Elise Hu

Don't go away just yet.

Stick around.

My conversation with Adam is coming up right after a short break with word from our sponsors.

Congratulations on your talk.

How are you feeling now that you're done?

Tell us what made you so curious about language in the first place and how you got hooked?

Is there a problem with social media changing language?

Because our language has always evolved.

This is a living and dynamic thing, right?

English or any other language in the world.

So is there anything wrong with it?

Yeah, you mentioned fast-paced.

As an etymologist, how are you managing the speed at which things are changing?

Right.

And it strikes me that everything is changing.

Like we're talking just within a matter of days, a trend can emerge and then be gone and then be considered passe or old, which is at a much faster cadence and speed than, say, academia, where language was traditionally researched and linguistics was studied.

What do you feel like are some trends this year in language that have come up and have really hit the zeitgeist that you have to explain the most?

Okay.

I'm trying to go through what I'm hearing in my house that sounds like nonsense because I have a 13-year-old and a 10-year-old and an 8-year-old.

Yeah, I do like being called chat, though, instead of mom.