The World in Words

21/08/2020

21/08/2020

19/08/2020

Texpat Tina Tobey Mack learns that Texas English is wildly varied, and that she speaks more of it than she thought. Our latest. https://subtitlepod.com/we-speak-tina/

07/08/2020

Do you know the origins of these words?

“Sold down the river.” “Cakewalk.” “Master and slave.” American English is riddled with words and phrases with racist origins or undertones — and now a growing number of institutions are reevaluating their use of such language.

05/08/2020

Does your accent surprise people? Disappoint them? Ciku Theuri experienced that. Then she did something about it. New episode!

Why doesn't Ciku Theuri sound Black? Her friends wanted to know. Eventually, she wanted to know. Ciku tells the story of how she came to speak the way she does—and how others, from Ohio to Kenya, perceive her speech. (Spoiler alert: she does sound Black.) Also in this episode: why many Americans c...

23/07/2020

What happens when the people of your birth country think you’re a foreigner? New episode!

Verónica Zaragovia lives in Miami but she was born in Colombia. Although she has a Colombian passport, her Spanish doesn't sound Colombian— at least that's what people tell her. During a recent stay in Bogotá, she decided to change that: she took lessons in Colombian Spanish. Along the way, she ...

08/07/2020

Yes, that's us. Telling the stories of how we came to speak the way we do.

We are how we speak, right? Well, it's complicated— enough so to spend Subtitle's next four episodes on this question. We'll tell the stories of a diverse collection of people, tracing how each came to speak the way they do. Along the way, we'll ask: Is speech a good barometer of identity? Does an...

24/06/2020

Linguists had always wanted to observe the emergence of a language first-hand. With Nicaraguan Sign Language, they got that chance.

In 1986, Nicaraguan officials invited American linguist Judy Shepard-Kegl to observe a group of Deaf children. The kids were using an unrecognizable signing system. Over the following years, Shepard-Kegl and other linguists found themselves uniquely placed to observe what they came to realize was th...

11/06/2020

We English-speakers love to "borrow" words. We may just need to borrow this one, which has been so useful to Finns for so long.

Finland has been named the happiest country in the world. So why is sisu the word that best describes Finns? Associated with war and endurance, sisu means stoic perseverance against almost insurmountable odds. But this small, cold nation is changing, as is the meaning of sisu. In these tumultuous ti...

03/06/2020

The Anglican Church, which has run into all kinds of trouble keeping up with the times, now says use of the Irish language on a gravestone might be construed as a "political statement."

Family of Irishwoman wanted phrase ‘In ár gcroíthe go deo’ at grave in Coventry

27/05/2020

Here's the latest episode. Down the metaphorical rabbit hole with linguist Elena Simino.

In unsettled times, we reach for metaphors. They help us make sense of the nonsensical—or at least that's what we tell ourselves. In this episode, we hear from linguist Elena Simino, editor of a crowd-sourced publication called the Metaphor Menu intended for people with cancer. She assesses the me...

13/05/2020

New pod! Bilingual comedian Joe Wong tells Patrick how calling out racism is like learning a foreign language. "You just have to keep speaking it and use it and say it out loud."

Joe Wong is a brilliant bilingual comedian. In the US, he does standup. In his native China he hosts a popular TV game show. Recently his comedy has become more political: he is confronting US racial tensions head-on. In quarantine, Joe is writing a book, cooking for his son (to his son's dismay), a...

05/05/2020

This chat with the fabulous and hilarious Joanna Hausmann was such fun. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/subtitle/id1482805610

29/04/2020

Fun episode of Subtitle to help get us through this time.

Bilingual comedian Joanna Hausmann (pictured with her mother Ana Julia Jatar-Hausmann) is sitting out the lockdown at her Venezuelan parents' New England home. She tells us of her love of outdated Venezuelan slang; also about parenting her parents (in both Spanish and English); and about how the res...

16/04/2020

Our leaders choose to use the language of war to convey the peril and drama of the situation we are in. But with wars come enemies. That's where the martial metaphors make trouble. Listen to the new episode of Subtitle.

In this episode, we talk with American medical student Esther Kim. She's trying to overcome her suspicion of people with a particular accent, one that she's come to associate with racist taunts. The COVID-19 wave of anti-Asian harassment has made things much worse. Also, Stanford professor Seema Yas...

14/04/2020

At least we can learn some new phrases from around the world!

Around the world, coronavirus is changing how we speak. Don’t be a “covidiot” - make sure your pandemic parlance is up to scratch

01/04/2020

This quarantine is bringing out the multilingual in many of us. New episode!

We can't travel. We can't hug or visit loved ones. But we can talk our way through this pandemic — and we're doing just that, in most of the world's languages. In this episode we hear from Kavita Pillay's mother, who tells a story from her childhood in southern India. And a filmmaker in New York t...

25/03/2020

Here's the latest, chock-full of one-on-one interviews that were possible just months ago.

Hassnae Bouazza was born in Morocco. She didn't speak a word of Dutch when she immigrated to the Netherlands, though today it's effectively her mother tongue. The Dutch government now insists that would-be immigrants like Bouazza pass a Dutch language "entrance exam." Are Dutch officials using langu...

04/03/2020

We have a new episode launching into Outer Space.

If there are extraterrestrials out there, what kind of messages might they be sending us? How might we decipher those messages? And should we hit reply? In this episode, we try to answer these questions and more.

12/02/2020

How do polyglots process language? An MIT lab is seeking answers. More in the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/subtitle/id1482805610

06/02/2020

What's make-believe about trees talking? Maybe not as much as you think. New pod with Nina Porzucki!

In folklore and fiction there's a rich tradition of trees that talk, from Greek mythology to The Wizard of Oz. But that's make-believe, right? Well, maybe. Many ecologists now believe that trees are in constant communication with their surroundings. Linguists may roll their eyes at claims of ‘talk...

03/02/2020

In case you missed it, this act of linguistic racism happened over the weekend.

Police investigate ‘shameful’ flyer stuck to doors on all 15 floors of tower block

23/01/2020

New episode! We follow polyglot Susanna Zaraysky to an MIT lab where she submits to a series of cognitive tests.

Susanna Zaraysky, speaker of nine languages, is one of those people who seem able to pick up French or Portuguese almost overnight. In reality, it's not so effortless—but is she cognitively predisposed to attaining fluency in so many languages? We follow her to an MIT lab where researchers put her...

14/01/2020

Big news! Check your podcast feed and you'll see some new episodes waiting for your ears. The pod has a new name but we're still telling stories about languages.

Episode 7 Uncategorized Why Mormons are so good at languages Stereotypes about Mormon missionaries tend to overshadow their great success in foreign language learning. Why is the Church of Jesus... Play episode

16/12/2019

Blows your mind how each language takes gender neutrality along its own unique pathway.

What pronouns do you use? There are, in fact, many non-binary ways to answer in historically gendered-languages.

14/11/2019

Here's Twitter, thinking 'die' means the same thing in all languages.

When does "the" mean "die"? A German-speaking Twitter user's response of "the boomers" reaped a 12-hour account lockout after it was interpreted as an English-language threat.

10/10/2019

In HK, is Cantonese vs Mandarin a proxy for democracy vs one-party rule? If so, a lot of ordinary people are getting collaterally hurt.

Recent immigrants to the city say they are becoming increasingly anxious after seeing a protest against an extradition bill mutate into a violent campaign against all things Chinese.

16/09/2019

Good question.

We should embrace London's lashings of languages.

12/09/2019

Killer translators? Looking forward to this movie!

Directed by Régis Roinsard. With Olga Kurylenko, Alex Lawther, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Riccardo Scamarcio. Nine translators, hired to translate the eagerly awaited final book of a bestselling trilogy, are confined in a luxurious bunker. When the first ten pages of the top-secret manuscript appear onl...

10/09/2019

Are they “Hispandering”?

Do the 2020 Democratic candidates using Spanish appeal to voters who speak the language? The answer is as nuanced as the Latino electorate.

23/08/2019

Languages need the law on their side.

In her dissent, Justice Paula Nakayama said she agreed the state should provide “as many students as possible” with access to immersion programs but she disagreed that the state Constitution required it.

30/07/2019

“There is also an intelligence to the hand, and it isn’t subject to complexes, because it communicates directly with the heart.”

Caradec’s Dictionary defines the gestures of everyone from Freemasons and medieval monks to Crips and Bloods in L.A. and gay people throughout the ages

29/07/2019

May depend on whether Spanish or English is your first language.

How do you say “Los Feliz” or “Angeleno”? Let’s take a tour through some of L.A.’s most confounding names.

24/07/2019

"Even if studying a foreign language is not a magical cure-all, there is one thing it will do: It will make you a better speaker of a foreign language." Amen.

The evidence is far less clear than popular media might lead you to believe.

24/07/2019

If you think you know the Rosetta Stone approach, think again, because it's changed!

Language software company Rosetta Stone has transformed itself into an SaS subscription-based business and expanded into edtech. The company is seeing a big payoff from this strategy.

24/07/2019

A new colonial language to add to English, Arabic, French, etc.

As China strengthens its already robust trade and infrastructural ties with Africa, Chinese-government funded Confucius Institutes to teach Chinese Mandarin are on the rise.

17/07/2019

There there soooo many stories about language learning apps. But this is good one.

Created seven years ago by MacArthur “genius” computer geek Luis von Ahn, Duolingo has hooked everyone from Bill Gates, Khloe Kardashian and Jack Dorsey to Syrian refugees in Turkey.

11/07/2019

Alternative headline: How language and climate don't always connect

While we’re losing biological diversity, we’re also losing linguistic and cultural diversity at the same time. This is no coincidence.

11/07/2019

Peter Hessler got called "Orientalist" after he wrote about Chinese lingerie sellers in Egypt. But it was his understanding of Mandarin and Arabic that opened the door on this world. We undervalue multilingualism at our peril.

Learning a new language can transform how you view the world, writes Peter Hessler. We must emphasis it in our debates over identity.

08/07/2019

Language is weaponized in Northern Ireland.

On a balmy July morning in a small castle nestled at the foot of the Sperrin mountains, Diarmaid Ua Bruadair reclines in his office chair and sighs contentedly in a rare moment of quiet, after another hectic school year. It’s the first week of the summer holidays at Gaelcholáiste Dhoire in County...