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Singlish: From Multilingual Roots to Modern Identity
Episode 190
Singapore’s English is a linguistic laboratory where Malay, Mandarin, Tamil and Chinese dialects collide with Standard English, producing the colloqu…
1 week ago
Babysitting Back‑Formation: How ‘babysit’ Came From ‘babysitter’
Episode 189
This episode explores the back‑formation of ‘babysit’ from the earlier noun ‘babysitter,’ tracing its first appearance in early twentieth‑century Ame…
1 week ago
The Virus Metaphor: From Biology to Computing and Its Legacy in English
Episode 188
In this episode we follow the word ‘virus’ from its biological origins through John von Neumann’s self‑replicating automata, to the first PC malware,…
1 week ago
When Engineers Doodled Clouds: The Surprising History Behind Our Digital Icon
Episode 187
From 1980s network diagrams to the cloud as a marketing term, we trace how engineers turned a simple doodle into an icon that now defines modern comp…
1 week ago
From Qahwa to Algorithm: Tracing Arabic's Journey Into Modern English
Episode 186
Explore how a handful of Arabic loanwords—coffee, sugar, alcohol, sulfur, saffron, and algorithm—made their way into Middle and Early Modern English,…
1 week ago
'Google': From Brand Name to Everyday Verb—A Linguistic Case Study
Episode 185
Josh Linsk traces how the tech giant’s name turned into a verb, exploring the linguistic process of denominalization, trademark law battles, and the …
1 week ago
From Convicts to Memes: Tracing the Rise of Australian English
Episode 184
Explore how the arrival of 18th‑century convicts, Aboriginal contact, gold rush migrants, and modern media shaped a distinct Australian dialect—its p…
1 week ago
Open‑Syllable Lengthening & the Great Vowel Shift: How English Vowels Got Their Make‑over
Episode 183
Explore how the subtle process of open‑syllable lengthening in late Middle English created a set of long vowels that later jumped into the Great Vowe…
1 week ago
How Faith and Letters: Christianity's Role in Shaping Old English
Episode 182
This episode traces how the arrival of Christianity introduced Latin vocabulary, a new alphabet, and monastic scribal practices that transformed Old …
1 week ago
From Housewife to Hussy: The Linguistic Path of an English Slur
Episode 181
This episode explores how the neutral word "housewife" was truncated in the 16th century to become the pejorative "hussy," tracing phonological shift…
1 week ago