Someday, we might make contact with intelligent life beyond our planet. In that case, linguists want to be PREPARED. Enter the excitingly named field of Xenolinguistics!
In this bonus episode, Gretchen and Lauren get enthusiastic about how linguists might go about communicating with aliens. Drawing on highlights of the academic book “Xenolinguistics: Towards a Science of Extraterrestrial Language”, we talk about how we’d actually go about trying to communicate with aliens. First of all, how can we know that a species is trying to communicate, and how can we convey our intentions in return? Secondly, do we have a shared context: are they on our planet, are we on theirs, or are we trying to decipher some sort of radio waves from afar? Third, what sort of medium are they using: visual, audio, and touch are all used for human languages and have some obvious advantages, but what about smell, electromagnetism, or electric pulses? Fourth, what could we learn about interspecies communication here on Earth from the African Grey Parrot, the prairie dog, and the vervet monkey? And finally, what other practical and ethical considerations do we need to remember based on current linguistic documentation projects? (The aliens may have multiple languages, only some of which are appropriate for outsiders to learn. And there are no spare AA batteries available in orbit around Alpha Centauri.)
As its catchy name suggests, “Lingthusiasm” is a show powered by its hosts’ passion for words. Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch, both linguists, were running separate blogs when they met online in the mid-2010s, and decided to combine their expertise into a podcast. New episodes are released monthly and offer listeners a window into all kinds of linguistic subjects, like the technical side of phonetics and semiotics and the cultural variations in how language is taught in schools.
The show is often as much about social habits as it is about language — one memorable episode had Gawne and McCulloch discuss “lopsided conversations,” those verbal interactions that can go off the rails if one person is either dominating or not contributing enough. It’s a fascinating listen that will change the way you see everyday communications.
Lingthusiasm Episode 96: Welcome back aboard the metaphor train!
We’re taking you on a journey to new linguistic destinations, so come along for the ride and don’t forget to hold on!
In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about metaphors! It’s easy to think of literary comparisons like “my love is like a red, red rose” but metaphors are also far more common and almost unnoticed in regular conversation as well. For example, English speakers often talk about ideas as a journey (the metaphor train) or as if they’re visual - clear or murky or heavy or maybe fuzzy, but not as fluffy or feathery or metallic or polka-dotted, but other languages can use different metaphors. We also talk about the process of metaphor design, and how metaphors can help us understand - or misunderstand - abstract concepts like electricity or language learning.
Note that this episode originally aired as Bonus 30: Welcome aboard the metaphor train! We’ve added a few new things about metaphors and an updated announcements section to the top. 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.
In this month’s bonus episode we get Tom Scott’s Language Files team together on one call for the first and last time! We talk with host/writer Tom Scott, as well as researcher/writer Molly Ruhl and animator Will Marler, about their roles putting the videos togehter, Gretchen’s role in the brainstorming and fact-checking process, and what it’s like working on a big, multi-faceted project like the Language Files videos.
Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90 other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds.
Gentner, D. (1983). Flowing waters or teeming crowds: Mental models of electricity. In D. Gentner, & A. L. Stevens (Eds.), Mental Models (pp. 99-129). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum. (Gentner and Gentner 1983, 2014 reprint)
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).
In this bonus episode, Lauren and Gretchen get the Language Files team together on one call for the first and last time! We talk with host/writer Tom Scott, as well as researcher/writer Molly Ruhl and animator Will Marler, about their roles putting the videos togehter, Gretchen’s role in the brainstorming and fact-checking process, and what it’s like working on a big, multi-faceted project like the Language Files videos. We also talk about what Tom found hardest to pronounce onscreen, Lauren’s secret contributions, how Molly’s thesis about tumblr linguistics led to them becoming part of the Language Files team, which of Will’s animated jokes got cut and which of their jokes stayed in, the gif vs gif video joke, and everyone’s favourite episode to make.
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 VWO 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.
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.
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.
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).
Si alguna vez te has preguntado cómo ha cambiado internet la forma en la que hablamos, “Arroba lengua” es tu libro. Una instantánea de un mundo en constante cambio. ✍️Escribe: Gretchen McCulloch 📝Traduce Miguel Papineau ¡Ya disponible en preventa!
Because Internet is now available in Spanish! There are also translations in Japanese and Korean but this is the first translation into a language I can understand, so I’m particularly excited! I’m doing an event in Madrid on Friday, 13 September at 8pm with the translator, Miguel Sánchez Ibáñez, and I hope to see people there!
The title has been translocalized into a Spanish social media expression: arroba is the name for the @ sign, and is a way of getting someone’s attention, so Arroba Lengua is like @language (only written out so people can actually find it in bookstores).
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!” We undergo this experience pratically every time we learn a word, and yet we still manage to do it.
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, with the appropriate tweaks in wording), so you can wear them in old-time typewriter font and see who does a double take.
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.
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Lingthusiasm merch generally
If you’re looking for subtle-to-obvious ways to signal that you’re a linguist or linguistics fan in public, gift ideas for the linguistics enthusiast in your life (or handy links to forward to people who might be interested in getting you a gift sometime), we also have many previous items of Lingthusiasm merch!
We love to see your photos of Lingthusiasm merch or any diy linguistics crafts projects you might make! Feel free to tag us @lingthusiasm on social media or share in the #merch-crafts-objects channel in the Lingthusiasm Discord.
We do love the word “do”, and we hope you do too. Don’t you want to know what the word “do” can do?
In this bonus episode, Gretchen and Lauren 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.
I’ve progressed from my menu of only gelato-making videos in Italian to other recipes in general, and in particular to lots of cooking videos from this popular Italian home cooking channel which was in the recommended videos after another one I watched. Maybe I’ll branch out again at some point to other speakers, but for now it’s nice to be able to stumble into more videos without having to think up new keywords to search. Also, I might need to make some of these recipes now…
In Estonian, so far I have learned one (1) highly useful word, “tere”, which this video tells me is an all-purpose neutral greeting (neutral with respect to both formality and time of day). Ooh, I’ve just realized while writing this post that it’s probably cognate to Finnish “terve”, a greeting I learned from Duolingo! (Yes, I just looked this up, seems like they both mean something to do with health.) So I’ve already learned one neat thing!
I’m also recognizing a few Estonian cognates from the Finnish Duolingo lessons, especially the verb “on” (which means “is”). I’m not recognizing many other words though, and I’m wondering how much of that is differing vocab and how much of that is not having learned many common words in Finnish yet (I’ve been especially chafing at how few verbs we’ve learned yet, it would be really useful to have a word like “I want” even if it’s unanalyzed because the grammar is more complicated than they want to introduce early).
Youtube’s algorithm has, after about a week, adjusted to the fact that I now want to watch videos entirely in Italian, and started recommending further Italian videos on my home feed (it was already doing so at the end of previous Italian videos). Tiktok’s algorithm, so far, has not done this yet, and is still recommending me stuff in English, despite me aggressively liking basically all of the Estonian videos I watch and nothing else.
Troubleshooting
I’ve noticed that it’s been easier to remember to do the podcast listening in Dutch and the youtube videos in Italian because I already have habits related to opening those apps, whereas I don’t have habits around using tiktok so I kept forgetting to open it and look at some Estonian videos. But a couple days ago I moved the tiktok app on my phone to a more visible location, and now it’s getting easier to remember.
Something else very weird that I noticed about listening is that when I play the tracks on my phone fairly loudly, it’s relatively easy to focus on trying to listen to them, sometimes while playing a simple visual game on my phone for something to fiddle with (I’ve already noticed that unfamiliar languages need to be played louder than familiar ones). But when I beam the podcast over to my speaker at a distance, suddenly I very quickly start tuning out the unfamiliar language and opening up apps that involve reading and completely ignoring it. I have no problems listening to podcasts on speakers in English; in fact, it’s my preferred method when I’m at home, but for some reason this causes my brain to reclassify Dutch as background noise to be ignored, even if it’s the same loudness as it would be when it’s played right near me. Super weird, has anyone else ever noticed anything like this?
Every Tumblr user knows that we Tumblrinas use language a little differently. We’re not like other social media users. We’re weird. We’re weirdos. And this month, we have actual linguist Gretchen McCulloch (@allthingslinguistic) on to talk about it!! Plus: House of the Dragon dragon-related feelings and throwing a ball in the air as you lay on your bed like a 90s teen character.
Credits and transcript in our reblog. You can find transcripts for this, and every other episode, here.
Find the posts discussed in this episode in this tag!
Also here are my 36 pages of posts (that’s like…360 posts) in my language on the interwebz tag, yes I did just check the spelling and that’s the one I randomly used at some point in 2012 and have just stuck with ever since.
Other bits from Because Internet that have resonated with tumblr users:
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