For the Love of Language
Episodes
Syntax: Word Order
02 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
How is word order different between languages?
Renaming
11 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss changing names for people, places, and even religions.
Linguistic Fossilization
22 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How people moving between countries can speak a language trapped in time.
Code Switching in Relationships
04 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When and why do people switch languages in a single conversation?
Phonology: Intervocalic Voicing
14 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why do consonants between vowels sometimes not sound like they're spelled?
English as the National Language
23 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Executive Order 14224 recently designated English the official language of the U.S.. We discuss what this actually means.
Generational Linguistics
22 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why do you speak differently than your grandma?
Education and Etymology with Liam Connerly
25 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Special guest Liam Connerly, an expert in Latin and Greek, talks with us about education and etymology! Listen to Liam's podcast, Latin in Layman's ...
Genericization, or all the Karens and the Romeos and Juliets
11 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How names become words with their own meanings. How brands die and Karen becomes the person you don't want to be.
Implicatures and the Gricean Maxims
21 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How do we imply things that others can infer? How do we create implicatures? We discuss the Gricean Maxims of quality, quantity, relation, and manner....
Logical Fallacies
30 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Straw men, slippery slopes, ad hominem and more. How do people use twisted logic? We reference the logical fallacies from: Purdue Owl: https://owl.pu...
Argumentation or Rhetoric
09 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We talk about emotional vs logical arguments, how syllogisms work, and how to convince your friends that the sky is orange.
Audiobooks and Storytelling
19 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We dive into the pros and cons of audiobooks and narration, with a significant tangent into the importance of human connection.
Gaslighting
28 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss some of the different types of gaslighting. If you need help, reach out to your emergency services or the Domestic Violence Hotline at http...
Asking Good Questions
07 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss compound questions, leading questions, and some of the differences in how questions are formed between different languages and cultures.
Star Trek's Darmok Episode
17 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra! We discuss Star Trek's Tamarian encounter and how Captain Picard learns how to communicate using the Tamarians' historica...
Categorical Perception
27 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Breaking everything into little boxes. And EJ's dog definitely wanted to be a part of the show.
Bluey's Dunny Episode
15 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss the fantastic episode of Bluey where the mom asks the family to say "toilet" instead of "dunny." You can find Dunny if you watch Bluey on D...
Poetry with Joshua Myer
20 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Can we define poetry? What makes good poetry? How do you find your voice? Do you have a poem inside you? Is AI ruining poetry? And, Stacie shares her...
Body Language: Bubbles, Gestures, and Vibes
23 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We talk about different aspects of body language and give some examples of body languages across cultures. EJ recommends reading What Every Body is S...
Bilingualism and Dementia
09 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss ideas from the study Does bilingualism protect against dementia? A meta-analysis by John A. E. Anderson, Kornelia Hawrylewicz, and John G. ...
Merge, Or Little Adding Machines
24 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A syntax discussion! What is merge? Is language actually special at all, or just one of a billion instances of merge in the human experience? Stacie r...
Communication Skills Not Taught In School
09 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We talk about working with teams, note-taking, the value of networking, and building connections by asking questions.
Lingua Francas
04 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How do langauges become international? How do widely spoken languages impact minority ones? What would it take for Icelandic to become a lingua franca...
Markedness
14 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss markedness, with a brief foray into phonetics. Stacie references the 1986 book Markedness, edited by Fred R. Eckman, Edith A. Moravcsik, a...
Numbers
17 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How do different languages handle numbers? Note: Here is a reference for different languages' plural rules for software localization: https://www.uni...
Cats and Pandas as Filler Words
26 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Grammaticality
05 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What are the different ways people perceive grammaticality in language? In this discussion, we rely heavily on Dr. Gert-Jan Schoenmakers' recent res...
Vocal Fry
15 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Navajo Code Talkers
24 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss how the Navajo language was used as an unbreakable code during World War II. We recommend reading Chester Nez's book Code Talker to learn m...
Politeness
03 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From simple platitudes to flipping people off, we discuss how politeness manifests in different scenarios.
Why can't white people roll their Rs?
20 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We answer this fantastic question that came up on our Instagram.
Code Switching
06 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why and how do people speak multiple languages in the same conversation?
Motherese, AKA Child-Directed Language, AKA Baby Talk
22 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss how we speak differently when speaking to children.
SEO and Content Marketing with De Tello Publishing
08 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ashely de Tello and Connie Davis join us from De Tello Publishing to talk about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and content marketing. We touch on us...
Our Thoughts on ChatGPT
01 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What is Artificial Intelligence? Is it actually intelligent? We share our thoughts on the newest AI that's all the rage: ChatGPT.
This One's for the Swifties
25 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Idioms
11 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Do you think of fluffy beasts falling from the sky whenever someone says, "it's raining cats and dogs," or do you think of getting out your slingshot ...
Speech Language Pathology with Amanda Goodner
20 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We talk with Amanda about how she became a Speech Language Pathologist and what that means.
Language Origin Stories
04 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What are the different myths around language creation and how languages became distinct from each other? We talk about several different cultures' lan...
Jargon
01 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We dive into domain-specific language, as well as cultural appropriation and whether jargon should always be public.
Deixis
07 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
References referring to referents can get interesting.
Language and Capoeira with Only the Strongest
02 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We team up with Only the Strongest, some of our amazing podcasting capoeira friends, and talk about how language is used in the Afro-Brazilian martial...
Inner Dialog
17 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What does your language look like when you're speaking to yourself in your head? We discuss thought in interpretation, how people address themselves i...
Writing, Editing, and Publishing with Ashley de Tello
10 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ashley de Tello, the CEO of De Tello Publishing, joins us to talk about how she helps people profitably publish their ideas. We dive into different pa...
The Wug Test
03 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss one of the most famous studies in Linguistics.
Animal Sounds
20 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why are animal sounds different in different languages? We dive into some phonetics and discuss onomatopoeias.
An Exercise in Conlangery
13 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In which we create a theoretical constructed language (conlang) and dive into some of the fundamentals of Linguistics.
Language Families
22 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What are language families? From English to Proto-Indo-European and Nicaraguan Sign Language, our ramblings hopefully bring you something you didn't k...
The Story of La Malinche: A Conquistador's Interpreter
15 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
La Malinche, also known as Malintzin or Marina, was gifted as a slave to Hernán Cortés by the Tabascans, and became the intermediary between him and...
Orthography (Writing Systems)
08 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss everything from the Latin alphabet to Egyptian hieroglyphs, and somehow manage to digress into how we only scream in vowels.
The Language Faculty Debate
01 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Is language an innate, human thing, or is it the same as every other cognitive process? We discuss the timeless debate between innatists and interacti...
Taboo Language
17 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We cover one of our most requested topics: swearing. Why do people swear? How do we rate the severity of swear words? What does taboo language tell us...
Semantics vs Pragmatics
10 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In which Stacie describes what it really means to rain cats and dogs and other ramblings on the topic of semantics and pragmatics.
Conlangs
20 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A conlang is a constructed language. What goes into creating a language? Why do it? Have any conlangs been successful? We mention Michael Adams' book ...
ASL and Interpretation with Alexis
13 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Alexis shares some of her knowledge and experience from working as an American Sign Language (ASL) Interpreter.
Sound Symbolism
06 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Do sounds have meaning on their own? We reference the following if you want to look up more details: The Bouba/Kiki Effect Pokémonikers: A study of s...
Names
30 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss how we name things and different naming conventions. Also, the podcast we mention on capoeira is called Only the Strongest.
A Casual Conversation on Multilingualism with Esteban
09 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We chat with one of EJ's high school friends, Esteban Ramos, about multilingualism and the experience at international schools.
Grammatical Gender
26 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss the what, the how, and the why of grammatical gender.
Accents vs Dialects
11 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Eurovision with Lelling
28 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Lelling joins us to talk about the Eurovision Song Contest and the way different languages are used in it.
Using Historical Language with Author Katherine Cowley
14 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Katherine Cowley tells how she replicated the language of Jane Austen's time in The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet and her other historical mystery n...
Language-Learning Apps
07 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Are language-learning apps effective? How should you choose which one to use?
Linguistics and Tech: Sentiment Analysis and Internationalization
30 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Multilingual Belonging at Schools with Taylor Simmons
23 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Taylor tells how she started a multilingual book program at her school and other ways to help multilingual students know they belong.
Q&A: Colors and Corpora
16 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Are we all seeing the same blue? What is a corpus? We answer your questions.
Stacie's Research in Optimality Theory
11 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We dive into optimality theory and Stacie's plans for her dissertation.
Programming Languages and Red Pandas
03 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In which we digress through ideolects, linguistic accommodation theory, and conlangs to answer the question of whether programming languages are langu...
The Hardest Language
06 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What is the hardest language to learn and why?
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
21 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Do the languages you speak impact how you think?
Globalization
20 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From conquests to song contests, what makes languages global and is it a good thing?
Descriptivism vs Prescriptivism
12 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why are linguists so against language rules? Should language academies have a say in how people speak? These are some questions we touch on in our dis...
Linguists vs Polyglots
05 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What is the difference between a linguist and a polyglot? And why does it matter?