The English We Speak: Donkey’s years
Why has Rob got a donkey in the studio?! It's probably got something with today's authentic English phrase which is about not doing something for a long time. How long…
Allusionist 60: Zillions
They look like numbers. They sound like numbers. You kinda know they are numbers. But they're not actually numbers. Linguistic anthropologist Stephen Chrisomalis explains what's going on with indefinite hyperbolic…
Grandmothers have the best curse words
two highlights: we hold swear words in a different part of the brain than the rest of language. We often don’t think of the literal meaning of common swear words…
Dialect versus language — what’s the big deal?
There are many rubrics that people cite as indicators of a dialect versus a language. Take mutual intelligibility. If two varieties of speech are mutually intelligible, surely they must be…
Allusionist 58: Eclipse
It's August 2007. Lauren Marks is a 27-year-old actor and a PhD student, spending the month directing a play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She's in a bar, standing onstage,…
Allusionist 54: The Authority
Sometimes you want to make the dictionary sexy, but it's just not a sexy thing