You're Saying It Wrong

Horse jumping, goats fighting hedgehogs, rude fruit-related gestures... today we look at some of the most surprising and exciting word origins we can think of.

We're continuing on from the last episode's fun and games, but the difficulty is ramping up!

Well, actually Nine Egregious Errors, but Eight looks better, and one of them isn't really THAT bad. We'll look at some of the most common language mistakes, even in major publications, that might make your eyes pop out of your head. But... are they really a big deal?

Find out what happens when perfectly nice words fall in with the wrong crowd...

OK, the time has come to talk about OK, OK? OK!

They're just two small, simple words. But when you put them together... all bets are off.

"She was probly at interpetive dance class at the libry that Febuary fifteenth."

No? No good? Try saying it out loud...

It's our 50th podcast extravaganza! We'll talk about the current bête noire of the language world, "irregardless", as well as other redundancies and ways language may be changing for better or worse. Plus, a hodgepodge (or mishmash, or olio, or potpourri, take your pick) of listener pet peeves and whatever else might be on our minds. We can do what we want, we're 50 now.

"The Warmth of the Athletic Hamster."

This is the sentence Fletcher received from Kathy and Ross. Say it aloud, and you'll probably hear epenthesis, the pronunciation of letters that are not there: "p" in warmth and hamster, perhaps an extra "a" in athletic.

This discussion prompts the trio to recall instances where they've heard others mispronounce words through epentheses: Fletcher revisits elementary school, though he won't name names; and Ross and Kathy... well, sorry, Uncle Jim.

Grab some aspirin and try to wrap your head around the sloppy Venn diagram of homonyms, homophones, homographs, heteronyms, heterographs, polysemes... confused yet? So are we...