Lexicon Valley

A podcast about language, from pet peeves to syntax.

Illustration depicting a female with a microphone

Listen longer

Slate Plus members get ad-free versions of all Slate podcasts, plus extra segments, bonus episodes, and more. Try it free today.

Join Slate Plus

About the Show

If you’ve ever had curious thoughts and questions about the ways we speak, read, and write, Lexicon Valley is the show for you. Hosted by linguist John McWhorter.

Host

Sergeant, Corporal, Colonel!

Peculiar linguistic tales of America’s soldiers.

To Reason Why

There’s more than one way to ask why. How come? What for?

When Talking to Your Mother-in-Law Is a Minefield

From baby talk to formal varieties, languages around the world offer—or even require—different ways of speaking for different situations.

The Incredible Story of the Traveling Creole

Enslaved people developed a hybrid language that sailed from Africa to the Caribbean and—unbelievably—back again.

This Am a Minstrel Stereotype, Right?

A longstanding mystery of Black English may finally be solved.

When Jews Adapted Spanish

Languages of the Ottoman Empire, inspired by historian Alan Mikhail’s new book God’s Shadow.

Does English Have a Future?

Lots of languages have no dedicated way to indicate later-ness. Somehow life goes on.

Defund Karen

On the insults, acronyms, and sloganeering of America’s racial reckoning.

Beyond the Five W’s

The curious grammar of questions in languages around the world.

Tweety Bird and Toddlerspeak

Language acquisition is like magic. How do children do it?

Coronavirus: Isolation and Aspiration

Can strongly aspirated consonants increase transmission of COVID-19?

Our Indigenous Languages

A luxuriance of long words, baroque case endings, and irregular everything—the Native American tongues!

I Just Can’t!

Host John McWhorter shares some of his longstanding language peeves—yes, linguists have them too!

The Many Meanings of Too

Host John McWhorter finds linguistic inspiration in an 80-year-old musical performance of Rubber Dolly.

Sicko, Whacko, Weirdo

The -o suffix traces back to old comic strip characters with names like Knocko and Groucho. Neato!

Chinese Has No Grammar, Right? Wrong!

Mandarin might not have gender or case endings, but there’s more to grammar than conjugations.

From Uptalk to Vocal Fry, Women Are Prolific Language Innovators

Want to hear what English will sound like in the future? Talk to a woman.

In What Order Did Languages Arrive in Europe?

DNA analysis is revealing which speakers traveled where and when.

Digging Up the Past

Let’s talk about how we talk about that which already occurred.

Verbs on the Move

Coming and going in languages around the world.