240 episodes
A Word in Your Ear ABC listen
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- Society & Culture
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4.7 • 149 Ratings
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Emeritus Professor Roly Sussex walks you through the linguistic mindfield, explaining the weird and wonderful aspects of English and many other languages.
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A Word in Your Ear: The World of Names
What are the cultural origins of our names? What makes them more feminine or masculine? And when did middle names become a thing?
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A Word in Your Ear: Advertising jingles
From jingles about sun safety to songs about vegemite, Australia's advertising history is full of iconic earworms. But why were they so successful?
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A Word in Your Ear: Insults
Insults are hardly features of polite conversation, but some might say we've gotten a bit soft.
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A Word in Your Ear: Capitals and Capitalisation
How did we decide what should be capitalised, and what should be lowercase? And why do we capitalise 'I' but not 'me'?
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A Word in Your Ear: Punctuation
Is it exclamation points, or exclamation marks? What's the deal with the full stop, apostophe and comma?
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A Word in Your Ear: American influences
The ABC's Lord of Language, the Emeritus Professor Roly Sussex, discusses American influences on the English language.
Customer Reviews
Five stars every time.
If you have any interest in the written and spoken language I highly recommend this program. I have listened for several years now on a weekly basis often repeating an episode several times and always come away informed and entertained. Roly you are great!
G/day
Great show and I have learned a lot about our language . Thanks Roley .
Fascinated by language
Roly is a star, so informed and knowledgeable I feel intimidated!
Love listening to his podcasts and love not having to suffer through adverts. Well done Roly!