Because Language - a podcast about linguistics, the science of language.

Daniel Midgley, Ben Ainslie, and Hedvig Skirgård
  • 4.6 (129)
  • Social Sciences
  • Updated Semimonthly

A podcast about linguistics, the science of language.

  1. 14h ago

    148: On the Mark (with Florence Hazrat)

    Commas, em dashes, apostrophes, and interrobangs. We use them for timing, for grammar, and even for social purposes. But these little marks didn't just arise overnight. Dr Florence Hazrat fills us in on the history and meaning of these symbols. Florence is the author of On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World. Timestamps 00:00 Start 01:48 Intros and hot punctuation takes (5:21) On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World 06:13 Patreon plug: It's OnlyFans for your brain 11:37 News: Irish citizenship test 17:35 News: Bonobo compositionality maybe not a thing 22:36 Side note: How does disconfirmation feel? 26:26 News: Analogies increase fidelity in language transmission 36:34 News: The Internet Archive is saving news footage 39:30 Related or Not: Theme from Camden 40:14 Related or Not 1: stick 44:32 Related or Not 2: vacation, vaccine, vacuum 46:10 Related or Not 3: Spot the pair 52:57 Interview with Florence Hazrat, author of On the Mark 55:09 Getting into punctuation 56:44 Punctuation is about prosody and…? 01:02:26 Misconceptions and playfulness in punctuation 01:04:45 Who were the heavy hitters in punctuation? 01:08:36 Punctuation as a democratising force 01:11:38 Hyphens and identity 01:14:59 English puts hyphens and spaces everywhere 01:20:14 How is digital communication changing punctuation? 01:23:57 Of dashes both em and en 01:30:33 Which punctuation marks have disappeared? 01:35:48 What punctuation should we be using, but don't? 01:38:15 Does punctuation help reading comprehension? 01:46:11 Conscious punctuation 01:49:19 Word of the Week: parachute 01:54:34 Word of the Week: Lake America 01:56:09 Word of the Week: doom trolling 02:05:44 Word of the Week: Naoero 02:06:46 Comment from Scott: Soo-ey! and Shakespeare 02:08:42 The Reads Show notes Why does French have circumflex letters? https://thelanguagecloset.com/2022/05/21/french-circumflex-circonflexe/ Citizenship rules to be tightened with longer residency and language test https://www.thejournal.ie/irish-citizenship-residency-changes-7154915-Sep2026/ White Australia policy | National Museum Australia https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/white-australia-policy Dictation test passages used in 1925 | National Archives of Australia https://www.naa.gov.au/students-and-teachers/learning-resources/learning-resource-themes/society-and-culture/migration-and-multiculturalism/dictation-test-passages-used-1925 [PDF] Aspects of Racism in the Australian Context: Issues of Definition and Action Minister for External Affairs Atlee Hunt, in a 1903 memo to his staff: "It is not desirable that [coloured] persons should be allowed to pass the test . . . and before putting it to anyone the Officer should be satisfied that he will fail. If he is considered likely to pass the test if put in English, it should be applied in some other language of which he is ignorant." https://www7.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AUJlHRights/1994/9.pdf Structure without semantics: no evidence for bonobo compositionality in Berthet et al. (2025) https://peerj.com/articles/21651/ Holding, Thomas, Paul E. Smaldino, and Charlotte O. Brand. "Analogies Evolve by Increasing Transmission Fidelity in the Communication of Complex Information." Evolutionary Human Sciences 8 (2026): e32.  https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2026.10063. TV News Search & Borrow | Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/tv Jethro Tull - Aqualung (Instrumental) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVcsLJ3mixQ Catherine the Great was inoculated against smallpox in a risky experiment. It changed Russia's history https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-22/catherine-the-great-russian-empress-inoculation-thomas-dinsdale/101405692 On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World, by Florence Hazrat https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/florence-hazrat/on-the-mark/9781541606494/?lens=basic-books (01:39:46) All over me On the Mark: Apple Books link https://books.apple.com/us/book/on-the-mark/id6755950089 Richard Artschwager, Exclamation Point (Yellow), 2001 http://www.dreamideamachine.com/?p=81116 Broken Swedish words (split by accidental spaces) breaking translations https://forum.readlang.com/t/broken-swedish-words-split-by-accidental-spaces-breaking-translations/5256 Tear Drops and Roses: Persian Punctuation by Florence Hazrat https://mindthegap1.substack.com/p/tear-drops-and-roses-persian-punctuation Irony punctuation | Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation Mind the Gap | Florence Hazrat on Sunstack https://mindthegap1.substack.com Florence Hazrat on Instagram (@thepunctuationlady) https://www.instagram.com/thepunctuationlady/ Labor's Secret Harbour by-election loss is ominous https://redflag.org.au/article/labors-secret-harbour-by-election-loss-is-ominous/ Political Parties, book by Duverger | Brittanica https://www.britannica.com/topic/Political-Parties Political parties : their organization and activity in the modern state, by Duverger, Maurice, 1917- | Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/politicalparties0000duve/page/n9/mode/2up?q=parachuting History of a concept: 'Parachute' candidates, an old electoral practice of politics taking precedence over roots https://www.lemonde.fr/en/history/article/2022/06/17/history-of-a-concept-parachute-candidates-an-old-electoral-practice-of-politics-priming-over-roots_5987200_157.html Parachute candidate | Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parachute_candidate Trump signs order to rename Lake Ontario 'Lake America' amid Canada trade war https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/27/trump-canada-lake-america-ontario.html Coxon tweet https://x.com/hilbertspaess/status/2097476196791709843 Google engineer claims AI technology LaMDA is sentient https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-13/google-ai-lamda-sentient-engineer-blake-lemoine-says/101147222 OpenAI IPO will not happen in 2026 amid AI safety fears, Sam Altman says https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/12/openai-delays-ipo-sam-altman-ai-safety-concerns Timnit Gebru tweet https://x.com/timnitGebru/status/2098289939217846660 Dear AI Companies: Stop the "Doom Trolling" https://calnewport.com/dear-ai-companies-stop-the-doom-trolling/ Cal Newport: Dear AI Companies: Stop the "Doom Trolling" https://youtu.be/aHxwZEXHwps?si=7K5dLhu34NIRPRqm The Thrill of Wanting AI to Destroy the World https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/09/ai-destroy-world-apocalypse/688575/ Nauru officially changes its name to Naoero https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/03/nauru-officially-changes-its-name-to-naoero Shakespeare in the Bush Bohannon, Laura (1971), from Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology, eds. James P. Spradley and David W. McCurdy Boston: Little Brown and Company. https://web.archive.org/web/20060613143803/http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/~idris/Essays/Shakes_in_Bush.htm List of typographical symbols and punctuation marks | Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_typographical_symbols_and_punctuation_marks

  2. Sep 23

    147: The Language Beat (with Michael Erard)

    Michael Erard has been covering language in major publications for a good long while. What has he learned, and what can linguistic communication take from his work? Michael sits down for a chat with Daniel and Hedvig to talk about his new book The Language Beat: Essays and Reporting on Language and Life. Timestamps 00:00 Start 01:21 Getting the book together: Save your contracts! 04:22 Getting into lingcomm 06:38 Popular things v things you're interested in 10:48 Getting the Spidey sense 19:30 Public reactions and book tour insights 23:22 Lingcomm involves a little bit of pastoral care 26:55 How has the lingcomm landscape changed? 34:05 Persistent misunderstandings 39:48 Are we seeing a lingcomm explosion? 47:37 Are we doing any good? 57:07 Thanks and closing

  3. Sep 17

    146: Beyond Words (with Karen Stollznow)

    How do children learn language, and why can't other animals? Why are false friends between languages always naughty? And how is public perception of language changing? Dr Karen Stollznow is taking us through a tour of psycholinguistics, taboo language, and linguistic skepticism with her new book Beyond Words: How We Learn, Use, and Lose Language. We're also taking a look at Bitch: The Journey of a Word. Timestamps 00:00 Start 00:32 Intros: Do you use Y'ALL? 06:46 New patron shoutout 08:07 News: Strathfield Council trying to control shop signage 17:37 News: Claude introduces watermarking 25:43 News: Welsh joins the Star Wars club 29:30 Related or Not: Theme from Hugh 30:25 Related or Not 1: cute and acute 34:48 Related or Not 2: skip 42:22 Related or Not 3: tribe, tribute, & tributary 46:51 Karen Stollznow on psycholinguistics 50:36 Language and animal communication 53:37 Skepticism in linguistics 59:48 Getting a book done 01:02:09 The attraction of taboo words 01:08:18 Daddy diaries and child language acquisition 01:15:00 False friends 01:19:09 Best way to learn a language? 01:22:05 Public awareness of linguistics 01:26:58 Word of the Week: forever war 01:29:56 Word of the Week: aegyo 01:31:20 Word of the Week: meat proxy 01:33:46 Word of the Week: Cyberno de Bergerac 01:37:31 Comment: vague v ambiguous 01:39:24 Comment: Okay if languages die? 01:41:59 Comment: Sudoku pronunciation in Japanese 01:43:20 The Reads 01:56:02 Outtake: Hedvig watches an eclipse 02:00:18 Outtake: Glottle

  4. Sep 3

    145: Face With Tears of Joy (live with Keith Houston and friends)

    Emoji, once regarded as some kind of frivolous nonsense, have become an important way we communicate online. But how did these little pictures come to our devices? What is the Unicode Consortium, and how did they get involved? And who is the Levitating Suit Guy? Fear not; author Keith Houston is here to give us the whole story in front of a live audience. Keith is the author of Face With Tears of Joy: A Natural History of Emoji. Timestamps 00:00 Start 02:21 Introducing Keith Houston, author of Face With Tears of Joy 03:28 Put your top five emoji in chat 08:03 What's the state of emoji now? 10:11 How did the Unicode Consortium get involved? 22:30 The strange history of Levitating Suit Guy 27:37 The latest emoji in v17.0 30:12 Changes to some emoji 38:22 What gives an emoji staying power? 47:12 Related or Not: Theme by David 48:10 Related or Not 1: orchard and hoard 52:46 Related or Not 2: belle, bell, ball, & ball 59:01 Related or Not 3: Italian aceto (vinegar) & Spanish aceite (oil) 01:03:45 Why don't they use emoji on Reddit? 01:05:26 Are emoji now more acceptable in serious contexts? 01:08:34 Do speakers of some languages use emoji more? 01:13:00 Any languages where they just don't use emoji? 01:13:59 Does everyone call them "emoji"? 01:16:13 Sociolinguistic trends in emoji? 01:22:12 The reads: Which emoji is closest to your name? 01:33:06 Afterparty

  5. Aug 22

    144: Sociophonetics Deep Dive (with Jennifer Nycz, Lauren Hall-Lew, and Kelly Wright)

    Why don't we all sound the same? Are some accents easier to learn? And are there reasons for the differences in how people sound and sign, or is it just random? We use sound and sign to encode information about our age, place, gender, sexuality, and so much more. Sometimes we're not even aware of how we do it. But we're fixing that on this episode with Jennifer Nycz and Lauren Hall-Lew, editors of Sociophonetics: Implications for Phonological and Phonetic Theory. Timestamps 00:00 Start: Introducing Jennifer Nycz and Lauren-Hall Lew 01:57 What is sociophonetics? 03:01 What's in our own sociophonetic background? 10:10 Why is it always vowels, vowels, vowels? 13:03 Why don't we all just sound the same? 15:09 You can hallucinate accents by seeing a photo 16:00 Sound encodes gender and sexuality 20:57 Chronolects, Boomerlects, and GenX-lects 22:04 Tweens to teens: What to expect sociophonetically? 27:33 Are there reasons for sound variation and change? 34:16 Why does a community change faster than an individual? 38:37 Does media have an influence on accent? 42:17 How much are we consciously aware of? 44:52 Are some accents easier? 48:39 What are the sociophonetic hot spots? 50:54 Are American women more nasal? 52:09 Persistent misconceptions 54:49 Fight linguistic discrimination, or teach marginalised people to "pass"? 01:03:03 The sociophonetics of signed languages

  6. Aug 11

    143: How to Kill a Language (with Sophia Smith Galer)

    How does it feel to be isolated from a language and a culture that could have been yours? There are many paths to language loss, but there are also many ways back. Language revitalisation is now happening for communities and individuals. We're talking about it with journalist and lingToker Sophia Smith Galer, author of How to Kill a Language: Power, Resistance, and the Race to Save Our Words. Timestamps 00:00 Start 00:34 Intros: How are you "going"? 05:54 News: A font that can poison data for GenAI 13:51 News: A lost Golden Age of language in the Holocene 27:33 News: New language support for Netflix, Disney+ 33:59 Related or Not: Theme from Gordon 34:37 Related or Not: ramshackle 41:39 Related or Not: nap 48:57 Related or Not: adder, deer, natter, otter, hydra 54:12 Chat with Sophia Smith Galer: Her language background 01:00:31 The pain of separation from one's own language 01:05:01 Attacks on multicuturalism 01:07:34 Is all language death language murder? 01:09:41 The role of parents in language transmission 01:16:52 Factors influencing language survival 01:26:50 Will GenAI help or harm minority languages? 01:35:33 Challenging monoglossic language ideology 01:40:36 Sophia encourages linguistic curiosity 01:43:11 Responding to a review: Is it okay if languages die? 01:53:21 Word of the Week: slop zombie 01:55:29 Word of the Week: eternity leave 01:56:24 Word of the Week: spherical bastard 01:58:10 Word of the Week: the butter's penthouse 02:01:47 Word of the Week: Jimothy 02:04:42 Comments: Ingressive speech 02:08:33 The Reads 02:15:40 Outtakes: Hedvig's plant

  7. Jul 28

    142: If This Be Magic (with Daniel Hahn)

    Translating Shakespeare takes a knowledge of language, culture, and poetry — both in English and in the target language. There are tradeoffs and pitfalls, but a skilled translator can bring Shakespeare closer to our age, not just to another language. We're talking with translator Daniel Hahn, author of If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation. Also, we're answering listener questions. Send us yours! Timestamps 00:00 Start 00:21 Intros: Shakespearean insults 07:33 Pronouncing SUDOKU: Why so variable? 15:58 Ingressive speech 20:46 Nonplussed 26:59 Related or Not: Theme from Hugh 28:13 Related or Not: pooch, pouch, pocket, and poach 38:14 Related or Not: caddy and caddie 42:47 Related or Not: hemi-, demi-, and semi- 49:30 Chat with Daniel Hahn: Keeping everything but the words 52:51 Spanish as a language of translation 58:59 Translation closes the distance: Shakespeare in contemporary English 01:07:02 Poetic meter and when to break it 01:11:07 Punctuating the translation 01:16:08 Archaic words and the feel of Shakespeare 01:18:23 Hardest language to translate Skakespeare into? 01:20:43 Staying true to time and culture 01:26:05 Having fun 01:31:12 Monosyllables 01:34:32 The impact of GenAI on translation 01:37:38 Getting people to care about translation 01:40:37 Should multi-line highway word markings start near to us or start far? 01:47:48 Gender and the -ster suffix 01:56:12 Comment from Allyson: Soo-ee! 01:58:03 The Reads 02:02:01 Outtake

  8. Jul 17

    141: Why Q Needs U (with Danny Bate and Caitlin M. Green)

    Each letter in our Latin alphabet tells a story. But what about spaces? Or writing direction? Should we get rid of some letters, or could we even do with more? Here to answer all these questions is Dr Danny Bate, author of Why Q Needs U: A History of Our Letters and How We Use Them. Timestamps 00:00 Start 00:44 Intros: Special letters 05:46 News: Spanish okay at World Cup? 09:30 News: Forgetting is helpful in language acquisition 21:18 News: Bluey in Yolŋu 25:41 Related or Not theme by Jo 27:21 Related or Not: prodigy, prodigal, and prodigious 34:19 Related or Not: vice, device, divide 43:09 Related or Not: gauntlet and gaunt 49:48 Interview with Danny Bate, author of Why Q Needs U 50:16 About Danny's podcast: A Language I Love Is… 52:24 The Alphabet: greatest innovation since sexual reproduction 56:08 The case against boustrophedon 58:51 Letters flipped over time 01:02:40 Why are some letters more common than others? 01:06:14 Why does H get used in so many digraphs? 01:10:52 Thoughts on spelling reform 01:18:07 Why are L and R so squirrelly? 01:28:53 The evolution of spaces in written language 01:31:46 What letters can we get rid of? 01:35:15 Actually, no, we need a new letter 01:36:53 Communicating linguistic ideas to the public 01:44:02 Word of the Week: monoculture 01:53:43 Word of the Week: algae-TBQ agenda 02:00:15 Word of the Week: hobbylos 02:03:14 Word of the Week: tokenmaxxing 02:06:27 Word of the Week: Claudeonomics 02:11:21 The Reads 02:18:18 Outtakes: Back on our Bluey nonsense + On being a Dan

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A podcast about linguistics, the science of language.

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