Author: Neal Whitman

A listener named Matt wants to know why some speakers of American English pronounce the word “wash” as “warsh.” This pronunciation is sometimes called the “intrusive R,” and like our recent episode on the “pin”/“pen” merger and “cot”/“caught” merger, this question has to do with dialects of American English.   The intrusive R in “warsh” is most commonly associated with a dialect of American English known as the Midland dialect. The exact boundaries of the Midland dialect region vary from study to study, but all the analyses agree that covers most of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri, as well…

A listener named Anne wrote in with this question: Have you written anything about the way some people pronounce short E and short I the same? For example, my husband says “pin” [P-I-N] and “pen” [P-E-N] the same way (sort of like a combination of how each is supposed to sound separately), and it fascinates me that he says he can’t hear a difference when I say them differently. I now ask my husband to spell words for me to avoid having any more misunderstandings. He thinks I’m crazy. I grew up in Minnesota and think it’s a Southern thing. …

Several listeners have asked when they should omit the subordinating conjunction “that” in their writing. For example, should you write “Squiggly said that it was Aardvark’s birthday,” or just “Squiggly said it was Aardvark’s birthday”? For this sentence, both ways are perfectly grammatical, but if you’re following a principle of omitting needless words, you’ll want to leave out the “that.” Watch out, though. Although “that” is optional in this example, you can’t assume it’s optional wherever you see it. Sometimes it’s mandatory. And even when it’s optional, it’s sometimes still a good idea to keep it. Bridge verbs and ‘that’…

A few years ago, I ran an episode about how I was hearing a lot of speakers saying “based off” instead of “based on.” The cheerful example I used was “I believe we’re all doomed based off what I saw last night,” instead of “I believe we’re all doomed based on what I saw last night.” In that episode, I said that the usage really took off in the 1990s, although “based on” is still in the majority. Well, now I have some further information about “based off” and an interesting parallel with another construction involving the word “based.” ‘Based…

What Is a Misle? Today I want to talk about misles, and one misle in particular. What’s a misle, you ask? It’s a mispronunciation of a word based on its spelling. It gets its name from the past tense of the verb mislead. The word misLED can be misREAD as /ˈmaɪzəld/. People who read it this way might go for years before they realize that misle-d and mis-led are the same word—the same way that it took me to realize that Tuck-son and Tucson, Arizona were the same place. Other misles include infrare-d for infrared, and warp-lanes for warplanes.…

Reading note: Read /?/ as “chuh,” and /?/ as “shuh.” Reading note: Read /i/ as a long E as in see, and /I/ as a short I as in sit.  I need to start this next segment with a warning. I’m going to talk about something that you may never have noticed, but after listening to this segment, you won’t be able to not notice it. Are you ready? OK. Listen to how I pronounce this next sentence: I painted a shtripe shtraight down the middle of the shtreet, then shtruck a pose as I shtraddled the line.  Some…

The English spelling system is famous for not making sense. The phonetic ideal of having each letter represent exactly one sound, and each sound represented by exactly one letter, is impossible when English has about 45 sounds, or phonemes, and only 26 letters to represent them. But more than that, any language that has been written for a long enough time will have spellings that haven’t caught up with modern pronunciations, because pronunciations change. English has been written for about 1,300 years, which is plenty of time for these mismatches to accumulate. One of the more frustrating signs of these…

Ain’t is possibly the most-maligned word in the English grammar guides. Even though many other contractions are now acceptable in all but the most formal writing, ain’t is still frowned upon in all but the most informal writing, and sometimes even there. But that hasn’t stopped it. Not only has ain’t not disappeared; it has even expanded its reach in recent years. Let’s start at the beginning: Ain’t has been part of English for about 400 years. It was originally a contraction for am not and are not and was written an’t and a’n’t. In their book Origins of the…

Audible, the Internet’s leading provider of spoken audio entertainment, has more than 150,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature, including fiction, nonfiction, and periodicals. For a free trial and free audiobook to keep, visit this link. Like, I’ve been doing this podcast for, like, eight years now, but there’s, like, one language peeve that I’ve never thought to write about, so when a listener asked me about it, I was, like, “I can’t believe we’ve never covered this before!” Not All Likes are Alike As you’ve probably guessed by now, the complaint is about the overuse of the word like. However, before…

In a recent episode on coordinating conjunctions, I talked about the popular mnemonic word FANBOYS to remember them: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so. I also talked about how the conjunctions for, so, and yet are different from the better-known conjunctions and, but, and or. But I didn’t talk about nor, because it’s unusual enough to deserve an episode of its own. Well, this is that episode! We’ll be talking about negative conjunctions, and what they can tell us about parts of speech in general. What Makes Something a Coordinating Conjunction As I said in the earlier…