Wherever Irish speakers in the world get together, you can have a "pop-up Gaeltacht"! And we're having one on this episode. We've got author and TG4 presenter Laura Pakenham taking us through the history and orthography of this great and resilient language. Laura is the author of Irish: History and Culture Through Language.

Timestamps

00:00 Start
00:24 Introducing Laura Pakenham
10:12 About Laura: Getting the gig
15:01 Navigating "correct" usage v. common usage
21:05 Different Irish voices on TG4
21:56 Getting feedback from Gaeilge speakers
24:33 Gaeilge as it is today
30:15 Irish is fun and cool, not so much a duty anymore
37:55 On coming to Irish as a learner
41:30 Related or Not: Theme
42:49 Related or Not: JIG, GIGUE, and JOG
49:51 Related or Not: HEATH, HEATHER, and HEATHEN
56:31 Related or Not: SCRAP and SCRUPLES
01:01:10 Gaeilge orthography and phonology
01:08:37 Gaeilge words and idioms
01:13:36 Why are things often referred to as "she"?
01:15:43 Favourite Irish words?
01:17:40 Irish diaspora and its linguistic impact
01:21:30 Advice for language advocates
01:23:59 The reads

What goes on in our minds when we construct an utterance? Linguists often use syntax trees to represent the structure of sentences, but are they psychologically real? Yngwie Nielsen and Dr Morten Christiansen have found evidence for something else: we can recognise patterns in strings of words, even when they don't form coherent "treelets". They're giving us a walkthrough of their latest work.

Timestamps

00:00 Start
00:31 Introductions: Yngwie and Morten
05:19 Insights into linguistics communication
07:45 What are syntax trees?
09:13 Why linguists love syntax trees
14:15 Treelets vs chunks: Looking beyond hierarchical structure
17:46 Wanna and gonna: Words that cross treelet boundaries
22:43 How to prime someone
28:18 Priming in this experiment: People do recognise chunks
32:26 Are people just filling in the treelet blanks?
35:23 Were they accidentally smuggling in treelets?
38:47 Do we process both treelets and chunks?
42:23 DensiTrees: A way of representing fuzzy networks
44:01 What are we doing mentally when we make an utterance?
47:20 What is language for?
49:29 Grammatical glue: How do we connect chunks?
53:23 Being able to language is bonkers
56:30 Should we be studying language differently?
01:01:09 Wrap-up and goodbyes

What will happen to the languages of climate refugees? Dr Mary Walworth has been working with the small island community of Nusi in Papua New Guinea, which was recently featured in an episode of Pole to Pole with Will Smith. What's it like doing media for a large audience, and more importantly, how do we help speakers hold onto their language? Dr Walworth joins us for this episode.

Timestamps

00:00 Start
00:45 Intros
04:00 What's coming up on this episode
06:58 New patron shoutout and spruik
09:05 News: Air Canada CEO resigns over English communication
14:34 News: Banning foreign language election information in the UK
23:54 News: Can LLMs pass the Wug Test?
34:03 News: Does closing your eyes help you hear better?
39:48 Related or Not: Theme
40:23 Related or Not: GORGE, ENGORGE, and GORGEOUS
48:09 Related or Not: ANY and MANY
51:54 Related or Not: GUAVA, GUACAMOLE, GUARANÍ, GUARANÁ
01:00:20 Interview with Mary Walworth
01:45:52 Word of the Week: bimbofication
01:54:00 Word of the Week: glottophobia
01:55:50 Word of the Week: liveness check
01:57:54 Comment from Colin: CLAN and PLANTA
01:59:03 Comment from Lauren: crash blossoms
02:02:49 The Reads
02:08:09 Outtake

"More people have listened to this episode than you have." Why does this sentence look so right, but feel so wrong? When your grammar says one thing, but your brain says another, you may have found a linguistic illusion. We're talking to Dr Dan Parker, author of Linguistic Illusions: A Case Study on Agreement Attraction.

Video for this episode: https://youtu.be/_9BcmMZrH7s

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 0:27
• News: 6:30
• Related or Not: 34:22
• Interview with Dan Parker: 49:53
• Words of the Week: 1:38:00
• Comment: 1:54:16
• The Reads: 1:58:19
• Outtakes: 2:05:39

How do you define what blue is? What even IS colour? Turns out, the quest to define colours was happening along with a standardisation crisis and a dictionary crisis at the venerable Merriam-Webster. Lexicographer and author Kory Stamper tells us all about it, and about her new book True Color.

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 1:17
• News: 12:40
• Related or Not: 33:34
• Chat with Kory Stamper, author of True Color: 50:43
• Words of the Week: 1:41:58
• Comment from Lauretta: 2:04:57
• The Reads: 2:08:14
• Outtakes: 2:16:48

We all have an accent — or several! And we use them to communicate things about us, and highlight aspects of our identity. So what's going on with the accents we hear? Are we losing some accents, or are they just changing? Dr Valerie Fridland is the author of Why We Talk Funny, and she joins us for this episode.

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 0:30
• News: 6:25
• Related or Not: 17:59
• Interview with Valerie Fridland: 36:53
• Words of the Week: 1:50:34
• The Reads: 2:21:21
• Outtakes: 2:26:14

We're talking to Dr Kelly Wright, friend of the show and data czar for the American Dialect Society. They run the biggest and most prestigious Word of the Year event, and she was there when the 2025 WotY votes came in. She's talking us through all the words we missed. Plus we get to some listener feedback.

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 0:41
• The ADS WotYs for 2025: 7:12
• Related or Not: 1:00:51
• Listener comments: 1:09:53
• The Reads: 1:20:28
• Outtakes: 1:27:01

Video version of this episode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXpfrXdWEW8

Video for this episode: https://youtu.be/Mqf05kN-TaI

It's Word of the Year season, and we're counting down our Words of the Week of the Year! In the time-honoured tradition, we gathered them all up from our 2025 shows, and let everyone vote. And we're going to give a mention to everyone else's words as well. We're joined by our friends and patrons, so come see them in chat!

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 1:31
• Everyone else's words: 5:57
• Related or Not: 34:34
• Our Words of the Week of the Year: 51:35
• Comments: 1:22:04
• The Reads: 1:26:36
• Outtakes: 1:30:50