Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics19 Jun 2020

45: Tracing languages back before recorded history

Language is much older than writing. But audio and visual cues from sounds and signs don’t leave physical traces the way writing does. So when linguists want to figure out how people talked before history started being recorded, we need to engage in some careful detective work, by comparing two or more similar, known languages to (potentially!) reconstruct a hypothetical common ancestor. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about these prehistoric languages that historical linguists have reconstructed, known as proto-languages. We dive into some of our favourite proto-languages (Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Algonquian, Proto-Pama-Nyungan, and Proto-Bantu), look at their characteristic grammatical signatures, and explain what we can and can’t know about the people who spoke them based on their vocabularies. --- This months bonus episode is about doing linguistics with kids! Child language acquisition is a perennial source of entertainment for the linguistically-inclined – and so is helping any young people in your life develop an interest in linguistics. In this episode, we talk about some of our favourite things to observe about how kids are learning language as well as linguistically-relevant books for children, middle grade, and young adult. Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to get access to this and 39 other bonus episodes, and to chat with fellow lingthusiasts in the Lingthusiasm patron Discord. Announcements: We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2020 LingComm Grants. Here are the project titles for the 4 grantees, and there’s more information about each project on the LingComm website, as well as two honourable mentions. We’re very excited to share more with you as they develop. https://lingcomm.org/ The Black Language Podcast (Anansa Benbow) Nonbinary Linguistics youtube channel (Nina Lorence-Ganong) Jazicharnica (Јазичарница) blog (Nina Tunteva and Viktorija Blazheska) War of Words podcast (Juana de los Santos; Angela Makeviciuz; Antonella Moschetti; Néstor Bermúdez) We had over 75 applications from around the world and we'd like to thank all applicants for making the job of deciding extremely difficult! New masks By popular demand, our IPA, Tree and Esoteric Symbol designs are now available on these new non-medical grade reusable fabric masks from Redbubble. On our store you’ll find the white IPA characters on black, red or navy, and the esoteric symbols in white on black or green on black. If you fancy another colour, or the tree design, we’ve made masks available on all of the scarf pages. https://www.redbubble.com/people/lingthusiasm --- For links to everything mentioned in this episode visit our shownotes page: https://lingthusiasm.com/

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Episoder(121)

121: Vampires, ghosts, imposters and more linguistic monsters

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 Lau...

15 Okt 41min

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

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 expen...

18 Sep 40min

119: Irregularity is all over the place

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 ab...

21 Aug 45min

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

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 abo...

17 Jul 45min

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

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 awa...

19 Jun 49min

116: Cross-cultural communication (in space!)

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 l...

22 Mai 31min

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

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 enthu...

17 Apr 1h

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

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, you...

20 Mar 54min