How much can we really know about the words we use? What are the facts behind some of the most tangled etymologies in English? And is our "Related or Not" game a good way of approaching word history?

We're talking to Dr Anatoly Liberman, perhaps the world's preëminent living etymologist and the author of Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology.

What's the difference between a KINK and a FETISH? Does it matter if you ASSUME or PRESUME? English is full of these close groups of words, and author Eli Burnstein has untangled many of them in his delightful book The Dictionary of Fine Distinctions. Eli joins us for this episode.

Timestamps
Intros: 0:42
News: 9:54
Related or Not: 24:11
Interview with Eli Burnstein: 37:33
Words of the Week: 1:10:13
The Reads: 1:33:45

New York City is home to a lot of languages! Sometimes a sizeable language community can live on just a couple of floors of an apartment building. Dr Ross Perlin is working to find and promote minority languages in NYC. He's the co-founder of the Endangered Language Alliance, and author of Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York. Ross joins us for this episode.

Intro: 0:36
News: 8:13
Related or Not: 32:52
Interview with Ross Perlin: 43:12
Words of the Week: 1:24:13
The Reads: 1:39:54

Show notes: http://becauselanguage.com/96-language-city/
Support the show: http://patreon.com/join/becauselangpod/