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Dictionary of American Proverbs

Grant shares some familiar proverbs that supposedly arose from African-American English. The book he mentions is Dictionary of American Proverbs by Wolfgang Mieder. This is part of a complete episode.

Down A Chimney Up

Good poetry is even better when you read it aloud. For his anthology, Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky selected works with just that in mind. Martha and Grant discuss a poem from the...

One Language, Many Voices Exhibit

“Evolving English: One Language, Many Voices” is a new exhibit at the British Library in London featuring the earliest printed versions of Beowulf, the Wycliffe and King James Bible, and the oldest known example of written English. This...

Foreignisms and Loanwords

In the novel Jane Eyre, characters sometimes speak whole sentences in French. A high school English teacher says her students wonder if there’s a term for inserting whole sentences from another language into fiction. Grant talks about the use...

Doing the Limbo

Hi, all! In last weekend's archive episode, we discussed the musical language of railroad conductors’ calls. Also, the military slang term cumshaw, tips for learning Latin, the influence of Spanish on English, hell-to-the-no...

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