On today’s episode of Spectacular Vernacular, Nicole and Ben talk about how the capital of Ukraine has become a linguistic hot take. They also interview Jessi Grieser, a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville about her new book, The Black Side of the River: Race, Language, and Belonging in Washington D.C. And finally, we bring on a listener for some wordplay. We hope you’re good at figuring out analogies. You could win a year’s membership to Slate Plus.

Do you have any language questions or fun facts to share? Email us at [email protected].  

Produced by Jasmine Ellis and Asha Saluja

Here are some notes and references from this week’s show:

New York Times: “How Do You Say Kyiv? It Can Be Hard for English Speakers” 

NPR “Kyiv or Kiev? Why people disagree about how to pronounce the Ukrainian capital’s name” 

Jessi Grieser: The Black Side of the River: Race, Language, and Belonging in Washington, D.C. 

“Bad Analogies” on Twitter

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