How legal and literary texts shaped English

Why is weird spelled like that? Why is yacht pronounced like that? Why is a firefighter a person who fights fires... but a pickpocket is neither a pick nor a pocket? We're so lucky to have linguist Colin Gorrie on the pod to talk about the "disaster" of English spelling and the history you can unearth in pretty much every English word. This one's such a nerdy delight — if you found yourself enraptured by our episode on accents, you're gonna love this one, too.

AND GREAT NEWS: WE HAVE VERY GOOD EPISODE TRANSCRIPTS NOW! They come out within 24 hours of the pod, so you just have to be a little patient and then come back and click here. We pay an actual human for help with these, so thank you for either being a paid subscriber or listening to the ads that make this model possible!

If you're a paid subscriber and haven't yet set up your subscriber RSS feed in your podcast player, here's the EXTREMELY easy how-to .

And if you're having any other issues with your Patreon subscription — please get in touch! Email me at annehelenpetersen @ gmail OR submit a request to Patreon Support. Thank you for making the switch with us — the podcast in particular is much more at home here!

Thanks to the Sponsors of Today's Episode!

• Celebrate your number one valentine, your greatest love, your dog! Head to Ollie.com/CULTURE, tell them all about your dog, and use code CULTURE to get 60% off your Welcome Kit.

• Go to wildalaskan.com/CULTURE for $35 off your first box of premium, wild-caught seafood.

• Wake up with clearer skin, smoother hair, and cooler sleep. Use code CULTUREPOD for an extra 30% off at blissy.com/CULTUREPOD.

• Get 15% off your first order at Blueland.com/CULTURE

Show Notes:

• Subscribe to Colin Gorrie's newsletter, Dead Language Society, here

• I personally really love 'Dog' is a Weird Word (you can find all the Weird Word editions collected here)

• Listen to our episode on The Ridiculously Interesting World of American Accents!

• I reference Wound Man — here's my interview with the art historian on the historical representations of him

• A very weird 1818 illustration of a pickpocket

• Just for fun, a map of Europe with place names in the dominant language of the place

We're currently looking for your questions for future episodes about:

• New trends you've noticed in the world of MOMFLUENCERS (with Sara Petersen, of course)

• Dark academia — the trends, the themes, the popularity, whatever you want (for an episode with R.F. Kuang!)

• Getting into Gaming as AN ADULT (and especially as a woman or non-binary person) (with Keza Macdonald, author of the new history Super Nintendo)

• Conversion Therapy (how it affects people late into life, how it still exists, etc. etc.)

• Your Parent(s) Died — How Do You Deal with All This PAPERWORK and bureaucracy??? (with death doula Becky Robison)

• What would LIFE AFTER CARS look like?? (With the hosts of the War on Cars pod!)

• KID INFLUENCERS — what happens when your parent puts you on camera before you can really consent?

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment

• As always, you can submit your questions (and ideas for future eps) here

  For this week’s discussion: Just gonna be real basic here and ask... What did you learn from this episode? So many tidbits and delightful explanations!