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Linguistics After Dark

Linguistics After Dark

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 Linguistics After Dark is a podcast where three linguists (and sometimes other people) answer your burning questions about language, linguistics, and whatever else you need advice about. We have three rules: any question is fair game, there's no research allowed, and if we can't answer, we have to drink. It's a little like CarTalk for language: call us if your language is making a funny noise, and we'll get to the bottom of it, with a lot of rowdy discussion and nerdy jokes along the way. At the beginning of the show, we introduce a new linguistics term, and there's even a puzzler at the end!Linguistics After Dark Science
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    • Episode 20: The Ghost of Language Past

      Episode 20: The Ghost of Language Past
      Jan 18 2026
      Wherein we play language games.Jump right to:12:47 Linguistics Thing Of The Day: Language games37:07 Question 1: Could y’all talk about how your understanding of how to pronounce the word can affect what you think the spelling, etymology, or meaning is? Examples that comes to mind is “su-burban” vs “sub-urban,” “a napron” vs “an apron,” “a stigmatism” vs “an astigmatism,” “acomma” vs “a comma,” etc. though I think some of those examples are actually different phenomena from each other. I think one is juncture loss? Or rebracketing?58:28 Question 2: If you had a chance to influence the evolution of language, what feature/words would you add a) because you like them and b) to troll people?1:21:43 The puzzler: How can a cube be cut so that the cross-section is a hexagon?Covered in this episode:Latin: the Ghost of Spanish PastThe Ides of MarchNot philosophers discussing cavemen building wallsPig Latin and Ubbi dubbi vs cant, argot, Polari, Cockney rhyming slang…Argobus, argopodesLanguage cannot be containedVerlanJuncture loss, rebracketing, and reanalysis in generalRocketcoptersEli shares a hot take about French he heard years ago (from an actual linguist)LOLcat, dogespeak, and uwuspeakȝEvidentialityClusivityIdentity attestation in first- and second-person pronounsTitles aren’t pronouns but they’re sort of next doorDoctorates should not be relevant to playing frisbeeLinks and other post-show thoughts:WaniKaniYes, being in Italy during Easter during the Jubilee was wild; being in the Vatican while the Pope laid in state was even wilder. (No, Sarah and her students did not get to see him, because they did not have 3+ hours to stand in line.)“Ghosts speak Latin” was supposedly a common belief in Elizabethan England, although Jenny couldn’t actually find a source more direct/reliable than footnotes in various copies of Hamlet (I.i.49) so better citation possibly needed?Ubbi dubbi, Polari, Tutnese, and Verlan. We couldn’t find an actual concrete origin of the name “Pig Latin,” though it does seem to have been called “Hog Latin” and to have begun as a version of “Dog Latin” (which seems to have referred to parody Latin in general).The Pig Latin puzzler was episode 8!Sarah says that the N in ‘a whole nother’ is always there. This is false: around twenty minutes earlier, Sarah herself said “a whole other,” which in retrospect she can confirm is absolutely influenced by Al’s point that knowing how the spelling works can change your pronunciation.Several examples of Verlan from one of the channels Sarah likes.“Helicopter” came up in episode 14.“Electric” does derive from Greek “ēlektron,” but not directly! It was borrowed into Latin as “electrum,” and then “electricus” in the 1600s by physicist William Gilbert. “Electric” and “electricity” were both first used in English in the 1640s by Sir Thomas Browne, who seems to have coined the latter. “Electrick” is a known early alternate spelling, so that definitely always would have been pronounced with a [k], but we couldn’t find evidence in either direction for whether “electricity” has always had an [s]. Also, Jenny has had the Schoolhouse Rock song stuck in her head for the last three days.The conlang Eli was thinking of is the Aramteskan language from P.M. Freestone’s Shadowscent series, and was developed by Lauren Gawne, of Lingthusiasm fame!Dual, trial, paucalThe NativLang video Sarah referenced that discusses Chinese timekeeping words.Ask us questions:Send your questions (text or voice memo) to questions@linguisticsafterdark.com, or find us as @lxadpodcast on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.Credits:Linguistics After Dark is produced by Emfozzing Enterprises. Audio editing is done by Abby and Charlie, question wrangling and show notes are done by Jenny, and transcriptions are done by Luca and Deren. Our music is "Covert Affair" by Kevin MacLeod.And until next time… if you weren’t consciously aware of your tongue in your mouth, now you are :)
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      1 h et 32 min
    • Episode 19: Voiced Glottal Stop 2k25

      Episode 19: Voiced Glottal Stop 2k25
      Dec 6 2025
      Wherein we are pro-winter until approximately February 15.Jump right to:4:38 Linguistics Thing Of The Day: Allophones26:50 Question 1: Why do we say “And you will be… (this person)?” when confirming identity? Why is it future tense? This cannot possibly be English. This cannot exist. Am I just wrong or is this one of those weird linguistic things?34:59 Question 2: If you had to remove one sound from the human phonemic inventory, which one would it be and why?42:05 Question 3: So, English’s pronoun “they” can vary in meaning quite a lot, for example in phrases like: “well [you know] what they say….” In this case, the meaning of ‘they’ is kind of like ‘the general public.’ An extra pronoun in the language for this could be slightly useful, as confusion could occur between ‘they’ meaning ‘that one specific group of people’ [versus] ‘the general public.’ My question is; whether languages exist where something like this extra pronoun actually exists.1:02:36 The puzzler: A couple claimed it was the anniversary of their wedding in order to receive a discount at a restaurant. The woman said, “Our wedding was on a beautiful Sunday morning, with birds chirping and flowers all in bloom, twenty-eight years ago today.” The waiter responded that the wedding sounded lovely, but they did not qualify for the discount. How did he know they were lying?Covered in this episode:[d] vs. [t] vs. [ɾ], bases, paces, pesos, and besosEnglish “R” is really weird and none of us know why we do itAllophones in complementary distribution are like Batman and Bruce WayneEli is not the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme CourtSarah plans a very strange dinner partyThe future (tense) of English is vast and unknowable (and collapsing with the subjunctive even where it didn’t used to)One of those weird linguistic things turns out to actually be three of those weird linguistic thingsSarah and Eli briefly forget [ɦ] is a sound that existsBabies deserve to keep labiodental tap [ⱱ] but bilabial trill [ʙ] could goWe have not turned a shitpost into something useful“Chat” is not a fourth-person pronounOfficial LxAD stance: The correct thing to do upon seeing a pile of snow is “jump in it”Specific versus generic third-person plural pronounsClusivitySingular, dual, paucal, and pluralEli’s keyboard could have prevented him from guessing last time’s puzzlerLinks and other post-show thoughts:Congrats to Don Bravo in Marshfield who now have a year-round liquor license actually!We promised to include an allophones worksheet in the show notes, so here’s two from a Ling 101 class at UNC Chapel Hill!Voiced ⟨h⟩ is [ɦ], the voiced glottal fricativeThe IPA chart: note that here, as is sometimes the case, the “light gray” and “dark gray” boxes Sarah and Eli refer to are instead blank/empty & gray, respectively.The sounds Eli suggested collapsing into one are [x] (voiceless velar fricative), [χ] (voiceless uvular fricative), and [ħ] (voiceless pharyngeal fricative). Alternately, we could remove the pharyngeals entirely.Periodic Lingthusiasm shout-out!See more at linguisticsafterdark.comAsk us questions:Send your questions (text or voice memo) to questions@linguisticsafterdark.com, or find us as @lxadpodcast on all the usual socials.Credits:Linguistics After Dark is produced by Emfozzing Enterprises. Audio editing is done by Abby and Charlie, show notes are done by Jenny, and transcriptions are done by Luca and Deren. Our music is "Covert Affair" by Kevin MacLeod.And until next time… if you weren’t consciously aware of your tongue in your mouth, now you are :)
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      1 h et 11 min
    • Episode 18: Can't Say "Teeth" Without Teeth

      Episode 18: Can't Say "Teeth" Without Teeth
      Aug 4 2025
      Wherein we are not professionals.Jump right to:4:44 Language Thing of the Day: The short scale vs the long scale21:38 Question 1: Why do we use 'on' to refer to spiders being 'on' ceilings? To me the spiders aren't on top of the ceiling, they're under. All the languages I know use a very similar preposition to 'on' in English, so I'd like to know if any other languages use a different preposition or postposition.38:20 Question 2: Morphologically and grammatically Japanese and te reo Māori behave very similarly: tons of particles all over the place, compounding as a major word source, not many affixes, little to no inflection, reduplication to convey emphasis, and very restrictive phonotactics. I see a pattern: Mandarin, Vietnamese and Thai disallow large consonant clusters and are highly analytic. On the other end of the spectrum there are Georgian (agglutinative hell), and (fusional) Czech, which both have unpronounceable consonant clusters. Is this correlation real or am I imagining things? [If it's real,] what is the reason for this convergent evolution?56:05 Question 3: Would someone wanting to be a linguist need a degree? Or is a degree just a sort of certification? I’ve always wondered this because I’ve always been fascinated by linguistics but I didn’t pursue it in university, instead opting for Translation (which I guess could use linguistics but you know what I mean). Would you guys, actual linguists, consider someone who studies the subject by themselves and engages in conversations of linguistics to be a linguist?1:13:09 Last episode’s puzzler’s answer1:19:09 The puzzler: Complete the sequence. C, F, T, ?, Y, H, N, J, I, ?Covered in this episode:TeethMyriads, millions, milliards, billions, billiards, trillions, and trilliardsDon’t be CanadaIndefinite hyperbolic numerals, like “ten thousand,” “seventy,” “seventy times seven,” “a billion,” “a bajillion,” or “hrair”Hanging on to the roof of a busHorses do not have wallsAre French speakers dans or en a mechsuit? We want to knowThings Sarah gets wrong on DuolingoFrom a spider’s perspective, the enemy’s gate is upDoes anyone do things by purpose?The time on a clock is a place, a month or a year is a container, and a day is a surfaceWhy do English speakers do “strength” to ourselvesThe “s” on a present-tense English verb is spicy and weirdJapanese says you can have little a consonant, as a treatThere are more than seven languages in the worldSyllabic consonantsBeing a linguist is not a real-world careerL’Academie Francais are disqualified from linguistics foreverEli proposes a screenplayIt’s teeth that are the problemLinks and other post-show thoughts:We accidentally skipped drinks chat, but Eli had water and Sarah had a weird but tasty raspberry-lemonade wine cooler thingThe secret dozenal system in English and the long hundredShort scale vs long scale, h/t Bex“Thousand” isn’t actually that weird; it’s just a Germanic word, instead of being derived from Latin. Here’s a map of words for “thousand” in European languages color-coded by etymologyPer Etymonline: “billiards” the game played on as rectangular table with ivory balls and wooden sticks, 1590s, from French billiard, originally the word for the wooden cue stick, a diminutive of Old French bille "stick of wood," from Medieval Latin billia "tree, trunk," which is possibly from Gaulish (compare Irish bile "tree trunk"); totally unrelated to French billiardSee more on our websiteAsk us questions:Send your questions (text or voice memo) to questions@linguisticsafterdark.com, or find us as @lxadpodcast on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.Credits:Linguistics After Dark is produced by Emfozzing Enterprises. Audio editing is done by Charlie and Abby, show notes are done by Jenny, and transcriptions are done by Luca and Deren. Our music is "Covert Affair" by Kevin MacLeod.And until next time… if you weren’t consciously aware of your tongue in your mouth, now you are :)
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      1 h et 24 min
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