2021-12-14
38 分钟From Booksmart Studios, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.
I'm John McWhorter, and in this episode, I'm going to do what I don't do.
I am going to talk about writing.
It's that aspect of language that is so prominent in our minds and so...
uninteresting in many ways to those of us who are linguists
because we think of spoken language as what the real thing is.
But that doesn't mean that writing isn't interesting in its own ways.
And one of them is in something that a lot of us really would probably rather not be hearing about right now.
And it's this new variant of the coronavirus called Omicron.
I know some of you say Omicron, but I can't say that.
And so I'm saying...
Omicron.
And of course, the way we're feeling about that is encapsulated by the message in,
for example, a song like this.
That is a very obscure song, but it's actually by the same guys who wrote Blues in the Night.
You know, my mama done told me.
and actually it's from a movie with that title.
That's Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer.
That's Hang On To Your Lids Kids.
Very catchy.