AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: we continue our conversation with James Geary about his new book, Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists.An aphorism is a philosophical saying whose author is known. Two yea...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: Martha Brockenbrough, a writer in Seattle and founder of SPOGG, the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. Five thousand people get her free e-mails about grammar, usage and w...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti. Rosanne Skirble is away, but joining me from Los Angeles is English teacher Lida Baker to explain our topic on Wordmaster this week. It's a feature of the language called compounding. LIDA BAKER: Compounding is when we take two w...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: our guest is Tom Dalzell, senior editor of the New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English -- and, now, the Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconven...
I'm Nancy Beardsley, filling in for Avi Arditti and Rosanne Skirble. This week on Wordmaster we'll talk about bad manners-and how they're reflected in what people are saying and not saying to one another these days. Our guest is British writer Lynne...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: we answer some listener questions. RS: Starting with this one from Rajpal Rawal in India, who sends us two sentences with questions about pronunciation -- more specifically, about...
More than half of the over one hundred native California tongues have disappeared. Many others have only a few, aging speakers. When this last fluent generation dies, languages spoken by Californians over centuries, will also die. At a recent gatheri...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER some ways to help you improve your memory. ELDH: We don't forget, we just haven't learned it in the first place.RS: That's Wendi Eldh. She's a communications trainer who teaches me...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: English teacher Lida Baker explains the use of the words after and before.LIDA BAKER: I'm going to say a few sentences and I just want you to tell me two things: Is the sentence c...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: the language of Hurricane Katrina. RS: Debra Howell is an artist who has lived in New Orleans on and off since the late 1960s. She says she never evacuated for a hurricane before...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble and this week on Wordmaster: a report from NBC News that caught our attention. RS: It's about a word that is spreading like no other. (MUSIC)FEMALE: Like, I saw these guys who, like, were really cute.MALE: And...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: some advice about writing. RS: For the past 18 years, Jim Allan has run a secretarial center in Los Angeles. He offers typing -- and a lot more. He draws on his background as a co...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: communication skills for the elderly. RS: And to teach it to them is George Shames, professor emeritus in psychology and communications disorders at the University of Pittsburgh....
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: from an interview on C-SPAN television, political pollster and strategist Frank Luntz talks about his book Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear.RS: At one...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER, our guest is the author of a new book called On Words: Insight Into How Our Words Work -- and Don't.RS: Paula LaRocque has worked for many years as a writing instructor and newspa...
