Kerstin Cable, host of "The Fluent Show" shares her tips and enthusiasm for learning new languages. We talked about what to do if you're stalled learning a language, what the good things and bad...

The sounds of certain words make us think of things that are big or small, round or spiky, and the tendency is nearly universal. For example, people can often pick words that refer to something big...

"Strollout," "insurrection," "yassify," "hard pants" and other words of the year for 2021.
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Was that uncle who wiped the floor with you in a card game a cardsharp or a card shark? Also, we look at what it is about using "they" as a singular pronoun that makes it sometimes stand out and...

I have a big metaphorical pile of questions from listeners in which the answers are too short to be a whole podcast segment, so today, I'm going to string them together and do a bunch of quick...

Today we use milk and cookies for Santa to figure out when compound subjects are singular or plural. We also invent a new language term: santaback. We hope you'll share your examples!
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Accomplished mystery writer Lori Rader-Day was drawn to the story of children who were evacuated to Agatha Christie's vacation home during WWII, but having never written a historical novel before,...

|HOST: Mignon Fogarty
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|Grammar Girl is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network.
|Theme music by Catherine Rannus at beautifulmusic.co.uk.
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Does your group use shibboleths? Plus, I'll help you avoid common embarrassing greeting card mistakes.
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Amirite? You have the tickets, don't you? Today we talk about those tiny questions at the end of sentences, what purpose they serve, and who is most likely to use them. Plus, we tackle that anxiety...

In this week's podcast, we discuss why you should never call your girlfriend your penultimate friend. Plus, we have fun and fascinating facts about Caesar and some of the phrases he gave us, such...

WWII was a rich source of new words for the English language. Before the 1940s, you couldn't tell an eager beaver to shut his pie hole while you were being debriefed by the head honcho. And you'll...

Today, I talked with Saraciea Fennell, who works in publishing, is behind the Bronx Book Festival, and is also the editor of a new anthology, "Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed," featuring essays from an...

The words tombstone and gravestone used to refer to large stone slabs that served as a lid for a tomb or covering for a grave. Also, the human scream has a very particular sound that makes it...

Have you noticed people switching to the present tense when they're telling stories? It actually has a name: It's called the "historical present tense."
This is the article we mentioned if you want...

Many words we use every day are actually trademarks. Did you know about all the words we talked about today? Plus, we talk about some really weird spellings and dunk on "Eats, Shoots &...

Researchers and companies are harnessing computers to identify the emotions behind our written words. While sentiment analysis is far from perfect, it manages to distill meaning from huge amounts...

In the world of great debates, there is one that has been long enduring and still keeps language prescriptivists awake at night: Is it "tom-ay-to" or "tom-ah-to"? Now, this may not seem as...

The author of "The Language of Leadership," Joel Schwartzberg, explains how you can make small tweaks to your language to make a big difference in your influence.
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Based on the history of who was sailing the high seas, it's a good bet pirates sounded a lot more multicultural than Ol’ Long John Silver would have us believe. We also discuss when you need a...