In parts of Wisconsin where the dialect is heavily influenced by German, it’s not unusual to hear phrases, like “Let’s go buy some bakery” for “let’s buy some baked goods,” and “from little on up,” meaning “from a young age.” This is part of a...
Patience, Hope, and Charity are pretty ambitious things to name your children. But what about Hate-evil, Be-courteous, or Search-the-scriptures? Or Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith? Puritan parents sometimes gave their kids so as to encourage those...
Do you pronounce crayon like crown? This common variation tends to be a Midlands pronunciation. Americans may pronounce this word several ways, as this dialect map shows. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Dialects of Crayon” Hello...
John from Richmond, Indiana, wonders whether writing voilà as walla, wallah, or vwala is becoming acceptable after seeing the mistake in a school note and online. The spelling voilà comes from French for “there it is,” even though many Americans use...
Martha shares listener email about linguistic “false friends,” those perplexing words in other languages that look like English words, but mean something completely different. A case in point is the detergent popular in the Middle East called...
quotenneger n.— «There’s even a derogatory term for the black token character on every show from the US here in germany. It’s “Quotenneger” which basically can be translated into “Rating-N(word).”» —“Study says TV not gay enough” by Bash TV...