lingthusiasm

Bonus 11: We are all linguistic geniuses - Communicating linguistics interview with Daniel Midgley of Talk the Talk

We're excited to be part of the broader linguistics podcast community and bring you behind the scenes on other shows!  

In this interview, Lauren sat down with Daniel Midgley of the Talk the Talk radio show/podcast to talk about how Daniel got into linguistics, what linguists and radio producers have in common, his favourite linguistics resources, and how linguists can be better at engaging with the media and the public. 

Lauren and Daniel got to hang out as part of the ...

15: Talking and thinking about time

When we talk about things that languages have in common, we often talk about the physical side, the fact that languages are produced by human bodies, using the same brain and hands and vocal tract. But they’re also all produced (so far) by people from the same planet and going through the same fourth dimension: time.

As the earth revolves around the sun again, each of your Lingthusiasm cohosts is going through another longest (Lauren) or shortest (Gretchen) day, and we’re reflecting on how...

Exciting future goal planning!

First things first: YAaaaaayyyyyYYYyyy!!! Less than a year after starting the podcast, we not only have a Patreon model that is sustainable, but you now get a full-length bonus episode every month from December on! 

(Also, Patreon isn't changing their payment structure after all, so everything is as it was before, and apologies for any confusion on that front.) 

When we started this Patreon we knew it was important to set goals, but we had very little sense of how long it might...

Bonus 10: Liveshow Q and eh

This episode is the Q&A session recorded after the Discourse markers liveshow. We fielded questions from the audience, as well as some sent in by patrons and fans who couldn't attend, and now you get to hang out with this excellent roomful of lingthusiasts in virtual space!  

We discuss 'eh', that most Canadian of discourse markers, and our favourite discourse markers. We also talk ab...

14: Getting into, up for, and down with prepositions

Are you up for some prepositions? You might think you’re over prepositions, but have you ever really looked into them, or have you just gone by them? Other parts of speech notwithstanding, prepositions are something we’re really down with.

In Episode 14 of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne introduce you to our favourite English grammar book, the mammoth, 1800-page Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (affectionately known as CGEL), and take a deep dive into ...

Wear your linguistics fandom on your sleeve (Sneak peek!)

By popular demand, we now have Lingthusiasm merch! We're soft-launching the merch here on Patreon because we wanted you all to be the first to know, and it'll be released to the internet at large in time for the next episode on Thursday (but please keep it under wraps until then). 

Lingthusiasm the podcast transforms your boring commute or chores into a lively, nerdy conversation, and now you can wear your linguistics fandom on your sleeve, around your neck, and surrounding your coffee or...

Lingthusiasm anniversary episode in November - Recommend, Review and Relisten!

November is the 1-year anniversary episode of Lingthusiasm! To celebrate a whole year of enthusiastic linguistics podcasting, we’re aiming to hit another milestone at the same time: 100,000 listens across all episodes. We’re currently just above 95.5k, so it’s totally doable! 

This time last year, Lingthusiasm was a top-secret project that no one had listened to yet (though we had actually already recorded two of the three episodes we launched with). Now, we've produced 13...

Bonus 9: Is X a sandwich? Solving the word-meaning argument once and for all

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, a bird, a fish, furniture, art, and more! 

So wait...does any word mean anything anymore? Have we just broken language??  It's okay, linguistics has a solu...

13: What Does it Mean to Sound Black? Intonation and Identity Interview with Nicole Holliday

If you grow up with multiple accents to choose from, what does the  one you choose say about your identity? How can linguistics unpick our  hidden assumptions about what “sounds angry” or “sounds articulate”?  What can we learn from studying the melodies of speech, in addition to  the words and sounds? 

In Episode 13 of Lingthusiasm, your host Gretchen McCulloch interviews 2017-10-19 23:54:34 +0000 UTC View Post

Bonus 9 poll - Is X a sandwich?

Is a hotdog a sandwich? What about pizza? What about a taco? What even is a sandwich? 

Wait, but is cereal soup? Is a bench a chair?? Is a cup a bowl??? 

AHHH HOW DOES MEANING WORK????

In an upcoming bonus episode, we're going to explore the hotly debated, much-requested "Is X a sandwich?" issue, and what this question tells us about how we assign meanings to words. 

But first! Let's get some concrete data. Please check the boxes by whichever of the things belo...

Bonus 8: So, like, what’s up with, um, discourse markers? Hark, a liveshow!

There are all these little words and phrases that we use all the time - y'know, anyway, okay, right, so, however, I mean, uh, and then... They aren't strictly necessary, and yet our speech would feel so weird without them. Welcome to the world of discourse markers! 

In this special Lingthusiasm live show, recorded in Montreal at Argo Bookshop, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne ensure you can say YES the next some someone says ‘y'know?’ 

We look at how re...

12: Sounds you can’t hear - Babies, accents, and phonemes

Why does it always sound slightly off when someone tries  to imitate your accent? Why do tiny children learning your second  language already sound better than you, even though you’ve been learning  it longer than they’ve been alive? What does it mean for there to be  sounds you can’t hear?

In Episode 12 of Lingthusiasm, your hosts  Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch explore the fundamental linguistic  insight at the heart of all these question...

Impromptu Montreal liveshow!

Later this month Lauren will be travelling to Montreal for a conference, and it just so happens that Montreal is where Gretchen lives! We decided that we couldn't resist this rare occasion for both of us being in the same place at the same time to try organizing a liveshow!  

We're thinking of it as a practice run for the big Patreon liveshow goal that we're planning for the future, and yes, we'll definitely give you all way more advance notice and consult you about location options for t...

Bonus 7: DIY Linguistic Research

What's the etymology of this word? When did people start using that thing? How is this new slang term used? 

Answering common linguistic questions is often a matter of where to look. In this bonus episode, Gretchen and Lauren talk about our favourite freely accessible linguistics research tools, from Etymonline to corpora, and how to get access to other kinds of linguistics resources when you're not at a university and don't have a research budget. 

We also talk about th...

What kinds of Lingthusiasm merch would you be interested in?

Our next bonus episode is going to be about doing linguistic research, especially when you're just getting started, not at a university, or don't have a huge budget. It was a tie with the previous topic, so we're happy to see that all the suggestions have been so popular, but we also don’t want to deprive you of a chance to click buttons and make your thoughts known this month! 

So instead, we're bringing you a MERCH POLL. We posted a photo of a couple handmade Lingthusiasm buttons/badg...

11: Layers of meaning - Cooperation, humour, and Gricean Maxims

– Would you like some coffee? 
– Coffee would keep me awake. 

Does  that mean yes coffee, or no coffee? It depends! Is it the morning or  the evening? Is the person trying to pull an all-nighter or take an  afternoon nap? A computer looking strictly at the meanings of the words  would be confused, but we humans do this kind of thing all the time  without even noticing it. 

In episode 11 of Lingthusiasm, your  hosts Gretchen  McCull...

Bonus 6: Language Play

You've probably heard of Pig Latin, or ig-Pay atin-Lay, where you bring the initial consonants to the end of the word and add -ay. But what about the inverse, where you bring the final consonants to the beginning of the word and add -ay? gay-Pi nay-Lati? In theory, it should be just as easy. In practice, the second one is way more difficult for your brain. But why?

This bonus episode of Lingthusiasm talks about language play! Games like Pig Latin, the Gibberish/Obbish family, rhyming sl...

It's a tie! Thanks for voting to select bonus 6... and 7!

The recent poll was so close that we've decided that bonus 6 will be about language games, and episode 7 will be about linguistic research ideas. 

Don't worry, we know you like the chance to vote (well, except the three of you who voted in the last poll against choosing), so we'll have a fun ~mystery poll~ instead of next month's topic poll.

Bonus 6 - what do you want to hear?

Which topic, suggested by your fellow patrons, would you like to hear for lingthusiasm bonus 6? 

10: Learning languages linguistically

Some linguists work with multiple languages, while others focus on just one. But for many people, learning a language after early childhood is the thing that first gets them curious about how language works in general and all the things in their native language(s) that they take for granted. 

In episode 10 of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne talk about how learning languages can feed into linguistics and vice versa. We also explore the power dynamics that affec...

Bonus 5: Hypercorrection

Is it "you and me" or "you and I"? Does "octopus" pluralize as "octopuses", "octopi" or "octopodes? If you're ordering a nice bottle of champagne, how do you say Moët? And what does that say about you?

People care a lot about talking "correctly" -- sometimes so much that we over-apply things we've been corrected on even in contexts where they didn't originally apply, a phenomenon known as hypercorrection. 

Hypercorrection and what we even think of as "correct" or "fancy" isn...

New recorder in the wild!

The new recorder is here, thanks to all you lovely patrons, so we thought we'd let you get the first glimpse of it in its, er, natural habitat! 

(Don't worry, it was returned to its protective case as soon as the photo was taken!)

9: The bridge between words and sentences - Constituency

 How do we get from knowing words to making brand-new  sentences out of them? In episode 9 of Lingthusiasm, we talk about how words form groups with other  words: constituency.

Once you start looking for it, constituency  is everywhere: in ambiguous sentences like “time flies like an arrow;  fruit flies like a banana”, in remixed films like “Of Oz The Wizard”,  and even internet dog memes.

For more information, and links to things mentioned in this e...

Vote for bonus 5!

We have two candidates for the topic of bonus five, and voting is open until Saturday. Which topic are you most interested in?

Bonus 4: Doggo linguistics behind the scenes

A while back, Gretchen was interviewed as part of an NPR story on the 'doggo' meme. While we were recording episode 8, Gretchen shared some of the backstory to the meme, and Lauren weighed in with her Australian nicknaming intuitions, but it got quite long and we had to cut it from episode 8 proper. &...

We're glad you're here

We just wanted to take this chance to say thanks to all of you that help make Lingthusiasm happen! This was the first month that your pledges paid our producer and our transcriber, which is a huge help for keeping the podcast ad-free and sustainable.  

We were both big fans of the Patreon model before we decided it was the best fit for Lingthusiasm. We love how it allows fans and creators to directly connect and build something cool together, and we're also patrons of creators an...

Vote for bonus 4!

Last month Gretchen was interviewed as part of an NPR story on the 'doggo' meme. While we were recording episode 8, Gretchen shared some of the backstory to the meme, and Lauren weighed in with her Australian nicknaming intuitions, but it got quite long and we had to cut it from episode 8 proper.  

Would you like ...

8: People who make dictionaries - Review of WORD BY WORD by Kory Stamper

Dictionaries: they’re made by real people! 

In episode 8 of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch talk about Word by Word, a recent book by Kory Stamper, a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster, about how dictionaries get made. (Spoiler: we liked it.) We also talk about how dictionaries get made for languages that don’t have any yet, the changing role of dictionaries on the internet and with social media, and how words often have a longer history than we expect (’g...

Bonus 3: How to sell linguistics skills to employers

Whether it's a semester of Linguistics 101, a BA, or a PhD, in our third bonus we share our tips for selling linguistics to future employers. We talk about why linguists have valuable skills that employers love, how to translate linguist-speak into boss-speak, the linguistic and other skills that have made our own careers possible, and cool things that other linguists have gone on to do for work. You'll even get the lowdown on what we both wanted to be when we grew up (spoiler: we didn't know 'l...

Vote on Bonus Topic 3!

We have two topic ideas for bonus three. Voting is open over the weekend and Monday. Which topic would you most like to get the lowdown on?