2026-10-28
24 分钟From Booksmart Studios, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.
I'm Bob Garfield.
This week, again, without Mike Volo, but also again on the subject of the provocative book,
How to Kill a Language, subtitled Power, Resistance, and the Race to Save Our Words by Sophia Smith-Gaylor.
In the last episode...
We discussed the many causes and effects of language extinction, political, cultural, and economic.
In the introduction, I described Gaylor's work as controversial in parts of the linguistic community.
And in part two of our conversation, I'll quibble.
Sophia, even though in actual time you've been sitting here all along, welcome back to Lexicon Valley.
Thank you for having me.
Look, don't tell my mom or my librarian.
But I scribbled all over and aggressively dog-eared your book to mark poignant passages and fun facts to know and tell.
For instance, in Oman, where Arabic is completely overtaking the regional charrette,
what's lost among many other things is the charrette word for cow dung,
which differs from the word for dung of other animals.
And an even more particular word for...
Of course, watery cow dung.
I'd heard of Inuits in 23 words for snow or something, but that was a new one for me.
Quite the education, this linguist game, no?
Well, if you think about it, like the nature of your cow's dung, that's data collection.