You know that feeling you get when you say something you've known forever — slang, a catchphrase, a cultural reference — and the other person stares blankly? They have no idea what you're referring to. Sometimes you feel old, sometimes you just feel out of touch.

That's just one of the things we talked about on this week's episode:

http://wywd.us/sound-old

We also talked about the pronunciation of "the" and "garage," “done” vs. “finished,” a new book about polyglots, the silent K in words, and lots more.

LANGUAGE NEWS

Christian Boer has created a typeface called "Dyslexie" that he believes will help dyslexics read any text rendered in it.

http://wywd.us/sS8cqB

What's the difference between "three times as much as" and "three times greater than"? The Style & Substance blog of the Wall Street Journal tackles this common bit of journalistic innumeracy (among other things).

http://wywd.us/t3IzYk

The backstory on the name of the element "ytterbium":

http://wywd.us/uCOsL7

Google Translate is already pretty good. Just how much better can it get?

http://wywd.us/sq2xee

Twitter isn't ruining English, writes Mark Liberman at Language Log.

http://wywd.us/rS6yPs

Alex Knapp, blogging at Fortune, sympathizes with the emotion behind the feeling, but agrees that the data show Twitter isn't ruining the language and says that, anyway, it can be hilarious.

http://wywd.us/rxsvFX

In that vein, book reviewer and blogger Maud Newton does some dialectical digging on Twitter and compares regional slang and outsiders' reactions to it.

http://wywd.us/uNeZew

In fact, Twitter is a source of great data for language study, writes our buddy Ben Zimmer in the New York Times.

http://wywd.us/w3ahG6

He follows-up at LanguageLog.

http://wywd.us/vUsqv4

Ben also writes in three places about the new Broadway play "Chinglish," a word which means a mix of Chinese and English. The play is not just about getting things wrong. Playwright David Henry Hwang: "Sometimes even when you know what someone's saying literally, they might as well be speaking a foreign language, because the underlying cultural assumptions can be so different."

Overall description of the play:

http://wywd.us/rZEcJB

Q&A with the playwright:

http://wywd.us/u4r24Q

Even more Q&A:

http://wywd.us/tJh0b9

Here’s a language quiz from Howard Richler's upcoming book. Take a famous person's name and then, using only letters already in that name, make another famous person's name. So Baer, as in Max Baer, would give you Berra, as in Yogi Berra. Try it:

http://wywd.us/sfpne4

BEHIND THE SCENES

We're happy to welcome a new sponsor to A Way with Words: the Fifth Edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language http://ahdictionary.com/.

This is the dictionary with the beautiful chart and appendix of Indo-European roots. You can get a taste of its etymological building blocks here from the standalone American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots:

http://wywd.us/twzkwf

The other thing you should know: the dictionary publisher’s executive editor, Steve Kleinedler, has a phonetic vowel chart tattooed on his back. Don't believe us? See for yourself:

http://blogs.discovermagazine……6/tæˈtu/

Best wishes and may you read more than you write!

Martha and Grant
Co-hosts of "A Way with Words"
http://waywordradio.org
words@waywordradio.org

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Support for "A Way with Words" comes from the Fifth Edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 10 Years in the Making with 10,000 New Words and Senses. Learn more at http://ahdictionary.com/

Support for "A Way with Words" also comes from National University, which invites you to change your future today. More at http://www.nu.edu/