Say you’re on a long road trip. Do you have a term for another driver who happens to be traveling the same direction and sets the pace for your car mile after mile? In an earlier episode, a Rhode Island listener left us wondering why her Swedish friend refers to such a driver as a Follow John. A listener in Malmö, Sweden, has since stepped in with an explanation. In that country, children play a game similar to “Simon Says” called Följa John, or “Follow John.” That helpful Swedish listener, by the way, is Karin Tidbeck, author of The Memory Theater (Bookshop|Amazon), which appears on the New York Times list of best science fiction and fantasy books of 2021. This is part of a complete episode.
The so-called “lifestyle influencer accent” you hear in videos on TikTok and YouTube, where someone speaks with rising tones at the end of sentences and phrases, suggesting that they’re about to say something important, is a form of what linguists...
Meg in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, gets why the state highway department encourages drivers to use their blinkers when changing lanes, but placing a digital sign at the Sagamore Bridge that reads Use Ya Blinkah is, well, a lexical bridge too far. Meg’s...
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