Talk the Talk the Talk the Talk

Has a month gone by already? I’ve got a backlog on Talk the Talk, so here’s a load of links for your enjoyment and edification.

For the first three links, I’m on about 5/6ths of the way through the stream. Watch out; it starts playing as soon as the page loads.

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23 March 2010: American English

For this episode, I report live from the USA, and fittingly I’m talking about that special dialect known as American English.

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30 March 2010: Guys

Would you call someone a ‘guy’, even if they’re a ‘gal’? What about in mixed-gender groups? A recent article in the Boston Globe is raising issues about what to call people. Is there any better way of handling this in English? And what about other languages?

This time on ‘Talk the Talk’, we return to language and gender, with a look at this most peevish of language peeves.

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6 April 2010: The Munduruku

This week on Talk the Talk, we talk about numbers. In English, we have lots of names for numbers, but the Munduruku people of the Amazon have no words for anything higher than five. Experiments show that they’re good at estimating large numbers like English speakers are, but not so good at working equations using numbers they have no words for. Is it a case of language constraining thought? Or are both being constrained by culture?

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13 April 2010: Homer-nyms

We have the Simpsons to thank for such words as “D’oh” and “embiggen”. But what else do the Simpsons have to tell us about language? On this week’s ‘Talk the Talk’, we look at neologisms and derivational morphology. But don’t worry, I do explain what all that is. I’m also pleased to say that I managed to restrain my urge to overdo the Homer impersonation.

This link seems to be different. They’ve made Talk the Talk downloadable, so now you can take it on your listening device of choice.

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That’s a lot of Talk the Talk to listen to, so don’t overdo it.

For next week’s show, we’re taking your questions, so be sure to email your language questions to talks@rtrfm.com.au, and I might pick it for next time.