Transcript Episode 106: Is a hotdog a sandwich? The problem with definitions

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘Is a hotdog a sandwich? The problem with definitions’. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about “What even is a sandwich, and how does meaning even work anyway?”

Gretchen: This episode totally blew our minds when we were researching the classic internet debate.

Lauren: But first, this episode was originally posted as our 9th bonus episode in November 2017.

Gretchen: Oh my gosh, it was from our first year. We have been doing monthly bonus episodes since 2017 for people who support us at the Ling-thusiast level or above. The support of patrons is literally the way the show keeps running and helps us not have to think about running ads or exposing you to other things you don’t wanna listen to.

Lauren: We now have over 100 bonus episodes in the Patreon bonus feed for you to listen to right now and new ones that come out every month.

Gretchen: Our bonus episodes are often a little bit more playful and less likely to be used in a linguistics classroom, like our several swearing bonus episodes.

Lauren: Or the whole bonus episode on the linguistics of kissing.

Gretchen: But overall, we have as much fun with bonus episodes as our mains. We love them so much, we wanted to share one from the archive on the main feed.

Lauren: It also gives us a chance to catch a bit of a break between preparing new episodes.

Gretchen: This was something we did last year as well, and it really helps us during a busy period.

Lauren: Indeed, there’re multiple reasons to love this tradition that we’ve started. We’re gonna play the original episode. We are gonna skip the intro with updates from 2017.

Gretchen: Ooo, what was the hot news in 2017?

Lauren: We were heading towards full-length bonus episodes – a thing we have been doing for almost eight years now.

Gretchen: I had almost forgotten that these bonus episodes weren’t full length to start.

Lauren: We literally didn’t have the money to pay Claire to edit full-length bonuses for us a year into making the show.

Gretchen: That explains why this was only about 20 minutes of tape. We were also celebrating our first official anniversary month.

Lauren: Of course, because it was and is November, our anniversary. That’s so lovely.

Gretchen: We’re gonna revisit an episode from when we were a year into the show. We’ll listen along with you. And then I look forward to chatting with you at the end about other things that we’ve observed about this topic.

Lauren: Our most recent bonus episode was all about linguistics landscapes and the way language is visible or not in the spaces around us.

Gretchen: Go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm to access this and many other bonus episodes including the original version of this episode with the announcements still intact.

[Music]

Lauren: We ran a poll with a very simple question: “Which of the following 20 items is a sandwich?”

Gretchen: If any!

Lauren: And people had opinions, I think it’s fair to say.

Gretchen: Yeah. This was, I think, maybe one of our more participated polls.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Definitely got the most comments because we didn’t manage to include a “none of the above” option because we ran up the max on the Patreon polls. We’re not gonna list all 20, because I assume you can see those, but I think of the most “sandwich” things, people were kind of most content to consider a hamburger a sandwich, maybe; bagel and cream cheese a sandwich; and an ice cream sandwich a sandwich. I mean. it’s got “sandwich” in the name! Like, it has to be a sandwich, right?

Lauren: Yeah. Things like burritos, pop-tarts, ravioli, apple pie didn’t really rate very highly.

Gretchen: Macarons, I don’t know – they seem very sandwich-y to me. They’ve got like, things on either side, and like a filling, and same with Oreos, like, they’re sandwich cookies. That’s their genre of cookie.

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Lingthusiasm Episode 106: Is a hotdog a sandwich? The problem with definitions

We asked you if a burrito was a sandwich, and you said ‘no’. We asked you if ravioli was a sandwich and you said 'heck no’. We asked you if an ice cream sandwich was a sandwich and things…started to get a little murky. This isn’t just a sandwich problem: you can also have similar arguments about what counts as a cup, a bird, a fish, furniture, art, and more!

So wait…does any word mean anything anymore? Have we just broken language?? It’s okay, linguistics has a solution!

In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about why deciding what’s in and what’s out of the definition of a word is so dang tricky, why people love to argue about it, and how prototype theory solves all the “is X a Y” arguments once and for all.

Note that this episode originally aired as Bonus 9: Is X a sandwich? Solving the word-meaning argument once and for all. We’ve added an updated announcements section to the top and a few new things about prototypes and meaning to the end. We’re excited to share one of our favourite bonus episodes from Patreon with a broader audience, while at the same time giving everyone who works on the show a bit of a break.

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

Announcements:

In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about fictional gestures with Eric Molinsky, host of Imaginary Worlds, a podcast about sci-fi, fantasy and other genres of speculative fiction! We talk about the Vulcan salute from Star Trek, the Wakanda Forever salute from Black Panther, and the three-finger Hunger Games salute, and how all three have crossed over with additional symbolism into the real world. We also talk about gestures that have crossed over in the other direction, from the real-world origins of the Vulcan salute in a Jewish blessing, the two-finger blessing in the Foundation tv series from classical Latin and Greek oratory via Christian traditions, as well as religious gesture in the Penric and Desdemona series, smiles and shrugs in A Memory Called Empire, and more.

Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 100+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds.

Here are the links mentioned in the episode:

Original episode on Patreon: ’Is X a sandwich? Solving the word-meaning argument once and for all’
Lingthusiasm bonus episode ’Liveshow Q and eh’
Wikipedia entry for 'Prototype Theory’
'Memes in Digital Culture’ by Limor Shifman
Ann Leckie on Fangirl Happy Hour
Jaffa cake: cake or biscuit? (UK)
Crostini: bread or biscuit? (Aus)
Tomato: fruit or vegetable?
cup vs. bowl vs. vase
cup vs. mug
No Such Thing as a Fish (podcast)
Wikipedia entry for 'Harlem Shake’
Wikipedia entry for 'Numa Numa’
Wikipedia entry for ’Gangnam Style’
Lingthusiasm episode ’Translating the untranslatable’

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon.

Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

Transcript Episode 95: Lo! An undetached collection of meaning-parts!

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘Lo! An undetached collection of meaning-parts!’. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about our default assumptions for learning new words – whether as kids, in a classroom, or while travelling. But first, we have new merch.

Gretchen: We have three new designs for merch. First off, we have some t-shirts, stickers, and badges, buttons, pins, whatever you call them, that say, “Ask me about linguistics.” They look like one of those classic, red “Hello, my name is” stickers only with “linguistics” instead of you name for those times when you’re maybe at a conference or an event or going about your life, and you want people to know that they can skip the small talk with you and talk directly about linguistics with you.

Lauren: We also have t-shirts that say, “More people have read the text on this shirt than I have,” which is not untrue.

Gretchen: This is a classic kind of sentence in linguistics more commonly found as “More people have been to Russia than I have,” but that was less funny and self-referential on a t-shirt. These are called the “comparative illusion,” which is when the first time you read that sentence with the comparative in it – “More people have been to Russia than I have” – you’re like, “Yeah, that makes sense. Wait. Hang on. What does that even mean?” That’s the illusion part. The illusion is that it makes sense. If you think about it longer, then it doesn’t make sense.

Lauren: It doesn’t make sense.

Gretchen: If you wear a shirt that says this – or a hat, or you carry around a mug or a sticker or a tote bag – that says these things with, of course, the word “shirt” swapped out for the relevant object – because we know how to do that – then people might do a double-take when they see it. You can confuse people, which sounds fun.

Lauren: This t-shirt is available in an old school typewriter-looking font. All of our shirt options are there on Redbubble with a range of different cuts and colours. We have relaxed-fitted classic t-shirts as well as hoodies, zip hoodies, and tank tops.

Gretchen: We have a secret third design, which we will be talking about later this episode – dun dun dun.

Lauren: Mm, suspense and mysteries.

Gretchen: Our most recent bonus episode is about the word “do” in English, and why it’s weird compared to basically every other language, and how this only started happening in the past few hundred years.

Lauren: To listen to this and many other bonus episodes, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

Gretchen: Plus, patrons got to find out about this new merch a few weeks ago. If you become a patron now, you’ll be the first to find out about future new merch and other behind-the-scenes updates. And you get to hang out on the Lingthusiasm Discord server to chat with other linguistics fans. Plus, of course, getting a whole bunch of bonus episodes and just helping us continue making the show for you.

[Music]

Lauren: I want you to imagine you’re visiting a place where you don’t speak the language. You’re standing in a field with one of your new friends. It’s a lovely day. You’re enjoying the scenery. And a rabbit scurries by. That person you’re standing with says, “Gavagai.” What do you think they are referring to?

Gretchen: I wanna say that they’re talking about the rabbit. This is a word that means “rabbit,” probably, in whatever that language is.

Lauren: Possibly.

Gretchen: But, in principle, it could mean a lot of other things as well. It could mean “scurrying” or “creature,” “animal,” or, as the philosopher V. W. O. Quine said, “Lo, un-detached rabbit parts,” which is just a very bizarre mental image.

Lauren: This is indeed a classic linguistic thought experiment from the philosopher V. W. O. Quine.

Gretchen: It’s also found in philosophy of language as well as linguistics. The philosophers sometimes also talk about this anecdote from a more philosophical perspective. The thing that’s exciting to me about it as a linguist is that it’s this pretty good approximation and distillation of the kind of challenge that you have when you’re trying to figure out some words in another language, and you don’t have someone or a book that can do some translation for you. You’re just like, “Well, here’s this word that’s been said in this context. What do I think it refers to?”

Lauren: I also appreciate how this one little thought experiment, interactional moment, set Quine on a philosophical train of thought that took up an entire book. Quine’s 1960 book Word and Object takes this thought experiment as its starting point to tease apart a lot of the issues around how we make and share meaning, especially across languages.

Keep reading

95: Lo! An undetached collection of meaning-parts!

Imagine you’re in a field with someone whose language you don’t speak. A rabbit scurries by. The other person says “Gavagai!” You probably assumed they meant “rabbit” but they could have meant something else, like “scurrying” or even “lo! an undetatched rabbit-part!”

In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about how we manage to understand each other when we’re learning new words, inspired by the famous “Gavagai” thought experiment from the philosopher of language WVO Quine. We talk about how children have a whole object assumption when learning language, and how linguists go about learning languages that are new to them through either translating standardized cross-linguistic wordlists known as Swadesh lists or staying monolingual and acting out concepts. We also talk about when our baseline assumptions are challenged, such as in categorizing kangaroos and wallabies by their hopping rather than their shape, and when useful folk categories, like “trees” and “fish” don’t line up with evolutionary taxonomies.

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

Announcements:
We have new Lingthusiasm merch!

Imagine you’re in a field with someone whose language you don’t speak. A rabbit scurries by. The other person says “Gavagai!” You probably assumed they meant “rabbit” but they could have meant something else, like “scurrying” or even “lo! an undetached rabbit-part!” Inspired by the famous Gavagai thought experiment, these items feature a running rabbit and the caption “lo, an undetached rabbit-part!” in a woodblock engraving crossed with vaporwave style in magenta, indigo, teal, cream, and black/white on shirts, scarves, and more!

“More people have been to Russia than I have” is a sentence that at first seems fine, but then gets weirder and weirder the more you read it. Inspired by these Escher sentences, we’ve made self-referential shirts saying “More people have read the text on this shirt than I have” (also available on tote bags, mugs, and hats), so you can wear them in old-time typewriter font and see who does a double take.

Finally, we’ve made a design that simply says “Ask me about linguistics” in a style that looks like a classic “Hello, my name is…” sticker, and you can put it on stickers and buttons and shirts and assorted other portable items for when you want to skip the small talk and go right to a topic you’re excited about.

Also, there are lots of other designs of Lingthusiasm merch, and we love to see your photos of it! Feel free to tag us @lingthusiasm on social media so we can see it out in the world.

In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about the word “do”! We talk about the various functions of “do” as illustrated by lyrics from ABBA and other pop songs, what makes the word “do” so unique in English compared to other languages, and the drama of how “do” caught on and then almost got driven out again

Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 80+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds.

Here are the links mentioned in the episode:

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon.

Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, and our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

“Gretchen: I think the best-known example of do you do the source language versus the target language in terms of plural in English is a certain little creature with eight legs.
Lauren: The octopus.
Gretchen: The octopus.
Lauren: Which I just avoid talking about in the plural at all to save myself a grammatical crisis.
Gretchen: I admit that I have also done this. If you were gonna pluralise “octopus” as if it’s English, it would just be “octopuses.” It’s very easy. But there’s a fairly long-standing tradition in English of when a word is borrowed from Latin to make the plural the actual Latin thing. Because, historically, many English speakers did learn Latin, and so you want to show off your education by using the Latin form even though it’s in English. So, if you’re going to pretend that “octopus” is Latin, then you wanna say, “octopi.” However, there is yet a third complication, which is that “octopus,” in fact, is actually Greek – “octo” meaning “eight” and “pus” meaning “feet. So, Greek does not make these plural by adding I to it. In that case, there has recently become popular a yet even more obscure and yet even more pretentious, to be honest, plural.
Lauren: Is there where you say, “octopodes”?
Gretchen: Well, this is where I used to say, “octopodes.” But I have recently learned that, apparently, it is, for maximum pretentiousness, /aktaˈpodiz/.
Lauren: You’ve out-pretentioused my out-pretentiousness.”

—

Excerpt from Lingthusiasm episode ‘Many ways to talk about many things - Plurals, duals and more’

Listen to the episode, read the full transcript, or check out more links about morphology, syntax, and words.

Transcript Episode 80: Word Magic

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘Word Magic’. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about word magic. But first, people often ask us to recommend books about linguistics that don’t assume prior knowledge of linguistics, so we’ve come up with a list of 12 books plus a few bonuses, including both nonfiction as well as some fiction books with some linguistically interesting elements.

Gretchen: Social media’s in an interesting state of flux these days, which, as someone who studies online interaction, I find very interesting. However, not unrelated to that, we like to encourage people to sign up for emails from us in case everything else just melts down.

Lauren: You can get this list of 12 of our favourite linguistics books by signing up for our free email list by following the link in the show notes or going to lingthusiasm.com.

Gretchen: Our email subscribers also regularly get an email once a month when there’s a new episode of Lingthusiasm. This month you will see a link to our linguistics books list if you’re an existing subscriber. Otherwise, you will get the books list in the confirmation email after you sign up at any time even if you’re listening to this way in the future. Technology is very useful for things like this.

Lauren: Our most recent bonus episode was the 2022 listener survey results. If you’d like to know whether being aware of the kiki-bouba meme affects how people respond to the blobby shape and the pointy shape, as well as other results from our survey, you can go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

[Music]

Gretchen: Speaking of books, I’ve read some linguistically interesting books lately!

Lauren: We realised that a common thread between some of the books we’ve been reading was this link of magic.

Gretchen: Specifically, I love the way that books about magic are also often really linguistically interesting because saying the word and casting the magic spell are so intertwined when it comes to our conception of how magic works. Actually, “magic spell” and “spelling a word” – etymologically, I’ve just look this up, and these have a common root.

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Lingthusiasm Episode 80: Word Magic

The magical kind of spell and the written kind of spell are historically linked. This reflects how saying a word can change the state of the world, both in terms of fictional magic spells that set things on fire or make them invisible, and in terms of the real-world linguistic concept of performative utterances, which let us agree to contracts, place bets, establish names, and otherwise alter the fabric of our relationships.

In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about word magic! We talk about how the word magic systems are set up differently in three recent fantasy books we like: Babel by R.F. Kuang, Carry On by Rainbow Rowell, and the Scholomance series by Naomi Novik. We also talk about linguistic performatives: why saying “I do” in a movie doesn’t make you married, aka Felicity Conditions, aka an excellent drag name; performativity as applied to gender (yup, Judith Butler got it from linguistics); the “hereby” test; and how technology changes what counts as a performative.

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

Announcements:
People often ask us to recommend interesting books about linguistics that don’t assume prior knowledge of linguistics, so we’ve come up with a list of 12 books that we personally recommend, including both nonfiction and fiction books with linguistically interesting elements! Get this list of our top 12 linguistics books by signing up for our free email list. Email subscribers get an email once a month when there’s a new episode of Lingthusiasm, and this month existing subscribers will see a link to our linguistics books list! If you find this any time in the future, you’ll get the books list in the confirmation email after you sign up.

In this month’s bonus episode, we get excited about the results of the 2022 Lingthusiasm Survey. We talk about synesthesia fomo, whether people respond differently to kiki/bouba depending on whether they’re aware of them as a meme, complicating the “where is a frown?” map, the plural of emoji, and more! Plus, we mentioned swearing in this episode? Yeah, we’ve got bonus episodes about that too.

Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 70+ other bonus episodes, as well as access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds! Our patrons let us keep making the main episodes free for everyone and we really appreciate every level of support.

Here are the links mentioned in the episode:

Lingthusiasm bonus episodes on swearing:

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon.

Lingthusiasm is on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, and our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

Lingthusiasm Episode 69: What we can, must, and should say about modals

Sometimes, we use language to make definite statements about how the world is. Other times, we get more hypothetical, and talk about how things could be. What can happen. What may occur. What might be the case. What will happen (or would, if only we should have known!) What we must and shall end up with. In other words, we use a part of language known as modals and modality!

In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about modals! We talk about the nine common modals in English, the gloriously-named quasimodals (no relation to the bellringer but I would absolutely read the Quasimodo/Quasimodal crossover, I’m just saying), and how people use the ambiguity between permission and believability in English modals for comic effect. We also talk about neat things modals do in various languages: in Nsyilxcen, the modal is a separate word, whereas in Nez Perce, it’s an affix on the verb, and in German, there are also modal adverbs. In Italian Sign Language and American Sign Language the forcefulness of the modal (such as the difference between “should” and “must”) is indicated through having modals that are performed faster or larger or have a more intensive expression in how they’re signed.

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

Announcements:

In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about the word “like”! We talk about why “like” falls prey to the frequency and recency illusions, why linguists get excited about “like” and other function words, and other important dispatches from the world of “like” (apparently people who use “like” are perceived as more attractive!).

Join us on Patreon to listen to this and 60+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds!

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening. To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

You can help keep Lingthusiasm advertising-free by supporting our Patreon. Being a patron gives you access to bonus content, our Discord server, and other perks.

Lingthusiasm is on Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.

Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, and our production manager is Liz McCullough. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

Bonus 64: There's like, so much to like about "like"

Bonus 64: There’s like, so much to like about “like”

“Like” is a word that’s super flexible and versatile (it can be a verb, a noun, a particle, and more), and each of these functions has its own patterns of use and history that we can trace back, sometimes suprisingly long ago. For example, the version that’s equivalent to “I mean” (as in, “like, you’d need to see it to believe it”) is found among speakers who were born in the UK and New Zealand as early as the mid-1800s, while the only version of “like” that seems to be new in recent decades or originate in North America is the one that introduces quotations, attitudes, and even gestures (“and then I was like…”).

In this bonus episode, your hosts Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about the word “like”! Specifically, we take as our springboard a paper by the linguist Alexandra D'Arcy called “Like and language ideology: Disentangling fact from fiction”. It turns out there are nine different functions of “like”, five very old (“I like cheese” and “like an arrow” go back to Old English) and four new…ish (from the 1800s to the surprisingly minor involvement of the Valley Girls). We also talk about why “like” falls prey to the frequency and recency illusions, why linguists get excited about “like” and other function words, and other important dispatches from the world of “like” (apparently people who use “like” are perceived as more attractive? look, like, I’ll take it.).

Listen to the episode about “like” and get access to, like, lots more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon

Lingthusiasm Episode 68: Tea and skyscrapers - When words get borrowed across languages

When societies of humans come into contact, they’ll often pick up words from each other. When this is happening actively in the minds of multilingual people, it gets called codeswitching; when it happened long before anyone alive can remember, it’s more likely to get called etymology. But either way, this whole spectrum is a kind of borrowing.

In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about borrowing and loanwords. There are lots of different trajectories that words take when we move them around from language to language, including words that are associated with particular domains, like tea and books, words that shift meaning when they language hop, like “gymnasium” and “babyfoot”, words that get translated piece by piece, like “gratte-ciel” (skyscraper) and “fernseher” (television), and words that end up duplicating the same meaning (or is it…?) in multiple languages, like “naan bread” and “Pendle hill”. We also talk about the tricky question of how closely to adapt or preserve a borrowed word, depending on your goals and the circumstances.

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

Announcements:

The LingComm grants have been announced! Thank you so much to everyone who made this possible, and congratulations to all our grantees. Go check out their projects as they keep rolling out over the rest of this year for a little more fun linguistics content in your life.

In this month’s bonus episode, originally recorded live through the Lingthusiasm Discord, we get enthusiastic about your sweary questions! We talk about why it’s so hard to translate swears in a way that feels satisfying, how swears and other taboo words participate in the Euphemism Cycle, a very ambitious idea for cataloging swear words in various languages, and more.

Join us on Patreon to listen to this and 60+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can play and discuss word games and puzzles with other language nerds!

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

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