John McWhorter on what the intricacies of the future tense tell us about the unwritten rules of pronouns.

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John Simpson, former editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, talks about life as a lexicographer.

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What does "Hickory Dickory Dock" really mean?  John McWhorter makes linguistic sense of seemingly arbitrary children's verse.

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How Words Hook Up and Make New Ones

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John McWhorter talks with author Jack Lynch about the sacrilege of modified Shakespeare. 

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Gretchen McCulloch talks to John McWhorter about the big meaning behind our favorite little pictograms.

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Ann Patty, author of "Living With a Dead Language: My Romance With Latin," talks about her transformative experience of learning Latin.

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Sali Tagliamonte, author of Making Waves: The Story of Variationist Sociolinguistics, talks about the underlying disorder of the English Language.

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Etymologist and poet Anatoly Liberman says that English is one of the most difficult languages to spell. But we can change that.

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Benjamin K. Bergen, author of the upcoming What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and

Ourselves, discusses the science of cursing.

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