Language

Language commentator Geoffrey Nunberg comments on interjections in modern slang.
Description (Program)

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg comments on the word millennium. He worries that during the next century, will anyone be able to spell it right. A look on the web showed the word misspelled 30-percent of the time. Nunberg offers his solution to the coming orthographic crisis.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg on the origins of the word "paparazzo."

Chess master Garry Kasparov may have lost to Deep Blue, but linguist Geoff Nunberg says there are some areas where humans will beat computers -- at least for now.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg wonders if present day warning signs will be comprehensible to future generations.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg comments on the history of slang, and refers to two books about it: Johnathan Lighter's Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang (1994) and "Flappers 2 Rappers" by Tom Dalzell (1997).

Stories of people changing their name, an excerpt from This American Life by Ira Glass, produced at WBEZ. Glass tells the story of his grandmother: when she was in her 30's, she was very ill and everyone thought she was going to die. So they changed her name. It was an old Jewish custom, to confuse the Angel of Death. And Margy Rochlin on the place you go to in Los Angeles if you want to change your name. It turns out to be surprisingly easy to change

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg reflects on our use of the term "postmodern" to describe everything from art to architecture. But Nunberg wonders when exactly modernism began and ended.

As the Ebonics controversy continues into its second month, linguist Geoff Nunberg comments on standard English.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg looks at the current debate surrounding black vernacular in school, which the Oakland school board has dubbed "Ebonics."