Fourteen-year-old Harry from Charlotte, Vermont, asks why we say something is clean as a whistle. Clean as a whistle refers not to a physical whistle, but to the purity of the sibilant sound. This is part of a complete episode.
All the answers to this puzzle from Quiz Guy John Chaneski are two-word phrases, and the only vowel they contain is the letter A. For example, suppose John is lounging in a shaded spot where only one variety of fruit is allowed. Where is he? This is...
Marcie from Fort Worth, Texas, grew up in Chile speaking Spanish, but her 10-year-old daughter has trouble rolling her Rs. This difficulty or inability to trill one’s Rs is called rhotacism, and it’s not uncommon in Spanish-speaking...
Fourteen-year-old Harry from Charlotte, Vermont, asks why we say something is clean as a whistle. The phrase refers not to a physical whistle, but to the purity of the sibilant sound. This is part of a complete episode.
Sean in Asheville, North Carolina, wonders how to pronounce the nearby town of Leicester. Say it the way the locals do. It’s part of a family of British place names affected by vowel reduction and haplology, the omission of a sound or syllable...
Joe in Huntsville, Alabama, says an elderly friend consistently says hope to mean help. For more than a century, some speakers in parts of the Southern United States to drop the L sound before another consonant in words, which then affects the...