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What does the bat in “acrobat” have to do with the word come? John explains.
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Reflexive pronouns are redundant in a way, sure, but they’re also quite common in many languages. John explains.
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There’s good reason to believe that sophisticated speech began long before homo sapiens hit the scene. John explains.
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Does Ayesha Rascoe have a good radio voice? Not according to many NPR listeners, who find her loud, high-pitched and generally grating. John explains.
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A recent study suggests that a new dialect is emerging in the southern part of Florida. John explains.
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The trial transcript of a 225-year-old murder is filled with fascinating evidence of the way we used to talk. John explains.
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Many English verbs have three forms — sing, sang and sung, for example. The problem is that speakers seem to want only two. John explains.
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Too — whether about excess, addition or contradiction — evolved from to. John explains.
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Some languages adopt their “health” word from the concept of wholeness — a metaphor that makes perfect sense. Other languages, however, adopt their “health” word from trees. John explains.
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Like the French word droit, English’s right has taken on a number of useful metaphorical meanings. John explains.
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In this favorite from the archives, John discusses some unwritten rules of English that can be remarkably difficult for a learner of English to master.
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The word “record” can be broken down into two parts, the re and the cord. But what do those parts even mean? John explains.
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John is traveling this week and so we’re running a previous episode about the speech patterns of Bette Davis, George Gershwin, Louis Armstrong and countless other Americans of the 1930s. Why do they all sound like that?
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So many of our words have ugly associations that are particular to a historical time or event. Should we expunge them entirely from our vocabulary? Can we? John weighs in.
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Words that come to mean “want” often start out meaning something else. Take “want,” for example. John explains.
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Henry James wrote his final novels just over a century ago — and yet they are far less accessible than works written much earlier. John explains.
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Possession is more or less about ownership, and we denote that in English by adding ’s to the end of a word. But of course there’s far more to the story than just that. John explains.
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There’s a rumor going around social networks that “knocked up” traces back to American slave trading. Is there any evidence for that etymology? John explains.
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It’s tempting to imagine that a sentence will translate rather neatly, word by word, from one language to another. It’s also naive. English, after all, is relatively straightforward, while most languages are far more gunked up with complexity — perhaps none as much as Yimas. John explains.
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The book and lyrics of The Music Man are replete with everyday, ordinary dialogue that, nevertheless, demonstrates how English often works. John explains.
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