Chinwag

Did you have deja vu at the rendezvous while watching the matinee ballet? Who knew we could speak French! Learn how and why these words got "loaned" to us from our friendly language friends around the world in this week's episode

It's raining cats and dogs! I just got the boot because I let the cat out of the bag... Idioms are the hardest thing to master in learning a new language, but what really creates a phrase as an idiom? Why do different languages have different idioms? Let's talk about it.

What do your favorite meal, political scandal, and celebrity couple all have in common? We use portmanteaux to describe them! This week's episode discusses the difference between compound words and portmanteaux and delves into the history of the term. Plus, learn about how different people use the same term to describe wildly different linguistic phenomenon!

What does it mean when two words act as one? Why are some compounds hyphenated and others are not? How do new compounds form in a language? I'll answer a listener question and discuss what it means to be a compound.

Ever have a complete conversation without any words? Do you read "!!!!" as a statement? Can you comprehend the question "????"? Let's explore how we got to this point, what we really say when we don't say anything at all, and what even is happening with all this punctuation.