If there’s one skill I wish I had, it’s the ability to learn languages and get good at them. (I’m not talking about computer languages.) I took Greek and Latin in high school, but I didn’t stick with either one. A while ago, I tried learning French with the app Duolingo, with the same result. Now, I’m trying French again, and I’m finally making some real progress. But the process has made one thing clear to me: There’s a lot I still don’t understand about how languages work.
So who better to unconfuse me than the latest guest on my podcast, John McWhorter?
A professor of linguistics at Columbia University, John is someone I’ve already learned a great deal from. He’s dedicated his career to demystifying the roughly 7,000 languages spoken around the world—and when he isn’t teaching college students, he’s busy sharing his knowledge with the rest of us. I’ve read a few of his many books, listened to his podcast Lexicon Valley, watched his Great Courses lectures, and always look for his columns in The New York Times.
I’m lucky enough to have met John before, but each time I talk with him, I learn something new. Our latest conversation was no exception. He helped me understand what makes English so irregular, why the ideal language wouldn’t have gendered pronouns, why all dialects are created equal, and much more. We also shared the languages we each wished we could learn (him: Navajo, me: Mandarin) and the words or phrases that have become our linguistic crutches (his: “the fact of the matter,” mine: “um”).
Whether you’re a natural at learning languages or a novice like me, I’m pretty sure this episode—all thanks to John McWhorter—will still teach you something. I hope you’ll give it a listen. And you can catch up on recent episodes of Unconfuse Me on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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