Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics

How do languages talk about the time when something happens? Of course, we can use words like “yesterday”, “on Tuesday”, “once upon a time”, “now”, or “in a few minutes”. But some languages also require their speakers to use an additional small piece of language to convey time-related information, and this is called tense. In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne talk about when some languages obligatorily encode time into their grammar. We look at how linguists go about determining whether a language has tense at all, and if so, how many tenses it has, from two tenses (like English past and non-past), to three tenses (past, present, and future), to further tenses, like remote past and on-the-same-day. --- This month’s bonus episode is about what happens when the robots take over Lingthusiasm! In this extension of our interview with Janelle Shane from Episode 40, we train a neural net to generate new Lingthusiasm episodes and perform some of the most absurd ones for you. Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to the Robot-Lingthusiasm episode and 35 previous bonus episodes, and to chat with fellow lingthusiasts in the Lingthusiasm patron Discord patreon.com/lingthusiasm Lingthusiasm merch makes a great gift for yourself or other lingthusiasts! Check out IPA scarves, IPA socks, and more at lingthusiasm.redbubble.com For the links mentioned in this episode, check out the shownotes page at https://lingthusiasm.com/post/190937079286/lingthusiasm-episode-41-this-time-it-gets-tense

If you feed a computer enough ice cream flavours or pictures annotated with whether they contain giraffes, the hope is that the computer may eventually learn how to do these things for itself: to generate new potential ice cream flavours or identify the giraffehood status of new photographs. But it’s not necessarily that easy, and the mistakes that machines make when doing relatively silly tasks like ice cream naming or giraffe identification can illuminate how artificial intelligence works when doing more serious tasks as well. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne interview Dr Janelle Shane, author of You Look Like A Thing And I Love You and person who makes AI do delightfully weird experiments on her blog and twitter feed. We talk about how AI “sees” language, what the process of creating AI humour is like (hint: it needs a lot of human help to curate the best examples), and ethical issues around trusting algorithms. Finally, Janelle helped us turn one of the big neural nets on our own 70+ transcripts of Lingthusiasm episodes, to find out what Lingthusiasm would sound like if Lauren and Gretchen were replaced by robots! This part got so long and funny that we made it into a whole episode on its own, which is technically the February bonus episode, but we didn’t want to make you wait to hear it, so we’ve made it available right now! This bonus episode includes a more detailed walkthrough with Janelle of how she generated the Robo-Lingthusiasm transcripts, and live-action reading of some of our favourite Robo-Lauren and Robo-Gretchen moments. Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to the Robo-Lingthusiasm episode and 35 previous bonus episodes. patreon.com/lingthusiasm Also for our patrons, we’ve made a Lingthusiasm Discord server – a private chatroom for Lingthusiasm patrons! Chat about the latest Lingthusiasm episode, share other interesting linguistics links, and geek out with other linguistics fans. (We even made a channel where you can practice typing in the International Phonetic Alphabet, if that appeals to you!) To see the links mentioned in this episode, check out the shownotes page at https://lingthusiasm.com/post/190298658151/lingthusiasm-episode-40-making-machines-learn

Why do some conversations seems to flow really easily, while other times, it feels like you can’t get a word in edgewise, or that the other person isn’t holding up their end of the conversation? In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne have a conversation about the structure of conversations! Conversation analysts talk about a spectrum of how we take turns in conversation: some people are more high-involvement, while other people are more high-considerateness, depending on how much time you prefer to elapse between someone else’s turn and your own. These differences explain a lot about when conversations feel like they’re going off the rails and how to bring them back on track. — This month’s bonus episode is about onomatopoeia! We talk about words that take their inspiration from the sounds and experiences of the world around us, and how these words vary across languages. Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to the onomatopoeia episode and 33 previous bonus episodes. patreon.com/lingthusiasm Lingthusiasm merch makes a great gift for yourself or other lingthusiasts! Check out IPA scarves, IPA socks, and more at lingthusiasm.com/merch For more links to everything mentioned in this episode, check out the shownotes at https://lingthusiasm.com/post/189762810146/lingthusiasm-episode-39-how-to-rebalance-a

In English you have one book, and three books. In Arabic you have one kitaab, and three kutub. In Nepali it’s one kitab, and three kitabharu, but sometimes it’s three kitab. In this episode of Lingthusiasm, Gretchen and Lauren look at the many ways that languages talk about how many of something there are, ranging from common distinctions like singular, plural, and dual, to more typologically rare forms like the trial, the paucal, and the associative plural. (And the mysterious absence of the quadral, cross-linguistically!) It’s also our anniversary episode! We’re celebrating three years of Lingthusiasm by asking you to share your favourite fact you’ve learnt from the podcast. Share it on social media and tag @lingthusiasm if you’d like us to reshare it for other people, or just send it directly to someone who you think needs a little more linguistics in their life. This month’s bonus episode was about reading fiction as a linguist! Check out our favourite recs for linguistically interesting fiction and get access to 30+ additional episodes if you’ve run out of lingthusiasm to listen to, by becoming a member on Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links and more go to https://lingthusiasm.com/post/189218282891/lingthusiasm-episode-38-many-ways-to-talk-about

What’s your favourite smell? You might say something like the smell of fresh ripe strawberries, or the smell of freshly-cut grass. But if we asked what your favourite colour is, you might say red or green, but you wouldn’t say the colour of strawberries or grass. Why is it that we have so much more vocabulary for colours than for scents? In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about language and smell! We discuss research into how languages describe scents, colour-odour synesthesia, and how researchers go about doing experiments on smell vocabulary (featuring the gloriously-named Sniffin’ Sticks). Plus, we talk about how Lauren invented a scent-focused language for a YA fantasy novel! The book is called Shadowscent in the US or The Darkest Bloom in the UK, and it’s by PM Freestone. Lauren created the Aramteskan language that appears in the book. We discuss what it is like to work on a constructed language for a novel, and how Lauren brought her knowledge of linguistics into the creation of this language. -- November is our official anniversary month! To celebrate three years of Lingthusiasm, we’re asking you, our listeners, to share your favourite fact from the show! This helps people who need more linguistics in their lives realize that this is a place where they can get it, and helps show us what people find interesting. If you share on social media, tag us (@lingthusiasm) so we can thank you and reshare it. We also have new merch! All of the Lingthusiasm merch makes a great gift for the linguist or language fan in your life, and we love seeing your photos of it! See photos of our new socks, greeting cards, glottal bottles, and t-shirts that say LINGUISTIC "CORRECTNESS" IS JUST A LIE FROM BIG GRAMMAR TO SELL MORE GRAMMARS at redbubble.com/lingthusiasm This month’s bonus episode is about surnames! We share the history of our own surnames, how different cultures approach naming, and when people change names. Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to the directions episode and 31 previous bonus episodes. patreon.com/lingthusiasm For the links mentioned in this episode, go to the shownotes page at https://lingthusiasm.com/post/188414891881/lingthusiasm-episode-37-smell-words-both-real

Larger, national signed languages, like American Sign Language and British Sign Language, often have relatively well-established laboratory-based research traditions, whereas smaller signed languages, such as those found in villages with a high proportion of deaf residents, aren’t studied as much. When we look at signed languages in the context of these smaller communities, we can also think more about how to make research on larger sign languages more natural as well. In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch interviews Dr Lynn Hou, an Assistant Professor of linguistics at the University of California Santa Barbara, in our first bilingual episode (ASL and English). Lina researches how signed languages are used in real-world environments, which takes her from analyzing American Sign Language in youtube videos to documenting how children learn San Juan Quiahije Chatino Sign Language (in collaboration with Hilaria Cruz, one of our previous interviewees!). We’re very excited to bring you our first bilingual episode in ASL and English! For the full experience, make sure to watch the video version of this episode at youtube.com/lingthusiasm (and check out our previous video episode on gesture in spoken language while you’re there). Check out the shownotes page to get the links mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/187829933341/lingthusiasm-episode-36-villages-gifs-and

Sometimes a syllable is jam-packed with sounds, like the single-syllable word “strengths”. Other times, a syllable is as simple as a single vowel or consonant+vowel, like the two syllables in “a-ha!” It’s kind of like a burger: you might pack your burger with tons of toppings, or go as simple as a patty by itself on a plate, but certain combinations are more likely than others. For example, an open-face burger, with only the bottom half of the bun, is less weird than a burger with only the top half. In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about syllables. Why aren’t there any English words that begin with “ng”, even though Vietnamese is perfectly happy to have them? Why do Spanish speakers pronounce the English word “Sprite” more like “Esprite”? Why did English speakers re-analyze Greek helico-pter into heli-copter? Plus more about how different languages prefer different things in their syllable-burgers and what happens when these preferences collide. This month’s bonus episode is about metaphors! Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to the metaphors episode and 29 previous bonus episodes. https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm Today is the final day for two things related to Because Internet, Gretchen’s book about internet linguistics (which is out now and you can get it!). 1. Send us your questions about Because Internet, internet language, or the process of writing a book for a special bonus behind the scenes Q&A episode about the book! 2. Join our new “ling-phabet” tier on Patreon by August 15th in any timezone (you may get a few hours into August 16th if you’re lucky!) and get a signed Because Internet bookplate sticker with your name on it in the mail! https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links and things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/187039068846/lingthusiasm-episode-35-putting-sounds-into

Emoji make a lot of headlines, but what happens when you actually drill down into the data for how people integrate emoji into our everyday messages? It turns out that how we use emoji has a surprising number of similarities with how we use gesture. In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about emoji, and how gesture studies can bring us to a better understanding of these new digital pictures. We also talk about how we first came to notice the similarities between emoji and gesture, including a behind-the-scenes look into chapter five of Gretchen’s book about internet linguistics, Because Internet (the chapter in which Lauren makes a cameo appearance!) Speaking of which, that’s right, Because Internet, Gretchen’s long-anticipated book about internet linguistics, is coming out this Tuesday! (That’s July 23, 2019, if you’re reading this from the future.) If you like the fun linguistics we do on Lingthusiasm, you’ll definitely like this book! Preorders and the first week or two of sales are super important to the lifespan of a book, because they’re its best chance of hitting any sort of bestseller list, so we’d really appreciate it if you got it now! Go to gretchenmcculloch.com/book for ordering links! We’re planning a special bonus Patreon Q&A episode with behind the scenes info on Because Internet and the book writing process once it’s out, so send us your questions at contact@lingthusiasm.com or on social media by August 15th to be part of this bonus episode! We also have a new tier on Patreon! For $15 or more, join the Ling-phabet tier and get your name and favourite IPA symbol or other special character on our Lingthusiasm Supporters Wall of Fame! Plus, join the new $15 tier by August 15th, and get a free Because Internet bookplate signed by Gretchen with your name on it and sent to you in the mail, so you can stick it inside of your copy of Because Internet (or anywhere else you like to put stickers). patreon.com/lingthusiasm As usual, we also have a bonus episode for the $5 Patreon tier, and this month’s bonus episode is about family words! Aka familects, these are the unique words that you create and use within your family. Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to the familects episode and 28 previous bonus episodes. patreon.com/lingthusiasm For the links mentioned in this episode, visit the shownotes page at: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/186386270916/lingthusiasm-episode-34-emoji-are-gesture-because

Why does “gh” make different sounds in “though” “through” “laugh” “light” and “ghost”? Why is there a silent “k” at the beginning of words like “know” and “knight”? And which other languages also have interesting historical artefacts in their spelling systems? Spelling systems are kind of like homes – the longer you’ve lived in them, the more random boxes with leftover stuff you start accumulating. In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about spelling, and celebrate the reasons that it’s sometimes so tricky. We then dive into quirks from some of our favourite spelling systems, including English, French, Spanish, Tibetan, and Arabic. This month’s bonus episode is about direction words! When you’re giving directions, do you tell someone to go north, left, or towards the sea? In this bonus episode, e talk with Alice Gaby about how different languages use different direction words. Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to the directions episode and 27 previous bonus episodes. Because Internet, Gretchen’s book about internet linguistics, is coming out next month, and if you like the fun linguistics we do for Lingthusiasm, you’ll definitely like this book! You can preorder it here in hardcover, ebook, or audiobook (read by Gretchen herself) – preorders are really important because they signal to the publisher that people are excited about linguistics, so they should print lots of copies! We really appreciate your preorders (and you can look forward to a special Q&A episode with behind the scenes info on Because Internet once it’s out!) For links mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/185735719586/lingthusiasm-episode-33-why-spelling-is-hard

Sometimes, you know something for sure. You were there. You witnessed it. And you want to make sure that anyone who hears about it from you knows that you’re a direct source. Other times, you weren’t there, but you still have news. Maybe you found it out from someone else, or you pieced together a couple pieces of indirect evidence. In that case, you don’t want to overcommit yourself. When you pass the information on, you want to qualify it with how you found out, in case it turns out not to be accurate. In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about how we come to know things, and how different languages let us talk about this. Some languages, like English, give us the option of adding extra adverbs and clauses, like “I’m sure that” or “I was told that” or “maybe” or “apparently”. In other languages, like Syuba, indicating how you’ve come to know something is baked right into the grammar. We also talk about what this means for how kids learn languages and how English might evolve more evidentials. This month’s bonus episode is about talking to animals! Making animals learn human language has not generally worked out as well as people have hoped, but the attempts are still very interesting! Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to the animals episode and 26 previous bonus episodes. patreon.com/lingthusiasm -- Merch update! Have you ever browsed the "Insert Symbol" menu just for fun? Do you stay up late reading Wikipedia articles about obscure characters? Or do you just…somehow…know a little bit too much about Unicode? Introducing the new ESOTERIC SYMBOLS scarves! We've hand-picked and arranged in a pleasing array our favourite symbols from the editing, logic, music, game piece, punctuation, mathematics, currency, shapes, planets, arrows, and Just Plain Looks Cool sections of Unicode! Including fan favourites like: the interrobang ‽ multiocular o ꙮ the old school b&w snowman, the pilcrow ¶ the one-em, two-em AND three-em dashes And yes, the classic Unicode error diamond with question mark itself � We're also very excited to announce that all our scarf designs (IPA, trees, and esoteric symbols) are now available on mugs and notebooks, for those who prefer to show off their nerdery in household object rather than apparel form. By popular demand, we've made LITTLE LONGITUDINAL LANGUAGE ACQUISITION PROJECT onesies and kiddy tshirts available for everyone! Available in Mum's, Dad's, Mom's, and without possessor marking (because it turns out that there are a LOT of kinship terms). Get them at: https://redbubble.com/people/lingthusiasm/ Here are the links mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/184928796346/lingthusiasm-episode-32-you-heard-about-it-but-i

When a language is shifting from being spoken by a whole community to being spoken only by older people, it’s crucial to get the kids engaged with the language again. But kids don’t always appreciate the interests of their elders, especially when global popular culture seems more immediately exciting. One idea? Make stories from pop culture, featuring characters like Dumbledore and Batman, but in the local language. In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch interviews Dr Ake Nicholas, a linguist and native speaker of Cook Islands Māori, the lesser known relative of New Zealand Māori. Ake combines her her work as a Lecturer at Massey University, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa, University of New Zealand, with having her students create resources for young Cook Islands Maori learners, especially video stories from pop culture. We also talk about Kōhanga Reo, or language nests, a method for language revitalization that was first developed for New Zealand Māori and has spread around the world, and the social situations around Cook Islands Māori and New Zealand Māori. This month’s bonus episode is about how people in the media know how to pronounce names correctly. It’s an interview with Tiger Webb, who makes the pronunciation guide for the ABC, recorded at our liveshow in Sydney. We get enthusiastic about words, style guides, emoji and more! Lauren and Tiger also quiz Gretchen on whether she’s learned any Australianisms on her visit to Australia, and Gretchen fires back with a few Canadianisms of her own. Feel like you’re in a cosy room of friendly linguistics enthusiasts by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to this and 26 more bonus episodes. patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to everything mentioned in this episode, including a map of the Cook Islands and the videos that Ake's students made, go to https://lingthusiasm.com/post/184283009071/lingthusiasm-episode-31-pop-culture-in-cook

This episode is also available as a special video episode so you can see the gestures! Go to youtube.com/lingthusiasm or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8dHtr7uLHs to watch it! When you describe to someone a ball bouncing down a hill, one of the easiest ways to make it really clear just how much the ball bounced would be to gesture the way that it made its way downwards. You might even do the gesture even if you’re talking to the other person on the telephone and they can’t see you. No matter what language you speak, you’re likely to gesture, but that doesn’t mean we all gesture the same. In Lingthusiasm’s very first video episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about gesture in a format where you can actually see what gestures we’re talking about! In particular, we talk about the kinds of gestures that we make at the same time as our words, even when no one can see us (Ever gesture on the phone? You’re not alone!) These gestures, called co-speech gestures, let us reinforce the rhythm of what we’re saying and indicate where or how something is moving. We also talk about how kids learn to gesture as they’re learning to speak, and how gestures differ in different languages. Massive thank you to our patrons for making this special video episode possible! Producing video is not a trivial task for a production team that’s used to audio-only, and your support on Patreon directly enabled us to film, edit, and caption this video, so everyone gets to learn about gesture linguistics without the frustration of not actually seeing what gestures we’re talking about! You’re stellar human beings and we appreciate you greatly. If you’d like to help Lingthusiasm keep producing regular ad-free episodes and cool additional features like this gesture video, become one of our patrons on Patreon. Plus, if you pledge $5 or more per month, you also get access to a monthly bonus episode and our entire archive of 25 bonus episodes right now. That’s so much Lingthusiasm you don’t wanna miss out on! The latest Patreon bonus episode asks, do you adjust the way you talk depending on who you’re talking to? There’s a word for that: linguistic accommodation. In Bonus 25, Gretchen talks with our producer Claire Gawne (yes, she’s Lauren’s sister) about how they’ve shifted their accents between Melbourne, Montreal, and Edinburgh. Plus, some behind-the-scenes on how Lingthusiasm gets made. Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to listen to it! patreon.com/lingthusiasm For more information and all the links mentioned in this episode, go to https://lingthusiasm.com/post/183615937296/lingthusiasm-episode-30-why-do-we-gesture-when-we

Some sentences have a lot of words all relating to each other, while other sentences only have a few. The verb is the thing that makes the biggest difference: it’s what makes “I gave you the book” sound fine but “I rained you the book” sound weird. Or on the flip side, “it’s raining” is a perfectly reasonable description of a general raining event, but “it’s giving” doesn’t work so well as some sort of general giving event. How can we look for patterns in the ways that verbs influence the rest of the sentence? In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about a new metaphor for how verbs relate to the other words in a sentence -- a verb is like a coat rack and the nouns that it supports are like the coats that hang on it. Admittedly, it creates some slightly odd-looking coat racks that you might not actually want in your home, but as a metaphor it works quite well. (We’ll stick to linguistics rather than becoming furniture designers.) We also take you through a brief tour of other metaphors for verbs and sentences, including going across (aka transitivity) and molecular bonds (aka valency). This month’s bonus episode is a recording from our liveshow in Melbourne, Australia, where we talk about how the internet is making English better with real audience laughter occasionally in the background! Feel like you’re in a cosy room of friendly linguistics enthusiasts by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to this and 23 previous bonus episodes. lingthusiasm.com/patreon Internet language is also the topic of Gretchen’s book, Because Internet, which is now officially available for preorder! You can show the publisher that people are interested in fun linguistics books and have a delightful treat waiting for you on July 23, 2019 by preordering it here! gretchenmcculloch.com/book For links to more topics mentioned in this episode, check out the shownotes page at https://lingthusiasm.com/post/182969748701/lingthusiasm-episode-29-the-verb-is-the-coat-rack

The Rift Valley area of central and northern Tanzania is the only area where languages from all four African language families are found (Bantu, Cushitic, Nilotic, and Khoisan). Languages in this area have been in contact with each other for a long time, especially in the minds of bi- and multilingual speakers, so it’s a really interesting place to learn more about why and how languages influence each other. In this episode, your host Lauren Gawne interviews Dr. Hannah Gibson, a Lecturer in the Department of Language and Linguistics at the University of Essex, about her work on how word order differences between Rangi and Swahili, both Bantu languages, are related to the different languages that they’ve been in contact with. They also get enthusiastic about Bantu languages in general and especially how the famous Bantu noun class system works. (Swahili, for example, has 16 different noun classes. including humans, natural things that aren’t human, abstract nouns, places, and words that begin with ki-.) This month’s bonus episode was about naming people, a topic which has been on Lauren’s mind a lot recently! Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to this and over 20 previous bonus episodes. patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to everything mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/182098995651/lingthusiasm-episode-28-how-languages-influence

There are certain things that human societies, and therefore languages, have in common. We have the same basic inventory of body parts, which affect both the kinds of movements we can make to produce words and the names we have for our meat-selves. We’re all living on a watery ball of rock and fire, orbiting a large ball of gas. And we all arrived on this planet by means of other humans, and form societies to help each other stick around. Sometimes, we even bring into existence further tiny humans. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about the special vocabulary that exists across languages for people you’re related to. Kinship terms are a fascinating area of commonality and variation: on the one hand, all languages seem to have ways of distinguishing family (both chosen and biological) from non-family. But on the other hand, there’s a wide degree of variation in the exact relationships that languages have words for, and this provides an interesting window into which relationships a culture thinks of as important. Languages can split up or lump together kinship relationships by age, generation, gender, clan, marriage, linguistic history, honorific extension, personal choice, and more. We also get into why words like “mama” and “papa” are so similar across languages, the surprisingly recent history of the word “sibling,” and the current rise in offshoots like “nibling” and “pibling.” This month’s bonus episode was a Q&A session from when Gretchen was in Melbourne with Lauren, and it’s available in both the normal audio form and a surprise video version! (We were testing out the camera situation ahead of the upcoming gesture video episode.) Find out about how ears work, fun linguistic games, whether some languages change faster than others, the Australianisms that Gretchen has recently learned, and a behind-the-scenes look into how the liveshows went and future Lingthusiasm plans. Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to this and 21 previous bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to everything mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/181276164046/lingthusiasm-episode-27-words-for-family