Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics

By Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne

72: What If Linguistics - Absurd hypothetical questions with Randall Munroe of xkcd

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Published September 15, 2022 7:02pm

What’s the “it’s” in “it’s three pm and hot”? How do you write a cough in the International Phonetic Alphabet? Who is the person most likely to speak similarly to a randomly-selected North American English speaker? In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about absurd hypothetical linguistic questions with special guest Randall Munroe, creator of the webcomic xkcd and author of What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. We only wish that there was a little more linguistics in the book. So Randall came on to fill the gap with all his m...

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