In 2014, a seemingly trivial and boring incident at the bank propelled me down a linguistic road via medieval werewolves, Ms Marvel and confusingly inscribed gravestones, to find out why the English language is riddled with all this gender. What’s it FOR? How did it GET there? Will it go AWAY now please? It is, at the very least, taking up brainspace and not paying any rent.

This is a recording of a live performance at the Blueberry Hill Duck Room in St Louis, Missouri on 23 November 2019, and there were visuals happening, so I’ll drop in sometimes to explain them, and I’ve also put a transcript and pictures in this post.

There are swears in this. There are also arguments that will be very useful to you if you ever come up against a denier of singular they. You will definitely win.

The English language is a mess. And if you don't like it, what are you going to do about it - fix it? Good luck with that.

In the early 18th century, a movement of grammarians and authors wanted to set up an official authority to regulate English, like French had in the Academie Francaise. But is trying to fix a language a good move? Linguists Liv Walsh and Thomas Godard weigh up the evidence.

Apologies in advance, pedants: this episode may contain some truths you* don't want to hear.
*we.

READING MATTER:

Some of the audio is a bit unclear, so here's a transcript of the show.
Find out about the Academie Francaise, including what you'll need to do if you want to become one of Les Immortels. (You'll probably have to kill one of the current ones.)
Here is Jonathan Swift’s language proposal and here is his Modest Proposal.
This article summarises how most linguistic rules are just busking it; it also links to a 1909 paper about the subject that doesn't mess around.
Thomas Godard recommends reading Fixing English by Anne Curzan and The Bishop's Grammar by Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, and listening to PRI's The World in Words.
The purists among you may wish to seek refuge with the Queen's English Society.

RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
toxophilite

CREDITS:

Thanks very much to Dr Liv Walsh and Thomas Godard, and to Dr Rachele De Felice who helped me find them.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. All the music is by Martin Austwick. Hear and/or download more - WITH LYRICS! - at thesoundoftheladies.bandcamp.com.
Say hello to me at facebook.com/allusionistshow, twitter.com/allusionistshow and twitter.com/helenzaltzman.

iTUNES • RSS • MP3

The English language is a mess. And if you don't like it, what are you going to do about it - fix it? Good luck with that.

In the early 18th century, a movement of grammarians and authors wanted to set up an official authority to regulate English, like French had in the Academie Francaise. But is trying to fix a language a good move? Linguists Liv Walsh and Thomas Godard weigh up the evidence.

READING MATTER:

RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
toxophilite

CREDITS:

Come back in a fortnight to see if the current attempts to fix English are faring any better than the 18th century ones.

- HZ

To accompany the current Allusionist miniseries Survival, about minority languages facing suppression and extinction, we're revisiting this double bill of The Key episodes about why languages die and how they can be resuscitated.

The Rosetta Stone and its modern equivalent the Rosetta Disk preserve writing systems to be read by future generations. But how do those generations decipher text that wasn't written with the expectation of requiring decipherment?

If you don't have a Rosetta Stone to hand, deciphering extinct languages can be a real puzzle, even though they didn't intend to be. They didn't intend to become extinct, either, but such is the life (and death) of languages.

iTUNES • RSS • MP3

The English language is a mess. And if you don't like it, what are you going to do about it - fix it? Good luck with that.

In the early 18th century, a movement of grammarians and authors wanted to set up an official authority to regulate English, like French had in the Academie Francaise. But is trying to fix a language a good move? Linguists Liv Walsh and Thomas Godard weigh up the evidence.

READING MATTER:

RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:toxophilite

CREDITS:

Come back in a fortnight to see if the current attempts to fix English are faring any better than the 18th century ones.

- HZ

RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
toxophilite