Because Language - a podcast about linguistics, the science of language.

What's the difference between a KINK and a FETISH? Does it matter if you ASSUME or PRESUME? English is full of these close groups of words, and author Eli Burnstein has untangled many of them in his delightful book The Dictionary of Fine Distinctions. Eli joins us for this episode.

Timestamps
Intros: 0:42
News: 9:54
Related or Not: 24:11
Interview with Eli Burnstein: 37:33
Words of the Week: 1:10:13
The Reads: 1:33:45

New York City is home to a lot of languages! Sometimes a sizeable language community can live on just a couple of floors of an apartment building. Dr Ross Perlin is working to find and promote minority languages in NYC. He's the co-founder of the Endangered Language Alliance, and author of Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York. Ross joins us for this episode.

Intro: 0:36
News: 8:13
Related or Not: 32:52
Interview with Ross Perlin: 43:12
Words of the Week: 1:24:13
The Reads: 1:39:54

Show notes: http://becauselanguage.com/96-language-city/
Support the show: http://patreon.com/join/becauselangpod/

Language authorities. Right-wing politicians. White supremacists and feminists. What do they have in common? They're all working together to fight gender-inclusive language. But why bring language into this fight? What extra does this give them?

Dr Caitlin Green and Maureen Kosse join us to explain on this big episode.

In honour of Grammar Day (4 March), we are joined live by special guest Ellen Jovin, who regularly dispenses grammar advice and wisdom from the Grammar Table. Now she's testing our grammatical mettle and answering our questions.

YouTube video of this episode:
https://youtu.be/C1l8Alk3Ptc?si=7pnGnuKcy9YY-mhR

What are your eyes doing when you describe a scene? It may depend on your language.

New research from Dr Rachel Nordlinger and team shows that we do a lot of planning and scanning very quickly, and it follows the requirements of our language. She's studied Murrinhparta, an Australian Aboriginal language, to see what its speakers do.

We’re talking words, and no one has a way with words like Grant Barrett. He’s here to tell us what it’s like at Dictionary.com, and what went down at the annual American Dialect Society Words of the Year 2023 vote. And perhaps he can help forestall Hedvig’s planned mass human extinction.

Also: World Endangered Writing Day is upon us! It’s a fantastic initiative, and author Tim Brookes of Endangered Alphabets is here to lay out the case for preserving writing systems.

The public has voted, and a winner has been decided! We're looking all the words chosen by the various dictionary bodies, and counting down our Words of the Week of the Year.

And there's a very special interview with author, blogger, activist, and inventor of words Cory Doctorow.

What is a woman? Or a man? Or a chair, or a sandwich? Or anything, really?

"Gender critical" people are making language into a vector to attack the rights of trans people. They treat categories like man and woman as binary and obvious.

But cognitive linguistics has a response, in the form of a new paper in Nature Human Behaviour. Are categories concrete, or are they mental, social, or something else? How do we categorise objects at all? Author Dr Andrew Perfors brings the science on this episode.

Who wrote the Oxford English Dictionary? Sure, James Murray had a very important role as editor, but a small army of volunteers submitted hundreds of thousands of words on slips of paper to get the project off the ground. What were their stories, and why did they have such a relentless sense of mission for the OED?

Dr Sarah Ogilvie is sharing her research into their lives and times, and it's startling and wondrous. She's a lexicographer and author of The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary.

Our accents are great! They represent our origins, our languages, our community, and our identity. But too many of us feel like we can't speak with our authentic voice. Accent prejudice is real.

Linguist and author Dr Rob Drummond joins us toexplain all about accent and accentism. He's the author of a new book You're All Talk.

And Dr Robbie Love is joining us with his research about how the word fuck is changing in the speech of British teens. Spicy!