Otherwords — Season 3

From the Brands Saying Bae in the 2010s, to the "wassup" ads of the 90s, advertisers are always trying to find ways to sound cool. But when brands on social media use a slang word in their marketing, that basically guarantees it's over. We understand that brands didn't come up with these words and that they're not part of the groups we think should be using them, but why? What makes a word slang,

There's a good argument that the letter R is, at least sometimes, not a consonant at all, but a vowel. Does that mean your 1st grade teacher was lying to you? Not exactly. R is an incredibly weird letter, with so many different sounds and functions, it's a wonder that we use one symbol to represent them all. And how people pronounce that one letter can speak volumes about their history and social

There are no shortage of wacky names for alcoholic beverages, from Fuzzy Navels, to Sex on the Beaches, to the NSFW AMF. Humans have been enjoying alcoholic beverages since the dawn of civilization so there's plenty of linguistic evidence in many languages to point to the origins of many of these alcoholic words. Let's take a deep dive into the etymology of alcohol.

English is the most widely spoken language on the planet. But, how did English become the most widely spoken language in the world? And why are there so many different kinds of Englishes?

Can you really invent a language? These people sure tried! But does anyone actually speak them?

Across the globe, queer communities have relied on secret lexicons known as "argots" to communicate safely, which have developed over the years into what some call "verbal jazz."

Whether you're shaping words with your mouth, signing them with your hands, or writing them on paper, the bulk of the work is going on up in your noggin. By determining what has been lost or impaired linguistically-speaking, neuroscientists have been able to not only better understand what language actually is but also how our brains process language and allow us to communicate.

Have you ever stressed out about sending an email, rereading it to see if it sounds okay, or wondering if you added too many exclamation points? Or maybe you feel confident when expressing yourself via text message, but you just can't seem to find the words when it's time to make a phone call. Why does it sometimes feel like switching modes of communication feels like you're trying to speak a completely different languages.

In some ways, colors are the ultimate example of language's power. The earliest humans didn't have words for colors. They had words for objects and actions, and it took tens of thousands of years for those words to evolve into the names of the colors we use today. In this episode, we'll answer that age-old question, which came first: orange the fruit or orange the color?

Where do place names come from? Well, toponymy reveals a lot about the culture and history of a place, including the people who lived there, the nature of the settlements, and the geographic landscape. So that's your short answer. For the long answer, including the longest place names in the world, join us as we dig into the exciting world of toponyms and find out how places got their names.