2022-07-07
38 分钟From Booksmart Studios, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.
I'm John McWhorter, and you know, we're going to revisit this lie versus lay thing,
because I have heard quite a bit of response to the show that I did about that.
It's all been very interesting.
Some of you are very angry about that,
and I completely understand, but it's such an interesting point.
It's such an interesting juncture in how a language changes and what you do about it that I want to revisit it by adding a point that I didn't discuss too much in the episode that I did about it,
which is that we know and effortlessly control so much about our language.
It's really an impressive thing what we do just to speak English without effort.
And the whole li-lay thing exists in contrast to that.
There's something different about it.
And I'll return to that specific question after we just look at some things about your language that may seem so naive.
But really, they're quite impressive.
They're much of why linguists find language so interesting.
So, for example, let's take something that'll seem very mundane.
What's a tub?
The word tub.
So homely.
One of those short,
homely little words where etymologists can't even figure out where it came from beyond looking at other Germanic languages.