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Welcome to the Valley!
Lexicon Valley is an audio show dissecting this messy, maddening and thoroughly wonderful thing we call language.
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As a guest on The Late Show, John told Stephen Colbert that there was nothing especially interesting to say about the word I. Well, he takes that back — there is, it turns out, much to say. Have a lis...
· 32 min 18 sec
Do you remember learning — in grade school most likely — the difference between a count noun and a mass noun? Probably not, and yet chances are that you use them correctly. That’s because you’ve maste...
· 38 min 8 sec
We are frequently asked — often by young listeners who are fascinated by language — how English could possibly accumulate the many thousands of words that make up its vast vocabulary. It’s a topic tha...
· 38 min 10 sec
The letters C and K can both represent what we might call a Hard C — as in Cosmo Kramer or Calvin Klein. Not to mention Q, which usually indicates that same sound. Why does the English alphabet have t...
· 30 min 49 sec
On January 20, 1961, President John F. Kennedy delivered — to an audience seated both outside at the U.S. Capitol and at home in front of their televisions — his inaugural address. Millions were stirr...
· 42 min 59 sec
What does it mean to be woke? Has the word problematic become problematic? Today in the Valley, John McWhorter talks with Banished host Amna Khalid about the fraught vocabulary of modern censorship....
· 30 min 19 sec
More than half the world’s approximately 7,000 languages will have no speakers left in the coming decades. Some are working feverishly to preserve or maintain them. Others are asking: Why bother? John...
· 44 min 12 sec
Do you know that the past participle of the intransitive verb lie is lain and that its past tense is lay, not to be confused with the present tense of the transitive verb lay? Oh, and do you know that...
· 26 min 48 sec
You might guess that Nigeria and Niger derive their names from the Latin word for “black,” especially since both countries were formerly colonized by Europeans. Guess again. John explains.Bonus segmen...
· 8 min 37 sec
President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee has said that her parents picked “Ketanji” from a list of West African names supplied by a relative. But West Africans speak hundreds of languages spread out ac...
· 38 min 11 sec
As John likes to say, Proto-Indo-European — the original ancestor of many European and Asian languages — began on the steppes of Ukraine. This is his linguistic love letter to a region and a people un...
· 28 min 25 sec
To describe inclement weather in English, we might say that “it” is raining, which seems natural to a native speaker. But does “it” refer to the sky, the outdoors, the god of precipitation? Maybe it’s...
· 31 min 15 sec
You may have noticed, among widespread coverage of looming Russian aggression, an unfamiliar pronunciation of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. What’s with the name change? And what does it have to do with...
· 41 min 4 sec
A hot mic caught President Biden using the epithet to describe a Fox News reporter. Where did “son of a b***h” come from, and why are modern speakers increasingly choosing other insults? Twitter: @le...
· 25 min 35 sec
Actors Sidney Poitier and Max Julien and law professor Lani Guinier — all of whom died this month — have last names that reveal fascinating stories about pronunciation, etymology and language change....
· 43 min 42 sec
Self-styled language experts — and let’s face it, that includes all of us — have lamented the decline of English for centuries. From shifting pronunciations to newfangled words to evolving grammar, ev...
· 33 min 8 sec
Happy New Year! In the warm and generous spirit of the holidays, we’re making this week’s bonus segment free to all. But there’s more: Until the end of the year, you can get 30% off a subscription to...
· 2 min 59 sec
An alphabet, one of humanity’s greatest innovations, is far from intuitive. Our own English lettering was borrowed from the Romans, of course, but where did they get it from? And where did the concept...
· 38 min 8 sec
Presenting the fan-favorite “Lexiconundrum” — a portmantastic puzzle for the ages. This week, an homage to Bob’s ancestors. Twitter: @lexiconvalley Facebook: facebook.com/LexiconValley Website: books...
· 5 min 24 sec
To celebrate the re-release of ten original Lexicon Valley episodes — remastered, ad-free and for paying subscribers only — Mike Vuolo and Bob Garfield return as hosts for this special show about the...
· 39 min 57 sec