How does social context shape our perception of language? When hiking the Appalachian Trail, a young woman from Wyoming found that fellow hikers assumed she was from another country, not only because of how she spoke, but also how she looked...
On Twitter, @HerbertStyles ponders what it would be like if all the punctuation marks went to a party. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Punctuation Party” You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use...
Open your kitchen cupboard or a cookbook, and chances are you’ll come across a lot of spices and peppers with recognizable names that you still can’t pronounce properly, like turmeric, cayenne, and habanero. We often give foreign-sounding...

