 76: Where language names come from and why they change

    · 37 min

    Language names come from many sources. Sometimes they’re related to a geographical feature or name of a group of people. Sometimes they’re related to the word for “talk” or “language” in the language itself; other…

  47. 75: Love and fury at the linguistics of emotions

    · 27 min

    Emotions are a universal part of the human experience, but the specific ways we express them are mediated through language. For example, English uses the one word “love” for several distinct feelings: familial love,…

  48. 74: Who questions the questions?

    · 38 min

    We use questions to ask people for information (who’s there?), but we can also use them to make a polite request (could you pass me that?), to confirm social understanding (what a game, eh), and for stylistic effect,…

  49. 73: The linguistic map is not the linguistic territory

    · 39 min

    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…

  50. 72: What If Linguistics - Absurd hypothetical questions with Randall Munroe of xkcd

    · 50 min

    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…

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