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What Is Yiddish?
Listen now (7 mins) | Jewish languages are examples par excellence of the Miami English phenomenon.
 • 
John McWhorter
8
August 2023
Arigatō/Obrigado ... Coincidence?
Are the words for "thank you" in Japanese and Portuguese related?
 • 
John McWhorter
2
What Is Miami English?
Listen now (26 mins) | How Cuban Spanish has affected the way people speak English.
 • 
John McWhorter
7
I Lighted Them Downstairs
Listen now (4 mins) | More language observations from the "first recorded murder trial in US history."
 • 
John McWhorter
July 2023
Why Did People "Ejaculate" in Old Books?
Also, is our 's for possessives just a shortened form of "his"?
 • 
John McWhorter
2
Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks
Listen now (29 mins) | On an indictment for the murder of Gulielma Sands, on Monday the thirty-first day of April, 1800.
 • 
John McWhorter
1
How Stripped Down Can a Language Get?
Do we need thousands of words — or even verb tenses — to communicate?
 • 
John McWhorter
June 2023
I Got Beat
Listen now (2 mins) | Old Looney Tunes cartoons have great examples of how English verbs often work.
 • 
John McWhorter
1
I Got My Nails Did!
Listen now (30 mins) | How English verbs are collapsing.
 • 
John McWhorter
3
May 2023
Frame Job
Listen now (5 mins) | The semantically circuitous path that connects “from” and “frame.”
 • 
John McWhorter
2
Does "Grandfathered" Trace to Slavery?
Also, does Russian have regional accents, like English or Italian?
 • 
John McWhorter
2
To v. Too
Listen now (27 mins) | Not all languages have prepositions, yet somehow they manage to-ness.
 • 
John McWhorter
3
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