Young kids growing up in Guatemala often learn Q’anjob’al, Kaq’chikel, or another Mayan language from their families and communities. But they don’t live next to the kinds of major research universities that do most of the academic studies about how kids learn languages. Figuring out what these kids are doing is part of a bigger push to learn more about language learning in a broader variety of sociocultural settings. In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch gets enthusiastic about how kids learn Q’anjob’al and other Mayan languages with Dr. Pedro Mateo Pedro, who’s an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, Canada, a native speaker of Q'anjob'al and a learner of Kaq'chikel. We talk about Pedro’s background teaching school in Q’anjob’al and Spanish, which sounds kids acquire later in Q’anjob’al (hint: it’s the ejectives like q’ and b’), and gender differences in how kids speak Q’anjob’al. We also talk more broadly about why this work is important, both in terms of understanding how language acquisition works as a whole and in terms of using the knowledge of how children acquire Indigenous languages to create teaching materials specific to those languages. Finally, we talk about Pedro’s newer revitalization work with a community of Itza’ speakers and the process of building a relationship with a community that you’re not already part of. Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/725990865999462400/transcript-episode-83-how-kids-learn-qanjobal Announcements: We love reading up on an interesting etymology, but the history of a word doesn’t have to define how it’s used now - and to celebrate that we have new merch with the motto ‘Etymology isn’t Destiny’. Our artist, Lucy Maddox has brought these words to life in a beautiful design in black, white, and rainbow gradient. The etymology isn't destiny design is available on lots of different colours and styles of shirts, hoodies, tank tops, t-shirts: classic fit, relaxed fit, curved fit. Plus mugs, notebooks, stickers, water bottles, zippered pouches, and more. Get yours here! https://www.redbubble.com/people/lingthusiasm/shop?artistUserName=Lingthusiasm&collections=3651094&iaCode=all-departments&sortOrder=relevant We also have tons of other Lingthusiastic merch available, it makes a great gift to give to a linguistics enthusiast in your life or to request as a gift from someone. Special shoutout to our aesthetic IPA chart redesign, which now comes in rectangle (looks great as a poster if you have an office or corridor that needs to be jazzed up), and with a transparent background for t-shirt purposes! Or get it on a tote bag or notebook so you can bring it to conferences! https://www.redbubble.com/people/lingthusiasm/shop?artistUserName=lingthusiasm&collections=3154890&iaCode=all-departments&sortOrder=relevant In this month’s behind the scenes bonus episode, Gretchen gets enthusiastic about the linguistic process of transcribing podcast episodes with Sarah Dopierala, whose name you may recognize from the credits at the end of the show! We talk about how Sarah's background in linguistics helps her with the technical words and phonetic transcriptions in Lingthusiasm episodes, her own research into converbs, and the linguistic tendencies that she's noticed from years of transcribing Lauren and Gretchen (guess which of us uses more quotative speech!) Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 70+ other bonus episodes, including our upcoming linguistics advice episode where we answer your questions! You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/725956192085671936/lingthusiasm-83-how-kids-learn-qanjobal-and

Linguists are often interested in comparing several languages or dialects. To make this easier, it’s useful to have data that’s relatively similar across varieties, so that the differences really pop out. But what exactly needs to be similar or different varies depending on what we’re investigating. For example, to compare varieties of English, we might have everyone read the same passage that contains all of the sounds of English, whereas to compare the way people gesture when telling a story, we might have them all watch the same silent film and re-tell it back. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about linguistics examples that have been re-used in lots of studies to get large groups of people to produce comparable language data. These sentences are supposed to be pretty unremarkable so we can focus on doing linguistics on them, but they end up having a sort of charmingly banal vibe that makes them much beloved by people who have spent tons of time poring over recorded files. We talk about The North Wind and the Sun, the Stella passage, the Rainbow passage, the Harvard Sentences, the Frog story, the Pear story, and the Tweety Bird video. We also talk about what goes into creating different genres of reusable example sentences, from phonetic balancing to what makes a concept culturally specific, as well as our experience learning about and coming up with various examples. Have a favourite recurring example that we didn’t have space for here? Let us know! Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/723543648527122432/transcript-episode-82-frogs-pears-and-more Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode we present: LingthusiASMR, a very special bonus episode, in which your hosts Gretchen and Lauren get enthusiastic about linguistics in a very relaxed manner by reading one very large classic set of charmingly banal linguistics example sentences. Several people have told us that this has helped put them to sleep, which isn’t usually our goal but it sure is for this episode! Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 70+ other bonus episodes, including our upcoming linguistics advice episode where we answer your questions, which you can ask here: https://forms.gle/s6MeeVAGWD3oaDoM6 (until September 1st 2023). You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/723422789301829632/episode-82-frogs-pears-and-more-staples-from

In the sentence “the horse has eaten an apple”, what is the word “has” doing? It’s not expressing ownership of something, like in “the horse has an apple”. (After all, the horse could have very sneakily eaten the apple.) Rather, it’s helping out the main verb, eat. Many languages use some of their verbs to help other verbs express grammatical information, and the technical name for these helping verbs is auxiliary verbs. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about auxiliaries! We talk about what we can learn about auxiliaries across 2000+ languages using a new linguistic mapping website called GramBank, why auxiliaries get pronounced subtly differently from the words they’re derived from, and how “be” and “have” are the major players of the auxiliary world (but there are other options too, like “do”, “let”, and “go”). We also put a whole bunch of farm animals in our example sentences this episode just so we have an excuse to make a very good wordplay at the end of the episode. Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/720244703378964480/transcript-episode-81-the-verbs-had-been-being Announcements: Are there linguistics things you want advice about? Both serious or somewhat silly? We’re going to doing a linguistics advice bonus episode for our 7th anniversary in November 2023, where we’ll answer your linguistics questions! Go here (https://forms.gle/s6MeeVAGWD3oaDoM6) to ask us your questions by September 1st 2023, and join us on Patreon to hear the answers! In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about the jobs that people go on to do after a linguistics degree! We talk about Lauren's new academic article in a fancy linguistics journal about a blog post series she's been running for 8 years, interviewing 80 people who studied linguistics, from a minor to a doctorate level, and their experience and advice for non-academic jobs. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 70+ other bonus episodes, including our upcoming linguistics advice episode where we answer your questions! You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/720244621612138496/lingthusiasm-81-the-verbs-had-been-being-helped

The magical kind of spell and the written kind of spell are historically linked. This reflects how saying a word can change the state of the world, both in terms of fictional magic spells that set things on fire or make them invisible, and in terms of the real-world linguistic concept of performative utterances, which let us agree to contracts, place bets, establish names, and otherwise alter the fabric of our relationships. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about word magic! We talk about how the word magic systems are set up differently in three recent fantasy books we like: Babel by R.F. Kuang, Carry On by Rainbow Rowell, and the Scholomance series by Naomi Novik. We also talk about linguistic performatives: why saying “I do” in a movie doesn’t make you married, aka Felicity Conditions, aka an excellent drag name; performativity as applied to gender (yup, Judith Butler got it from linguistics); the “hereby” test; and how technology changes what counts as a performative. Read the transcript here - https://lingthusiasm.com/post/718799528026882048/transcript-episode-80-word-magic Announcements: People often ask us to recommend interesting books about linguistics that don't assume prior knowledge of linguistics, so we've come up with a list of 12 books that we personally recommend, including both nonfiction and fiction books with linguistically interesting elements! Get this list of our top 12 linguistics books by signing up for our free email list. Email subscribers get an email once a month when there's a new episode of Lingthusiasm, and this month existing subscribers will see a link to our linguistics books list! If you find this any time in the future, you'll get the books list in the confirmation email after you sign up. https://lingthusiasm.com In this month’s bonus episode, we get excited about the results of the 2022 Lingthusiasm Survey. We talk about synesthesia fomo, whether people respond differently to kiki/bouba depending on whether they're aware of them as a meme, complicating the "where is a frown?" map, the plural of emoji, and more! Plus, we mentioned swearing in this episode? Yeah, we’ve got bonus episodes about that too. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 70+ other bonus episodes, as well as access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds! Our patrons let us keep making the main episodes free for everyone and we really appreciate every level of support. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/717705460623491072/episode-80-word-magic

Spoken languages can change the pitch or melody of words to convey several different kinds of information. When the pitch affects the meaning of the whole phrase, such as rising to indicate a question in English, linguists call it intonation. When the pitch affects the meaning of an individual word, such as the difference between mother (high mā) and horse (low rising mǎ) in Mandarin, linguists call it tone. In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about tone, intonation, and the combination of the two. We talk about various meanings of intonation, such as question, list, floor-holding, emphasis, enthusiasm, and sarcasm, and how different languages use different shapes of intonation contours for functions like these. We also talk about things languages do with tones, from changing meanings of individual words to indicating grammatical information like negation. Finally, we talk about the many, many options for writing tone and intonation (from highly technical proposals to fun internet creations), how tone interacts with lyrics/melody in songs, and how “high” versus “low” tone is actually a culturally-specific metaphor -- could we start calling tones “thin” and “thick” or “big” and “small” instead? Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/715162109812637696/transcript-episode-79-tone-and-intonation-tone Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode, originally recorded as a liveshow on the Lingthusiasm patron Discord server, your host Gretchen gets enthusiastic about how languages do gender with special guest Dr. Kirby Conrod. We answer your questions about lots of things related to language and gender, including: gender-neutral versions of sir/ma'am and dude/bro, why linguistic gender even exists, how people are doing gender-neutral and nonbinary things across related languages, and how neopronouns are often made by recycling bits from a language's canonical pronouns. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 70+ other bonus episodes, as well as access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds! Our patrons let us keep making the main episodes free for everyone and we really appreciate every level of support. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/715161716945813504/episode-79-tone-and-intonation-tone-and