thelinguistthing

[thelinguistthing]

god actually baited us into creating the tower of babel so that He could create His most beloved children: autistic linguistics enthusiasts

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Why does like every language do things with their R sounds that nobody else understands

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At the risk of sounding anti-intellectual, I think that college should be free and also not a requirement for employment outside of highly specialized career fields

[thelinguistthing]

Linguistics and Language Podcasts

Looking for podcasts about language and linguistics? Here’s a comprehensive list with descriptions! I’ve also mentioned if shows have transcripts. If there are any I missed, let me know!

Linguistics

Lingthusiasm A podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne (that’s me!). Main episodes every third Thursday of every month, with a second bonus episode on Patreon. (Transcripts for all episodes)

Because Language Every week Daniel, Ben, and Hedvig cover the news in linguistics and tackle a particular topic. (previously Talk the Talk) (Transcripts for all episodes after release)

The Vocal Fries Every episode Carrie Gillon & Megan Figueroa tackle linguistic discrimination in relation to a particular group. (Transcripts for some episodes)

En Clair A podcast about forensic linguistics from Dr Claire Hardaker at Lancaster University. Episodes released monthly, with a range of topics from criminal cases to literary fraud. (Transcripts for all episodes)

Language on the Move Conversations about linguistic diversity in social life. (Transcripts for some episodes)

Said & Done A podcast about languages and the people who speak them, from the Columbia LRC

Accentricity From Sadie Durkacz Ryan, a lecturer in sociolinguistics at Glasgow University. Season one has six episodes.

All About Accents A podcast all about accents with linguist and accent coach Dani Morse-Kopp in conversation with her partner Lucas Morse. 

Tomayto Tomahto Led by Talia Sherman, a Brown University undergrad, this interview-based podcast explores language.

Field Notes Martha Tsutsui Billins interviews linguists about their linguistic fieldwork. (Transcripts for all episodes)

History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences sub-30 minute episodes about the history of linguistics from James McElvenny, with the occasional interviews.

Lingua Brutalica Jess Kruk and Wes Robertson take on the world of extreme metal.

Say It Like You Play It A podcast about games, language and culture.

The Language Revolution Changing UK attitudes to languages.

The Secret Life of Language An interview podcast from the University of Melbourne’s School of Languages and Linguistics.

JSLX Conversations Podcast A podcast produced by the Journal of Sociolinguistics. (Transcripts for all episodes)

Lexis A conversation about linguistics with a topical UK focus, from Matthew Butler, Lisa Casey, Dan Clayton and Jacky Glancey.

Kletshead A podcast about bilingual children for parents, teachers and speech language therapists from Dr. Sharon Unsworth. Also in Dutch.

Linguistics Lounge A podcast about language and discourse with Tony Fisher and Julia de Bres. Transcripts for all episodes.

CorpusCast from Dr Robbie Love, available alongside other shows in the Aston University podcast feed or in video format.

Life and Language Michaela Mahlberg chats with her guests about life and why language matters.

Toksave – Culture Talks A podcast from the PARADISEC Archive, where the archived records of the past have life breathed back into them once again.

Theory Neutral Covering typology and descriptive grammars with Logan R Kearsley.

PhonPod Podcast Interview-based podcast about phonetics and phonology.

Linguistics Careercast A podcast devoted to exploring careers for linguists outside academia.

Language

The Allusionist Stories about language and the people who use it, from Helen Zaltzman (Transcripts for all episodes) (my review).

Grammar Girl Episodes are rarely longer than 15 minutes, but they’re full of tips about English grammar and style for professional writing, and more! (Transcripts for all episodes).

A Language I Love Is… A show about language, linguistics and people who love both. An interview-based podcast hosted by Danny Bate.

Word of Mouth BBC Radio 4 show exploring the world of words with Michael Rosen.

America the Bilingual Dedicated to the pursuit of bilingualism in the USA.

Words & Actions A podcast about how language matters in business, politics and beyond.

Subtitle A podcast about languages and the people who speak them, from Patrick Cox and Kavita Pillay. For those who miss Patrick’s old podcast, The World in Words.

The Parlé Podcast from Canadian Speech-Language Pathologist Chantal Mayer-Crittenden.

Slavstvuyte! A podcast for everyone who is fascinated by Slavic languages from Dina Stankovic.

Subtext A podcast about the linguistics of online dating.

Conlangs

Conlangery Particularly for those with an interest in constructed  languages, they also have episodes that focus on specific natural  languages, or linguistic phenomena. Newer episodes have transcripts.

Linguitect Matt, Rowan and Liam explain linguistic topics and talk about how to build them into your conlang.

Dictionaries

Word For Word From Macquarie dictionary, with a focus on Australian English.

Fiat Lex A podcast about making dictionaries from Kory Stamper & Steve Kleinedler. One season.

Word Matters From the editors at Merriam-Webster, hosted by Emily Brewster, Neil Serven, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. 

English

Unstandardized English Interview-based podcast. Disrupting the language of racism and white supremacy in English Language Teaching.

History of English Meticulously researched, professionally produced and engaging content on the history of English. (My reviews: episodes 1-4, episodes 5-79, bonus episodes).

Lexicon Valley Hosted by John McWhorter.

That’s What They Say Every week linguist Anne Curzan joins Rebecca Kruth on Michigan public radio for a five minute piece on a quirk of English language.

A Way With Words A talk-back format show on the history of English words, cryptic crosswords and slang.

Words/etymology

Something Rhymes With Purple Susie Dent and Gyles Brandreth uncover the hidden origins of language and share their love of words.

Telling our Twisted Histories Kaniehti:io Horn brings us together to decolonize our minds– one word, one concept, one story at a time.

Word Bomb Hosts Pippa Johnstone and Karina Palmitesta explore one word per week, using particular words for a deep dive into linguistic and social issues. (Transcripts for all episodes)

Words for Granted In each episode Ray Belli explores the history of a common English word in around fifteen minutes.

Lexitecture Ryan, a Canadian, and Amy, a Scot share their chosen word each episode.

Bunny Trails Shauna and Dan discuss idioms and other turns of phrase.

Translation & Interpreting

Brand the Interpreter Interviews about the profession, from Mireya Pérez.

The Translation Chat Podcast a podcast on Japanese to English media with Jennifer O’Donnell, and translators and editors in the Japanese to English localization.

In Languages other than English

Parler Comme Jamais A French language podcast from Binge Audio.Monthly episodes from Laélia Véron.

Sozusagen A German language podcast of weekly 10 minute episodes.

Talking Bodies A German language podcast about speech, gesture and communication.

Registergeknister A German language linguistics podcast of the Collaborative Research Center 1412 at the Humboldt University of Berlin.

Språket A Swedish language podcast from Sveriges Radio about language use and change.

Språktalk A Norwegian language podcast with Helene Uri and Kristin Storrusten from Aftenposten.

Klog på sprog A Danish language podcast that playfully explores the Danish language.

Kletshead A Dutch language podcast about bilingual children for parents, teachers and speech language therapists from Dr. Sharon Unsworth. Also in English.

Over taal gesproken A Dutch language podcast from the Institute for the Dutch language and the Dutch Language Society.

BabelPodcast A Portuguese language podcast from Brazil, hosted by Cecilia Farias and Gruno.

El Racionalista Omnívoro a Portuguese language podcast about linguistics, history, cinema, literature and more, hosted by Antonio Fábregas.

War of Words A Spanish language podcast about linguistics from Juana de los Santos, Ángela Rodríguez, Néstor Bermúdez and Antonella Moschetti.

Con la lengua fuera A Spanish language podcast from Macarena Gil y Nerea Fernández de Gobeo.

Hablando mal y pronto A Spanish language conversational podcast from Santiago, Juan and Magui.

Rhapsody in Lingo Cantonese podcast on language and linguistics.

Back Catalogue

These are podcasts that had a good run of episodes and are no longer being produced.

Spectacular Vernacular A podcast that explores language … and plays with it Hosted by Nicole Holliday and Ben Zimmer for Slate. Transcripts available. 19 episodes from 2021 and 2022.

Science Diction a podcast about words—and the science stories behind them. Hosted by Johanna Mayer, this is a production from WNYC Science Friday. 42 episodes from 2020-2022.

Troublesome Terps The podcast about the things that keep interpreters up at night. 70 episodes from 2016-2022.

The World in Words From PRI, episodes from 2008-2019.

How Brands are Build (season 1 of this show focuses on brand naming)

Very Bad Words A  podcast about swearing and our cultural relationship to it. 42 episodes from 2017 and 2018.

The Endless Knot is not strictly a language podcast, but they often include word histories, linguistics podcast fans episode may find their colour series particularly interesting.

Given Names (four part radio series from 2015, all about names. My review)

Odds & Ends

There are also a number of podcasts that have only a few episodes, are no longer being made, or are very academic in their focus:

The Black Language Podcast Anansa Benbow brings you a podcast dedicated to talking about Black people and their languages. Five episodes from 2020.

Speculative Grammarian Podcast (from the magazine of the same name, about 50 episodes from Dec 2009-Jan 2017)

Linguistics Podcast (on YouTube, around 20 episodes in 2013 introducing basic linguistic concepts)

Evolving English: Linguistics at the Library (8 episodes 2018), from the British Library.

Language Creation Society Podcast (8 episodes, 2009-2011)

LingLab (very occasionally updated podcast from graduate students in the Sociolinguistics program at NC State University)

Hooked on Phonetics five episodes from Maxwell Hope from 2019 and 2020.

Glossonomia Each episode is about a different vowel or consonant sound in English. 44 episodes from 2010-2014.

Distributed Morphs An interview-based podcast about morphology, from Jeffrey Punske. Eight episodes in 2020.

Word to the Whys a podcast where linguists talk about why they do linguistics. Created by TILCoP Canada (Teaching Intro Linguistics Community of Practice). 10 episodes in 2020 and 2021.

The Weekly Linguist An  interview podcast about the languages of the world and the linguists who study them from Jarrette Allen and Lisa Sprowls. 21 episodes in 2021.

Silly Linguistics (ad hoc episode posting, but episode 7 is an interview with Kevin Stroud for History of English fans)

Linguistics After Dark Eli, Sarah and Jenny answer your linguistics questions in hour-ish long episodes.

WACC Podcast (guest lectures at Warwick Applied Linguistics)

Sage Language and Linguistics

Let’s Talk Talk

Queer Linguistics has a couple of episodes, with a bit of classroom vibe

GradLings An occasionally-updated podcast for linguistics students at any stage of study, to share their stories and experiences.

Canguro English A podcast about language for people learning languages. 103 episodes from 2018-2021.

Why is English? A podcast about how the English language got to be the way it is, from Laura Brandt. Seven episodes from 2020 and 2021. 

Animology Vegan blogger Colleen Patrick Goudreau uses her love of animals as a starting point for exploring animal-related etymologies. 27 episodes from 2017-2020.

Wordy Wordpecker Short weekly episodes from Rachel Lopez, charting the stories of English words. 14 episodes from 2018.

Speaking of Translation A monthly podcast from Eve Bodeux & Corinne McKay. 10 episodes from 2020-2021.

Se Ve Se Escucha (Seen and Heard) Language justice and what it means to be an interpreter, an organizer and bilingual in the US South, from the Center for Participatory Change. Episodes from 2020.

This is an updated listing from December 2024. I’m always excited to be able to add more podcasts to the list, so if you know of any linguistics/language podcasts not here, please let me know! I wait until a show has at least 5 episodes before I add it to the list, and I like to let people know when transcripts are available.

[thelinguistthing]

fact: when pidgin dialects involve english, -glish becomes the suffix, eg: chinglish, konglish, hinglish fact: slash pair name order puts the top first and the bottom second, eg: deancas vs casdean conclusion: english is an uke language and that’s why we have an omegaverse, not an alphaverse

[thelinguistthing]

no one will convince me that we as linguists don't just pretend to take noam chomsky seriously because he's still alive and nobody wants the headache. him and his fucking 'language is meant to support thinking and not to communicate' ass. him and his fucking gigachad grammar. I'm sick of hearing about him. I want to hear about literally anyone else (but NOT william labov. I don't wanna hear about his ass either)

this is what noam thinks. this is what's going on in his head. this is the set of parameters he was born with or whatever. he is portraying himself as the chad because he's coping with the fact that he's been dumb and wrong since the 60s. most of the field of linguistics today sprung out of the necessity to tell him how dumb and wrong he was.

"oohoohoo grammar is innate" you know what else is innate noam, you crusty motherfucker? my foot in your ass. balls. fucking balls, dr. chomsky.

disclaimer: I know I'm being reductive. do not come on this post and tell me I'm being reductive because I know good and well that that is what I am doing. avram noam chomsky does not need you to come on this post and suck his toes because some master's student called him a dipshit. I promise and guarantee you that he does not. if somebody tries to defend noam chomsky's gigachad grammar to me I will lure you into the basement with the promise of a rare unpublished chomsky manuscript from 1969 and cask of amontillado your ass right next to the little compartment where I keep my old bedframe.

[thelinguistthing]

women in PHLEGM (poetry, history, language, english literature, ghost stories, music)

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L'académie française, quand tu penses qu'ils ont touché le fond, ils creusent le sol en fait

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Nobody suffered as much as Saussure!!!

The horrors of being perceived? Absolutely pale in comparison to the sheer insanity that is the history behind the Course in General Linguistics (1916).

Imagine the following:

You're a linguist and professor. You're doing your thing, you just published a book about the genitive case in Sanskrit (1881). Nothing too crazy, it's the current trend in linguistics anyway.

You're teaching this linguistics course (1906-1911) and it's pretty new and exciting. It's a new department, even, and you get to impart your new ideas on your students. Your ideas are very innovative, but nobody really knows that outside your students and fellow professors.

You die (1913)

Your students are like RIP, he sure was a great guy, and collect their course notes into a semi coherent text, eventually edited by your fellow professors (1916)

Your contemporaries don't really vibe with your work, so aside from your peers, nobody knows about your work. (And the peers in question, while deeply respecting your work, already have their own divergences from your initial theory)

Some 12 years later your work is discussed at the first ever international linguistics conference (1928) and suddenly your work (the compilation from students' notes of your course, edited by your peers) is the hottest thing since sliced bread (1928). They publish a new edition of your work

Linguistics as a science gets invented.

Structuralism as a linguistic and philosophical current gets invented, allegedly based on your work (you have never once mentioned the word "structure" in your entire Course)

Also semiotics is invented, which is neat cause you predicted that

Some decades later non-linguists take ahold of your Course and base the creation of entire fields of humanities (such as anthropology) on it

Your work is so influential that anybody who wants to become a great thinker (linguist or otherwise) with New ideas does so in reaction to you (allegedly) (post-structuralism)

You single-handedly influence the entire course of linguistics and all humanities, as well as the largest philosophical movements in the 20th century (structuralism - allegedly following your work - post-structuralism - allegedly reacting against it)

Eventually people start reading your actual manuscripts, course notes, diaries etc, as well as conferences you held in your lifetime. It turns out you were infinitely more nuanced than what you've been painted as. (You are known as The "language vs speech" guy whereas you planned to write a linguistics of Speech too, but never got to. on account of your death.) (You never used the word structure yet are the father of Structuralism) (you talk about linguistic values more often than the linguistic sign). They publish yet another new edition of your work, this time annotated with your actual manuscripts. (1972). Saussure Studies, as in, deciphering your real intended meaning, are a thing now.

Linguists finally talk about the "real you" and the contrast between "your" most popular work vs your actual writings, conferences, courses and notes. But they're a minority and the average person only knows about Structuralism and maybe the General Course in Linguistics if they're a humanities student.

The only way the people reading this know this whole story is by way of a tumblr post (2024) (111 years after you died) based on a grad student's study notes, based on a History of Linguistics course held by a professor whose PhD (2015) is in the historiography of the Course, based on the reconstructions of whatever was left of your manuscripts, trying to undo the misconceptions of the almost century long interpretation and reinterpretation of your Course in General Linguistics (1916), which itself was an interpretation based on your students' notes and your peers' input, 3 years after you died.

Cause this is what happened to Ferdinand the Saussure (1857-1913), father of modern linguistics

This is like a monkey's paw deal: you become the most influential figure in 20th century humanities BUT...!!

RIP Saussure, you would've loved/ hated the current state of linguistics.

I suppose the moral of the story is: the real Course in General Linguistics was the lost media we found along the way

[thelinguistthing]

no punctuation we read like romans

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what the fuck is "dark academia" isnt real academia dark enough do you know what some of these fuckers woudl do for funding

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I’m gonna have to do…

*whispers* maths

*sound of english language and linguistics students fleeing*

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Round 1

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she tower on my babel till I ἐπιούσιον

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the three linguistics papers to read about singular they (morphosyntax)

Bjorkman, B. M. (2017). Singular they and the syntactic representation of gender in English. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 2(1). Open access link

Konnelly, L., & Cowper, E. (2020). Gender diversity and morphosyntax: An account of singular they. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 5(1). open access link

Conrod, K. (2022). Abolishing gender on D. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique, 67(3), 216-241. Open access link

in chronological order because these papers are all basically responding to each other; this papers focus on the (morpho)syntax and semantics of english singular 'they' referring to specific people (like they/them pronoun-users).

if you like posts like this, let me know! i'll give "three linguistics papers to read about (topic)" every once in a while based on interest

[thelinguistthing]

Books Recommendation : The Secret History

Hum... WOW ?

What a read ! I just finished and already feel like i need to read it again to find out every clues and references (and LIES) that I've missed. It is a long read but worth it.

If you like an unreliable narrator, unperfect characters and love literature go for it ! It has all of that tied into a very good mystery.

The book will make you reflect on the "dark academia" trend and how theses kind of fantasies it generates can be aspiring and/or damaging, the value of the knowledge you are acquiring, the elitism of long studies... It is honestly hard to condense the depth and details of the book here.

Have you read it ? Let me know !