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The Allusionist

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A PODCAST ABOUT LANGUAGE
BY HELEN ZALTZMAN

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The Allusionist

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Allusionist 183. Timucua

October 9, 2023 The Allusionist
A boggle set spelling out the word Timucua

When Spanish missionaries arrived in what is now called Florida, there were 100,000-200,000 Timucua people in the region. Just two centuries later, there were fewer than 100. Soon, with all the people who spoke it dead, the Timucua language died out, too, preserved only in a few Spanish-Timucua religious texts.

In the 21st century, linguistic anthropologist Aaron Broadwell and historian Alejandra Dubcovsky have been decoding and translating these texts to understand the Timucua language and the people who were writing it down.

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In episodes Tags language, lexicography, lexicon, vocabulary, history, translation, revival, survival, Aaron Broadwell, Alejandra Dubcovsky, Timucua, isolates, Florida, Georgia, USA, colonisation, missionaries, Franciscan, Indigenous Americans, Spanish, Christianity, conversion, genocide, Roman alphabet, writing systems, Catholic, Catholicism, catechism, communion, Genesis, Bible, Adam and Eve, Eve, gender, euphemisms, conquistadors, Timucua Rebellion, letters, writing, nival, lost language, Survival

Allusionist 146. Survival: Today, Tomorrow part 1

November 24, 2021 The Allusionist

The Icelandic language has remained so stable over the centuries, speakers can read manuscripts from 900 years ago without too much trouble. And when they need a new word for more recent concepts, there are committees to coin one, so that the modern Icelandic lexicon includes such things as the internet, helicopters and mansplaining. Defending the language from the encroachment of English, however, is rather more challenging.

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In episodes, Survival Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, Helen Zaltzman, history, Iceland, Icelandic, Ágústa Þorbergsdóttir, Jóhannes Bjarni Sigtryggsson, linguistic purism, neologisms, new words, coinages, calques, portmanteaus, internet, Danish, Norse, Norwegians, Norway, Denmark, technology, mansplaining, domains, lost letters, letters, thorn, eth, ash, characters, printing press, ye, programming, subtitles, translation, automated translation, Unicode, jink, Survival, jouk

Allusionist 126. Survival: Custodians of the Languages

November 29, 2020 The Allusionist
A126 Survival: Custodians of the Languages logo.jpg

In Australia, there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of languages. Until English arrived.

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In episodes, Survival Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, Survival, Rudi Bremer, Karina Lester, Australia, country, indigenous, First Nations, Aboriginal people, colonisation, colonisers, oppression, genocide, oppressed languages, endangered languages, language death, language extinction, English: problematic fave, stolen generations, punishment, assimilation, language revival, oral culture, family, relationships, families, relatives, missionaries, Kaurna, Gamilaraay

Allusionist 118. Survival: Bequest

July 3, 2020 The Allusionist
A118 logo Survival Bequest.jpg

When the Europeans arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand, as well as guns, stoats and Christianity, they brought ideas of cisgender monogamous heterosexuality that were imposed upon the Māori people as if there had never been anything else. But one word, takatāpui, proved otherwise.

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In episodes, Survival Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, Helen Zaltzman, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, Hemi Kelly, Elizabeth Kerekere, LGBTQIA, LGBTQ+, Pride, queer, sexuality, gender, identity, sex, relationships, families, family, community, Aotearoa, New Zealand, oppression, enby, NB, nonbinary, homosexuality, bisexuality, pansexuality, polyamory, heterosexuality, trans, intersex, rainbow people, genderfluid, fluidity, oppressed languages, minority languages, gender stereotypes, masculinity, femininity, monolingual, multilingual, loanwords, gender fluid, society, Christianity, Christian, religious, colonialism, colonial, Survival, colonisation, English, invasion, war, translation, Māori, takatāpui, Britain, British, UK, annexation, Treaty of Waitangi, urbanisation, whiteness, white privilege, privilege, English problematic fave, punishment, corporal punishment, shame, sailors, settlers, Maori Land Wars, art, carvings, bowdlerization, storytelling, story, stories, oral, oral tradition, writing systems, Roman alphabet, written, music, songs, singing, lyrics, whakataukī, proverbs, sayings, metaphor, imagery, genitalia, genitals, male, female, orthography, pronunciation, auscultation, stoats, laments, lost language, pronouns, context, gendered pronouns, erasure

Allusionist 78. Survival: Oot in the Open

May 25, 2018 The Allusionist
A78 Scots logo.jpg

You are born and raised in a household speaking a language. Then you start going to school, and that language is banned. If you speak it, you'll be punished physically or psychologically. Across your country, there are people like you who associate their first language with shame, or not even being a language at all.

This is the predicament of the Scots language.

Scots language campaigners Ishbel McFarlane and Michael Dempster recount how Scots was sent into the shadows, and how it is at long last returning to public.

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In episodes, Survival Tags English: Problematic Fave, Scots, Scotland, minority languages, Gaelic, UK, Britain, shame, language, bilingual, Geneva bible, Robert Burns, history, monarchy, monarchs, James I, James VI, dialects, Scots Gaelic, David Hume, spelling, survival, Survival, Ishbel McFarlane, Michael Dempster

Allusionist 42+43. Survival: The Key rerun

May 4, 2018 The Allusionist
The Key logo.jpg

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?

Features mild scenes of linguistic apocalypse.

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In episodes, Survival Tags language, language death, language extinction, dead languages, minority languages, Rosetta Stone, Rosetta Project, Rosetta Disk, Latin, Romans, Ancient Rome, British Museum, Long Now Foundation, past, future, history, preservation, interpretation, decipher, translate, stele, Egypt, Egyptian, Napoleon, archaeology, multilingual, bilingual, Oscan, ancient, extinction, Italy, graffiti, ancient languages, monolingual, Survival, survival
Allusionist Patreon
Featured
Allusionist 212. Four Letter Words: Park
Allusionist 212. Four Letter Words: Park
Allusionist 211. Four Letter Words: -gate
Allusionist 211. Four Letter Words: -gate
Allusionist 210. Four Letter Words: 4x4x4 Quiz
Allusionist 210. Four Letter Words: 4x4x4 Quiz
queer playlist
Allusionist 209. Four Letter Words: Serving C-Bomb
Allusionist 209. Four Letter Words: Serving C-Bomb
feed bullshit
Allusionist 208. Four Letter Words: Ffff
Allusionist 208. Four Letter Words: Ffff
WhatsApp Image 2025-04-27 at 23.06.37.jpeg
several bits of news! (nothing bad)
Allusionist 207: Randomly Selected Words from the Dictionary
Allusionist 207: Randomly Selected Words from the Dictionary
Allusionist 206. Bonus 2024
Allusionist 206. Bonus 2024
A Christmas Carollusionist
A Christmas Carollusionist
Allusionist 205. Lexicat, part 2: now with added Dog
Allusionist 205. Lexicat, part 2: now with added Dog
Festivelusionists
Allusionist 204. Lexicat, part 1
Allusionist 204. Lexicat, part 1
Allusionist 203. Flyting
Allusionist 203. Flyting
Creative Commons Licence
The Allusionist by Helen Zaltzman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.