Subtitle

With the Scripps National Spelling Bee back after a Covid-enforced year off, we conduct our very own spelling quiz. Also, Kavita Pillay offers her take on why Indian American kids perform so well in spelling bees. And author and self-described “crummy" speller David Wolman tells us why he wrote a history of English spelling and the many attempts to reform it. 

Photo of a spelling bee in Fulton, MD, by Howard County Library System via Flickr/Creative Commons. Music in this episode by Cloudline, Podington Bear and Alexander Boyes. Read a transcript of the episode here.

The German word "Volk" usually translates as "people," but it means a whole lot more than that. In 1989 as Germans tore down the Berlin Wall, they chanted, "Wir sind das Volk!" ("We are the people!") Today, though, "Volk" no longer unites Germans. Some understand it to mean everyone living in Germany. Others define it along ethnic lines, thereby excluding immigrants. Now with parliamentary elections looming as they did in 2017 when Patrick Cox first reported this, voters are again wondering: Who are the "Volk" of Germany? Who belongs, and who doesn't?

Photo by Patrick Cox of German publisher and far-right activist Götz Kubitschek with his wife Ellen Kositza at their home in Schnellroda, Germany. Music in this episode by Podington Bear and Blue Dot Sessions. Read a transcript here.

In 2012, a children’s book in Sweden sparked a nationwide debate— not about the book’s content but a three-letter word used by the main character. Hen was a relatively new, gender-neutral pronoun which challenged Swedish grammar norms. The use of hen tapped into a conversation the country was already having about gender and equality. Can the introduction of one word make a difference in changing societal views? Nina Porzucki goes to Sweden to find out.

Photo by Nina Porzucki. Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear. Read a transcript of this episode here.

If you're under the impression that encyclopedias and dictionaries in the West were always organized from A to Z, think again. We have chosen to classify knowledge in many ways, each reflecting the values of the age. Patrick Cox speaks with Judith Flanders, author of A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order about the centuries-long resistance to alphabetization, and why A to Z may now be here to stay.

Photo of a dictionary in the Boston Public Library by Trevor Pritchard via Creative Commons. Music in this episode by Circus Marcus, Jason Leonard, Alexander Boyes, Podington Bear, Die Minimalistin, Yan Terrien and Lobo Loco. Read more about Judith Flanders here. Read a transcript of the episode here.

Japan is an ethnically homogenous nation where everyone speaks Japanese, right? Not exactly. Other groups including the Ainu also have called Japan home, perhaps for longer than the Japanese themselves. Today, the Ainu language is spoken by only a handful of people. One of them, Russian-born linguist Anna Bugaeva, takes Patrick Cox to meet Ainu speakers (and non-speakers) on the island of Hokkaido. Along the way, we learn about the mysteries of Ainu, a "language isolate" unrelated to any other language in the world. Bugaeva says Japanese children aren't taught about the Ainu because their presence—and language—contradict standard Japanese history.

Music in this episode by Tonality Star, Podington Bear, Circus Marcus and Blue Dot Sessions. Photo of Ainu language activists Maki and Kenji Sekine by Patrick Cox. More on Anna Bugaeva's research here. Read a transcript of the episode here.