Wherein we find an excuse to recommend a bunch of music to you.

Jump right to:

• 2:26 Language Thing of the Day: Filler words
• 14:17 Question 1: How did we get nicknames that don't seem to make sense? Like how did "Peggy" come out of "Margaret"?
• 25:26 Question 2: Why do singers' accents almost always become less intense in their singing voices as opposed to their speaking voices?
• 37:30 Question 3: How do we change the meaning of a sentence just by changing vocal pitch? Typed-out transcripts can lose the information conveyed by vocal pitch.
• 1:04:32 Answer to last week's puzzler

Covered in this episode:

• Filler words in different languages (English, Japanese, ASL), and their discourse function
• Names and their nickname equivalents: Margaret/Peggy, Theodore/Ted, Richard/Dick, John/Jack

Links and other post-show thoughts:

• Number One brand Thai iced tea (available loose or bagged)

Ask us questions:

Send your questions (text or voice memo) to [email protected], or find us as @lxadpodcast on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

Credits:

Linguistics After Dark is produced by Emfozzing Enterprises. Luca edits, Jenny Sarah transcribed this one, and Sarah Eli did the show notes. Our music is "Covert Affair" by Kevin MacLeod.

And until next time… if you weren't consciously aware of your tongue in your mouth, now you are :)