How Did Nigeria Get Its Name?
You might guess that Nigeria and Niger derive their names from the Latin word for “black,” especially since both countries were formerly colonized by Europeans. Guess again. John explains. Visit ...
9 Apr 20229min
Where Is the Name Ketanji From?
President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee has said that her parents picked “Ketanji” from a list of West African names supplied by a relative. But West Africans speak hundreds of languages spread out ac...
29 Mars 202241min
A Linguistic Love Letter to Ukraine
As John likes to say, Proto-Indo-European — the original ancestor of many European and Asian languages — began on the steppes of Ukraine. This is his linguistic love letter to a region and a people un...
15 Mars 202231min
How About This Weather?
To describe inclement weather in English, we might say that “it” is raining, which seems natural to a native speaker. But does “it” refer to the sky, the outdoors, the god of precipitation? Maybe it’s...
1 Mars 202234min
Joe Rogan and the N-Word, by Way of Kyiv
You may have noticed, among widespread coverage of looming Russian aggression, an unfamiliar pronunciation of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. What does that have to do with Joe Rogan’s use of the N-word? ...
15 Feb 202242min
Son of a B*tch on a Hot Mic
A hot mic caught President Biden using the epithet to describe a Fox News reporter. Where did “son of a bitch” come from, and why are modern speakers increasingly choosing other insults? Visit ...
1 Feb 202226min
RIP: Sidney Poitier, Lani Guinier, Max Julien
Actors Sidney Poitier and Max Julien and law professor Lani Guinier — all of whom died this month — have last names that reveal fascinating stories about pronunciation, etymology and language change. ...
18 Jan 202246min
300 Years of Language Peevery
Self-styled language experts have lamented the decline of English for centuries. From shifting pronunciations to newfangled words to evolving grammar, everyone from Jonathan Swift to John McWhorter ha...
29 Dec 202136min
