A woman whose husband speaks Guaraní, Spanish, German, English, Italian, plus a bit of liturgical Hebrew, notices a curious thing happening while he was taking notes during lessons with a rabbi. As he jotted notes in Spanish and Guaraní, he used his...
After several weeks in Hawaii, a South Carolina listener returned curious about the terms aloha and aloha spirit. Founded on ideas of mutual respect among humans and in harmony with nature, the concept of the “Aloha spirit” is so fundamental to...
For many people, religion provides language and rituals for key milestones in life, from births to weddings to funerals. But what if you don’t ascribe to any particular religion? What words do you use to mark those moments? An uplifting new book...
The term kit bag question refers to a question that’s better not asked, lest you suffer a consequence you might otherwise have avoided. It’s a translation of Modern Hebrew she’elat kit bag, a slang expression that arose among members of the Israeli...
Jim in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, says that during childhood games of touch football, he and his friends would count out the required three seconds before rushing as Mississippi one, Mississippi two, Mississippi three. Other ways of counting seconds...
In another episode, we discussed the apparent lack of a single English word that means “give someone something to drink” in the same way that feed means to “give someone food to eat.” A listener points out that in Hebrew, that function is fulfilled...
