Nate in Winterville, North Carolina, remembers an older relative asking Are you going to get outside of that? meaning “Are you going to finish that meal?” To get outside of a meal or to climb outside of a meal suggests that you’re...
Marcie from Fort Worth, Texas, grew up in Chile speaking Spanish, but her 10-year-old daughter has trouble rolling her Rs. This difficulty or inability to trill one’s Rs is called rhotacism, and it’s not uncommon in Spanish-speaking...
Eight-year-old Violet in Zionsville, Indiana, grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, saying sprinkles more like sprankles, rhyming with rankles. On paper, the cupcake topping is spelled sprinkles, with an i; in speech, her family’s pronunciation is simply...
Nine-year-old Evie calls from Texas to ask about the origin of the phrase raining cats and dogs. This idiom alludes to the cacophonous nature of a heavy downpour. Around the world, expressions about torrential rain also connote the idea of a noisy...
Alex in Amarillo, Texas, says he often hears speakers dropping the sound of the first r in the word forward, sounding like foward or fuhward. It’s what linguists call dissimilation, where, when duplicate consonants are not far apart in a single...
Ken in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, wonders about the use of a couple of interjections. Why don’t people begin sentences with the word Say any more? And is it impolite to start a sentence with Hey? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript...