Books for language lovers include Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, Guy Deutscher’s lay-friendly tour of research on language and thought, and OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word, Allan...
Need to type something in Linear B or Mayan? Want to make Japanese emoticons? Now you can. Grant explains why the release of Unicode 6 has many typescript aficionados doing the happy dance. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
Renee from Indianapolis, Indiana, asks about tickety-boo, an old-fashioned expression meaning “all in order,” “correct,” or “just dandy,” after hearing it often from a former boss at an Indian corporation in Florida. The phrase became especially...
If you’re driving and need to turn 180 degrees, you make a U-turn. But what do you make if you speak a language that doesn’t include the letter “U”? If you’re a Hindi speaker, what do you call wearing a V-neck sweater...
A caller wonders if the Spanish and Arabic articles el and al spring from the same linguistic root. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Spanish and Arabic Article Roots” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, how are you...
Many of the world’s languages apparently derived from a prehistoric common ancestor known as Indo-European. But since no one ever wrote down a word of it, how do we know what it was like?