32: Fallen Leaves: The Chinese Languages (with Wu Mei-Shin, Ye Jingting, and Israel Lai)
What we call sometimes Chinese is really a gigantic family of languages. They're somewhat divided in mutual intelligibility, and somewhat united in their writing system. How are they different, and how are they maintaining themselves? Two Chinese researchers, Wu Mei-Shin and Ye Jingting, join us. And what's going on in the Cantonese lingopod world? We're joined by Israel Lai of Rhapsody in Lingo.
18 Jul 20211h 38min
31: All the Words (with Grant Barrett)
Words of the Week are coming out of the woodwork, and who better to work through them with us than Grant Barrett of A Way with Words? Wowee.
30 Jun 202158min
30: Mailbag of Raspberries (with Helen Zaltzman)
Our Mailbag is once again full of questions, and podcasting luminary Helen Zaltzman is here to help us answer them! Why is the raspberry sound (PBTPBBBBT) not a speech sound in any language? Or is it? How can sounds in a language change so much over time? Am I BURNED OUT? Or BURNT OUT? Why are they called metaphysicians and not metaphysicists? What can we call something besides LAME? Why is AMPHI- so infrequently used in English?
14 Jun 20211h 7min
29: Cultish (with Amanda Montell and Jared Holt)
Blog post with show notes: http://becauselanguage.com/29-cultish/ Support the show on Patreon: http://patreon.com/join/becauselangpod/ Language helps us build and maintain social relationships. Cults — however we define them — exploit this function and subvert it for their own ends. Amanda Montell is the author of the new book Cultish, and she joins us for this show. And researcher Jared Holt explains why QAnon conspiracy catch phrases seem to be dropping off in popularity from the mainstream web.
8 Jun 20211h 47min
