The state of Idaho has a large community of Basque speakers. Their native tongue is what’s known as a language isolate, meaning one that is not historically connected to those around it. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
Why does English derive words for some colors, such as blue and orange, from French, but not words for other colors, such as black and white? A fantastic resource about the history of colors is Kassia St. Clair’s The Secret Lives of Color...
If someone’s been talking about you in English, then metaphorically speaking, your ears are burning. If they were talking about you in Modern Greek, it’s said that you must have been hiccupping. This is part of a complete episode...
If you’re looking for dictionary recommendations, you’ve tuned to the right program! For comprehensive, desk-dwelling dictionaries, Grant likes the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 6th Edition, a two-volume set, and the brand-new...
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?