Lexicon Valley from Booksmart Studios – Details, episodes & analysis

Working backwards from existing languages, linguists have had great success reconstructing Proto-Indo-European. Does that mean we can do the same for all language families? John explains.

A cyclone came through and blew off most of English’s clothes, says John, in Part II of his discussion of Indo-European.

Many English verbs have three forms — sing, sang and sung, for example. The problem is that speakers seem to want only two. John explains.

Too — whether about excess, addition or contradiction — evolved from to. John explains.

Some languages adopt their “health” word from the concept of wholeness — a metaphor that makes perfect sense. Other languages, however, adopt their “health” word from trees. John explains.

Like the French word droit, English’s right has taken on a number of useful metaphorical meanings. John explains.

In this favorite from the archives, John discusses some unwritten rules of English that can be remarkably difficult for a learner of English to master.

The word “record” can be broken down into two parts, the re and the cord. But what do those parts even mean? John explains.

John is traveling this week and so we’re running a previous episode about the speech patterns of Bette Davis, George Gershwin, Louis Armstrong and countless other Americans of the 1930s. Why do they all sound like that?

So many of our words have ugly associations that are particular to a historical time or event. Should we expunge them entirely from our vocabulary? Can we? John weighs in.