What happens in a classroom of refugee and immigrant youngsters learning English? Their fresh approach to language can result in remarkable poetry — some of which is collected in the anthology England: Poems from a School. Also, new language among...
Rachel from Harrogate, Tennessee, says when she was growing up in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area, she and her fellow musicians used the term B-flat as slang for “ordinary” or “average.” In the 1938 publication New York Panorama...
Martha shares her childhood misunderstanding of the term State of the Union. Who knew it wasn’t an annual contest to determine the best one of all 50 states? This is part of a complete episode.
Why do so many people in the Keystone State refer to it with the letters P-A rather than sounding out all the syllables in Pennsylvania? Especially when they say a city in that state and then Pee Ay? This is part of a complete episode.
What’s the emotion halfway between clinical depression and euphoria? After our discussion of this question, listeners chimed in by email, phone, and social media with suggestions. They included complacent, balanced, placid, fine, content...
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...
