Linguistics After Dark

Episode 20: The Ghost of Language Past

Wherein we play language games. Jump right to: * 12:47 Linguistics Thing Of The Day: Language games * 37:07 Question 1: Could y’all talk about how your understanding of how to pronounce the word can affect what you think the spelling, etymology, or meaning is? Examples that comes to mind is “su-burban” vs “sub-urban,” “a napron” vs “an apron,” “a stigmatism” vs “an astigmatism,” “acomma” vs “a comma,” etc. though I think some of those examples are actually different phenomena from each other. I think one is juncture loss? Or rebracketing? * 58:28 Question 2: If you had a chance to influence the evolution of language, what feature/words would you add a) because you like them and b) to troll people? * 1:21:43 The puzzler: How can a cube be cut so that the cross-section is a hexagon? Covered in this episode: * Latin: the Ghost of Spanish Past * The Ides of March * Not philosophers discussing cavemen building walls * Pig Latin and Ubbi dubbi vs cant, argot, Polari, Cockney rhyming slang… * Argobus, argopodes * Language cannot be contained * Verlan * Juncture loss, rebracketing, and reanalysis in general * Rocketcopters * Eli shares a hot take about French he heard years ago (from an actual linguist) * LOLcat, dogespeak, and uwuspeak * ȝ * Evidentiality * Clusivity * Identity attestation in first- and second-person pronouns * Titles aren’t pronouns but they’re sort of next door * Doctorates should not be relevant to playing frisbee Links and other post-show thoughts: * WaniKani [https://www.wanikani.com/] * Yes, being in Italy during Easter during the Jubilee was wild; being in the Vatican while the Pope laid in state was even wilder. (No, Sarah and her students did not get to see him, because they did not have 3+ hours to stand in line.) * “Ghosts speak Latin” was supposedly a common belief in Elizabethan England, although Jenny couldn’t actually find a source more direct/reliable than footnotes in various copies of Hamlet (I.i.49) so better citation possibly needed? * Ubbi dubbi [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubbi_dubbi], Polari [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polari], Tutnese [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutnese], and Verlan [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan]. We couldn’t find an actual concrete origin of the name “Pig Latin,” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_Latin#Origins_and_history] though it does seem to have been called “Hog Latin” and to have begun as a version of “Dog Latin” (which seems to have referred to parody Latin in general). * The Pig Latin puzzler was episode 8 [https://linguisticsafterdark.com/2024/03/22/episode-8.html]! * Sarah and Eli say that the N in ‘a whole nother’ is always there. This is false: around twenty minutes earlier, Sarah herself said “a whole other,” which in retrospect she can confirm is absolutely influenced by Al’s point that knowing how the spelling works can change your pronunciation. * Several examples of Verlan [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XbdWYNpQC2c] from one of [https://www.youtube.com/@Multilingual_nest/shorts] the channels [https://www.youtube.com/@royaventurera] Sarah likes. * “Helicopter” came up in episode 14. [https://linguisticsafterdark.com/2024/12/28/episode-14.html] * “Electric [https://www.etymonline.com/word/electric]” does derive from Greek “ēlektron,” but not directly! It was borrowed into Latin as “electrum,” and then “electricus” in the 1600s by physicist William Gilbert. “Electric” and “electricity [https://www.etymonline.com/word/electricity]” were both first used in English in the 1640s by Sir Thomas Browne, who seems to have coined the latter. “Electrick [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/electrick#English]” is a known early alternate spelling, so that definitely always would have been pronounced with a [k], but we couldn’t find evidence in either direction for whether “electricity” has always had an [s]. Also, Jenny has had the Schoolhouse Rock song [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu_cdePrNe8] stuck in her head for three days. * The conlang Eli was thinking of is the Aramteskan language from P.M. Freestone’s Shadowscent [https://www.goodreads.com/series/243061-shadowscent] series, and was developed by Lauren Gawne [https://www.superlinguo.com/post/188957453957/how-i-made-the-aramteskan-language-for-pm], of Lingthusiasm [https://www.superlinguo.com/post/188477210640/lingthusiasm-lingthusiasm-episode-37-smell] fame! * Dual, trial, paucal [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_number#Dual] (not “trual,” whoops!) * The NativLang [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eelVqfm8vVc&t=4m36s] video that discusses Chinese timekeeping words. Ask us questions: Send your questions (text or voice memo) to questions@linguisticsafterdark.com, or find us as @lxadpodcast on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Credits: Linguistics After Dark is produced by Emfozzing Enterprises. Audio editing is done by Abby and Charlie, question wrangling and show notes are done by Jenny, and transcriptions are done by Luca and Deren. Our music is "Covert Affair" by Kevin MacLeod [https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3558-covert-affair/]. And until next time… if you weren’t consciously aware of your tongue in your mouth, now you are :)

Episode 19: Voiced Glottal Stop 2k25

Wherein we are pro-winter until approximately February 15. Jump right to: * 4:38 Linguistics Thing Of The Day: Allophones * 26:50 Question 1: Why do we say “And you will be… (this person)?” when confirming identity? Why is it future tense? This cannot possibly be English. This cannot exist. Am I just wrong or is this one of those weird linguistic things? * 34:59 Question 2: If you had to remove one sound from the human phonemic inventory, which one would it be and why? * 42:05 Question 3: So, English’s pronoun “they” can vary in meaning quite a lot, for example in phrases like: “well [you know] what they say….” In this case, the meaning of ‘they’ is kind of like ‘the general public.’ An extra pronoun in the language for this could be slightly useful, as confusion could occur between ‘they’ meaning ‘that one specific group of people’ [versus] ‘the general public.’ My question is; whether languages exist where something like this extra pronoun actually exists. * 1:02:36 The puzzler: A couple claimed it was the anniversary of their wedding in order to receive a discount at a restaurant. The woman said, “Our wedding was on a beautiful Sunday morning, with birds chirping and flowers all in bloom, twenty-eight years ago today.” The waiter responded that the wedding sounded lovely, but they did not qualify for the discount. How did he know they were lying? Covered in this episode: * [d] vs. [t] vs. [ɾ], bases, paces, pesos, and besos * English “R” is really weird and none of us know why we do it * Allophones in complementary distribution are like Batman and Bruce Wayne * Eli is not the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court * Sarah plans a very strange dinner party * The future (tense) of English is vast and unknowable (and collapsing with the subjunctive even where it didn’t used to) * One of those weird linguistic things turns out to actually be three of those weird linguistic things * Sarah and Eli briefly forget [ɦ] is a sound that exists * Babies deserve to keep labiodental tap [ⱱ] but bilabial trill [ʙ] could go * We have not turned a shitpost into something useful * “Chat” is not a fourth-person pronoun * Official LxAD stance: The correct thing to do upon seeing a pile of snow is “jump in it” * Specific versus generic third-person plural pronouns * Clusivity * Singular, dual, paucal, and plural * Eli’s keyboard could have prevented him from guessing last time’s puzzler Links and other post-show thoughts: * Congrats to Don Bravo in Marshfield who now have a year-round liquor license actually! * We promised to include an allophones worksheet in the show notes, so here’s [https://users.castle.unc.edu/~jlsmith/ling101/hw/hw2.pdf] two [https://users.castle.unc.edu/~jlsmith/ling101/hw/hw4.pdf] from a Ling 101 class at UNC Chapel Hill! * Voiced ⟨h⟩ is [ɦ], the voiced glottal fricative [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_glottal_fricative] * The IPA chart [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet#/media/File:IPA_chart_2020.svg]: note that here, as is sometimes the case, the “light gray” and “dark gray” boxes Sarah and Eli refer to are instead blank/empty & gray, respectively. * The sounds Eli suggested collapsing into one are [x] (voiceless velar fricative [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_fricative]), [χ] (voiceless uvular fricative [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_uvular_fricative]), and [ħ] (voiceless pharyngeal fricative [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_pharyngeal_fricative]). Alternately, we could remove the pharyngeals [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharyngeal_consonant] entirely. * Periodic Lingthusiasm [https://lingthusiasm.com/] shout-out! * See more at linguisticsafterdark.com [http://linguisticsafterdark.com/2025/12/06/episode-19.html] Ask us questions: Send your questions (text or voice memo) to questions@linguisticsafterdark.com, or find us as @lxadpodcast on all the usual socials. Credits: Linguistics After Dark is produced by Emfozzing Enterprises. Audio editing is done by Abby and Charlie, show notes are done by Jenny, and transcriptions are done by Luca and Deren. Our music is "Covert Affair" by Kevin MacLeod [https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3558-covert-affair/]. And until next time… if you weren’t consciously aware of your tongue in your mouth, now you are :)

Episode 18: Can't Say "Teeth" Without Teeth

Wherein we are not professionals. Jump right to: * 4:44 Language Thing of the Day: The short scale vs the long scale * 21:38 Question 1: Why do we use 'on' to refer to spiders being 'on' ceilings? To me the spiders aren't on top of the ceiling, they're under. All the languages I know use a very similar preposition to 'on' in English, so I'd like to know if any other languages use a different preposition or postposition. * 38:20 Question 2: Morphologically and grammatically Japanese and te reo Māori behave very similarly: tons of particles all over the place, compounding as a major word source, not many affixes, little to no inflection, reduplication to convey emphasis, and very restrictive phonotactics. I see a pattern: Mandarin, Vietnamese and Thai disallow large consonant clusters and are highly analytic. On the other end of the spectrum there are Georgian (agglutinative hell), and (fusional) Czech, which both have unpronounceable consonant clusters. Is this correlation real or am I imagining things? [If it's real,] what is the reason for this convergent evolution? * 56:05 Question 3: Would someone wanting to be a linguist need a degree? Or is a degree just a sort of certification? I’ve always wondered this because I’ve always been fascinated by linguistics but I didn’t pursue it in university, instead opting for Translation (which I guess could use linguistics but you know what I mean). Would you guys, actual linguists, consider someone who studies the subject by themselves and engages in conversations of linguistics to be a linguist? * 1:13:09 Last episode’s puzzler’s answer * 1:19:09 The puzzler: Complete the sequence. C, F, T, ?, Y, H, N, J, I, ? Covered in this episode: * Teeth * Myriads, millions, milliards, billions, billiards, trillions, and trilliards * Don’t be Canada * Indefinite hyperbolic numerals, like “ten thousand,” “seventy,” “seventy times seven,” “a billion,” “a bajillion,” or “hrair” * Hanging on to the roof of a bus * Horses do not have walls * Are French speakers dans or en a mechsuit? We want to know * Things Sarah gets wrong on Duolingo * From a spider’s perspective, the enemy’s gate is up * Does anyone do things by purpose? * The time on a clock is a place, a month or a year is a container, and a day is a surface * Why do English speakers do “strength” to ourselves * The “s” on a present-tense English verb is spicy and weird * Japanese says you can have little a consonant, as a treat * There are more than seven languages in the world * Syllabic consonants * Being a linguist is not a real-world career * L’Academie Francais are disqualified from linguistics forever * Eli proposes a screenplay * It’s teeth that are the problem Links and other post-show thoughts: * We accidentally skipped drinks chat, but Eli had water and Sarah had a weird but tasty raspberry-lemonade wine cooler thing [https://beatboxbeverages.com/products/pink-lemonade-11-1-abv] * The secret dozenal system in English [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lSMPJ1ZJk_U] and the long hundred [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_hundred] * Short scale vs long scale [https://foone.tumblr.com/post/761621342749638656], h/t Bex * “Thousand” isn’t actually that weird; it’s just a Germanic word, instead of being derived from Latin. Here’s a map of words for “thousand” in European languages color-coded by etymology [https://i.imgur.com/gMChW6j.png] * Per Etymonline: “billiards” [https://www.etymonline.com/word/billiards] the game played on as rectangular table with ivory balls and wooden sticks, 1590s, from French billiard, originally the word for the wooden cue stick, a diminutive of Old French bille "stick of wood," from Medieval Latin billia "tree, trunk," which is possibly from Gaulish (compare Irish bile "tree trunk"); totally unrelated to French billiard [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/billiard#French] * See more on our website [https://linguisticsafterdark.com/2025/08/02/episode-18.html] Ask us questions: Send your questions (text or voice memo) to questions@linguisticsafterdark.com, or find us as @lxadpodcast on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Credits: Linguistics After Dark is produced by Emfozzing Enterprises. Audio editing is done by Charlie and Abby, show notes are done by Jenny, and transcriptions are done by Luca and Deren. Our music is "Covert Affair" by Kevin MacLeod [https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3558-covert-affair/]. And until next time… if you weren’t consciously aware of your tongue in your mouth, now you are :)

LxAD @ CrossingsCon Announcement

LINGUISTICS AFTER DARK WILL BE LIVE NEXT MONTH! COME SEE US AT CROSSINGSCON IN PHILADELPHIA, AUGUST 15TH–17TH. MORE DETAILS AT CROSSINGSCON.ORG [https://crossingscon.org/] ---------------------------------------- transcript: ELI: Hey, hey, Sarah, what do you call it when a corvid recites a poem by Coleridge? SARAH: …what? ELI: A crow sings Khan. SARAH: But why? that doesn't make any sens—ohhh, a CrossingsCon, because we're doing a live show there! ELI: Yeah! And, and, hey, Sarah, when are the Ides of August? SARAH: Well, CrossingsCon is the 15th through the 17th. The Ides of August are actually on the 13th. ELI: Wait, no no no, ides are on the 15th, you know, the ides of march, stabby stabby, the whole— SARAH: No, only sometimes, because the Romans did this weird thing where they counted the days in a month— ELI: No no no, this isn't Romans After Dark, this is Linguistics After Dark, come see us live at CrossingsCon, August 15th through 17th, more details at crossingscon.org!

Episode 17: The Vibes Are Iffy

Wherein we learn how to learn how to read. Jump right to: * 4:53 Linguistics Thing Of The Day: Existential “be” versus straight copula * 16:32 Topic of the day: Phonics vs. the 3-cueing model, AKA how learning to read works, and how teaching people to read works (or doesn’t) * 1:37:43 The puzzler: “Second in command managed jewel branch. A boy, last minute, made breakfast spread (6,9)” Covered in this episode: * The best holiday dinner foods * Existential verbs * Copulas * The science of reading * “Vibes-based reading” is probably not a fair term but also maybe not an inaccurate one * The phonological processor * FLOSZ rule * Scribal O * “Ghoti” is not pronounced “fish” * 40% and 90% are different numbers * The difference between being able to read and being able to read * Statistically speaking, most people are not Sarah * The four-part processing system model * The orthographic processor * Developmentally inappropriate fonts for kids * Developmentally inappropriate fonts for Sarah on Duolingo * Eli learns he’s a white girl from Ohio * Sight-reading is not the same as whole-word reading * The semantic processor * Associating dogs and blueberries, dogs and bogs, or dogs and dishes * The context processor * Most people will not learn to read on their own * If you’re good at something, don’t necessarily teach it * For once on this podcast, an actual definitive answer! (Which some people might disagree with.) * There is no “too late” in life to learn to read * Where to learn to read, as an adult * The nerdiest part of the episode * The portion of our audience which comprises sailors from the 1800s Links and other post-show thoughts: * Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind, by George Lakoff [https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo3632089.html] * True Biz, by Sara Nović [https://sara-novic.com/true-biz] * We may not actually have talked about scalar implicature by name on the pod? Sarah talked about it in a linguistics presentation at CrossingsCon, which we think may be what Eli and Sarah were (mis)remembering when they said we’d covered it early on. Potential future Language Thing of the Day…? * Sixty-three percent of fourth-grade students performed at or above the NAEP Basic level in 2022, while thirty-seven percent of fourth-grade students performed below the NAEP Basic level. Only thirty-three percent of fourth-grade students performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level on the reading assessment in 2022. [https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading/nation/achievement/?grade=4] * Not for the first time and not for the last: chriego and sgr [https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Ftwoqaq50zf9b1.jpg] * Also not the for the first time, Canadian syllabics [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Aboriginal_syllabics] * What The Font? [https://www.myfonts.com/pages/whatthefont] * The three-cueing system was developed by Ken Goodman, who almost certainly had undiagnosed dyslexia [https://www.tumblr.com/3liza/783240217548259328/he-brought-up-the-example-of-a-child-who-comes-to], and has been described as functionally teaching children to be dyslexic, rather than teaching anyone (with or without dyslexia) to actually read. * Mapping where words are housed in the brain [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k61nJkx5aDQ] * Jumbled words don’t actually work quite like that [https://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/] * The style of writing Latin that Sarah refers to is called scripto continua [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptio_continua] * The four-part processor diagram Kristen describes [https://readinghorizons.com/blog/teaching-high-frequency-words-the-science-of-readings-breakthrough-instructional-method/] * LETRS course with Louisa Moats and Carol Tolman [https://www.lexialearning.com/resources/webinars/welcome-to-letrs] * UFLI is the University of Florida Literacy Institute [https://ufli.education.ufl.edu/] * The six syllable types in English orthography [https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/spelling-and-word-study/articles/six-syllable-types] Ask us questions: Send your questions (text or voice memo) to questions@linguisticsafterdark.com, or find us as @lxadpodcast on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Credits: Linguistics After Dark is produced by Emfozzing Enterprises. Audio editing is done by Charlie, show notes are done by Jenny, and transcriptions are done by Luca and Deren. Our music is "Covert Affair" by Kevin MacLeod [https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3558-covert-affair/]. And until next time… if you weren’t consciously aware of your tongue in your mouth, now you are :)