AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: extremism by any other name. RS: The term Islamofascism, or Islamic fascists, has prompted some debate. We were curious how the term fascism originated and how political scientist...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: linguist Walt Wolfram from North Carolina State University, a self-described dialect nomad who likes to wander through the dialects of American English. RS: And where has this nom...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: an electronic tutoring system that helps non-native speakers of American English learn to pronounce words with a native accent. RS: The product is called NativeAccent. It's sold b...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: the founder of National Punctuation Day. RS: Sunday was the day for a celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotes and other proper uses of periods, semicolons and the ev...
Punctuation Rap PUNK, PUNK, PUNCTUATION PUNK, PUNK, PUNCTUATION I am a QUESTION MARK, what do I do? I'm at the end of questions, like Where? What? or Who? PUNK, PUNK, PUNCTUATION PUNK, PUNK, PUNCTUATION I am a PERIOD, that means full stop, At the end...
Welcome to this week's Wordmaster. I'm Adam Phillips. That is the sound of a wild fire. Although late September and early October usually signal the end of forest fire season in North America, 2006 has been far worse than usual in terms of the number...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and our guest this week on Wordmaster is writer Paul Dixon, just out with a new version of Slang: The Topical Dictionary of Americanisms. PAUL DIXON: Most slang dictionaries go A-to-Z and they co-mingle the s...
I'm Avi Arditti and this week on Wordmaster: teaching English in Russia. (MUSIC)A lunchtime concert at Saint-Petersburg State University. Last month I had the opportunity to speak at two conferences -- one was a meeting of SPELTA, the St. Petersburg...
Howdy. I'm Adam Phillips, sitting in for Avi Arditti and Rosanne Skirble. For this week's Wordmaster, we go the rodeo. SPEAKER: Welcome to the Montana rodeo on a Saturday night! The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association is holding its national champ...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: If mixing with people at parties leaves you at a loss for words, writer Jeanne Martinet offers some help in an updated edition of her popular book The Art of Mingling.RS: Give us...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: how an English teacher found an unexpected lesson in the Nazi Final Solution -- Hitler's effort to exterminate the Jewish people during World War Two. RS: The Holocaust was in the...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on Wordmaster: Rosanne Skirble and I serve up a feast of idioms related to health and gluttony, as we present the classic children's fairy tale Hansel and Gretel -- retold by Slangman David Burke. MUSIC: Hansel and G...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: reduced forms in spoken American English. RS: We're talking about forms like whaddaya -- meaning what do you, as in whaddaya say? Whaddaya Say? is also the title of a popular teac...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: using the Internet to help make sense of words that are closely related. RS: Like house and home, for example. Both describe a living situation. But house refers to the building,...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: why forgetfulness might actually help in learning a second language. RS: Ben Levy is a graduate student in the Psychology Department at the University of Oregon, studying an area...
