This was a fun show to do. It’s about babies and language: what do they know, and when do they know it?

It’s a little long though. The idea of having a break in the middle was that, instead of having 14 minutes of me all in a row, we could split it and have 7 + 7 on either side. But what’s happening is that I’m stretching it both ways and getting 10 + 10. Is the world ready for 20 minutes of me?

Well, ready or not, here it is. I might have to impose some self-discipline if Jess won’t do it! But we do have fun chatting. Hope it’s fun for you too.

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Yes, I remember the first time I heard the word ‘bogan’. It was 1987.

I also remember the use of ‘bog’, used in a witty epigram written on a bus shelter.

And now ‘bogan’ is in the Oxford English Dictionary.

I did make one error. I conflated the Oxford English Dictionary with the Oxford Dictionaries Online. That matters a bit.

My favourite part of this podcast was calming Stacy down. You can hear his exasperation at the new trendy words! And I think that is an attitude that a lot of people share. A lot of the articles about the Oxford English Dictionary use phrases like ‘hallowed bastion’ and so forth, but why should we expect a hoity-toity tone from it? It’s language as used by all of us.

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I’m fascinated by the origins of our language. I feel like I’m always building up more of the picture of how it came about, and today’s podcast features two new pieces.

Piece one: Some linguists hold to social interactionism, or the idea that young humans acquire language in a social context. And what do you know: apes appear to use simplified gestures to their young.

The other piece is lip smacking. Macaques smack their lips, and that’s the kind of coordinated fine mouth movement that could have provided the bridge from grunts to discrete sounds.

Language appears to have left its traces in other species, leading all the way up to us.

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Ordinarily I’m not into unusual words from other languages. Yes, they exist, but why make them into some weird curiosity? Even so, I thought this article was interesting

25 Handy Words That Simply Don’t Exist in English

and I thought there were some things to say about language categories and lexical gaps.

Plus the fact that English would be so much better with a word like ‘tartle’. Let’s all borrow it.

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I have to say, I approached this show with a bit of trepidation, since ‘rape’ is such a potent word and I thought people would be angry about whatever I said. But you have to tackle the tough ones sometimes. And some people do throw the word around, so I wanted to address it. One politician referred to ‘raping companies‘, which does seem trivial. And then Fox’s Catholic priest referred to the government ‘raping their rights’. Don’t you think that of all people, a Catholic priest would want to divert attention away from that word? I’ve never noticed him being so concerned about actual rape.

Yes, we do discuss the word ‘rape’ and its history, but we’re really talking about how to navigate language change. Is it okay to use the word ‘rape’ metaphorically, like “raping the wilderness”? Or does that trivialise real rape? On the other hand, the word ‘rape’ has been stricken from actual trials where sexual assault is the real issue! I was a juror in a sexual assault trial years ago, and I don’t recall the word ‘rape’ being used.

Hang out ’til the end — there’s a little bit of post-show chatter.

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For this show, we had some fun with the passive voice. A lot of people have this idea that passive voice is being used every time there’s some kind of evasion or abdication of responsibility. It’s true that this is one thing passive voice does, but it’s not the only thing it does, and there are other ways to do it. So this podcast tells you how to spot it once and for all. Very educational.

And this show marks the return of Ben Ainslie! He’s been in earlier episodes, and I always enjoy a talk with him. We’re muy simpático. Maybe he’ll return.

I forgot to say: the date of Passive Voice Day was determined by shaunm on Shaun’s Blog. I left him out, which is actually kind of fitting since, hey, you can do that in passive voice.

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