Martha Barnette

The way that words stick around is when they bubble up naturally without you really noticing.

Like the word selfie, for example.

It's such a useful word.

And we didn't have that word, you know, 30 or 40 years ago.

Ah, the Regency era.

You might know it as the time when Bridgerton takes place, or as the time when Jane Austen wrote her books.

The Regency era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British history.

Vulgar History's new season is all about the Regency era, the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal.

Listen to Vulgar History, Regency era, wherever you get podcasts.

Hey, thanks for having me, Mike.

Well, that's a really good question because I am an English teacher's kid.

And when my beloved mother would hear something mispronounced or misspoken in her class, she would walk to the chalkboard and take her fingernails and put them at the top and drag them all the way down and say, that's what this sounds like to me.

But you know, over the years, I've learned that there are often good reasons for

this or that pronunciation.

First of all, that there are a lot of different pronunciations that are perfectly valid.

There are actually, I think, something like 20 different pronunciations of the word water just in the United States.

You know, you have water in Philadelphia and water in other parts of the country.

And we'll think about, for example, we used to get a lot of calls about the expression needs washed, you know, the car needs washed.

And I'd have somebody say, you know, I just had a new coworker move to town.

And he always says the cat needs let out or the baby needs picked up.