How do you pronounce rooibos? The name of this tea comes from the Afrikaans words rooi bos, meaning “red bush.” Rooibos is pronounced ROY-boss, but it’s also called bush tea, red tea, or redbush tea. http://waywordradio.org

1665-Caller-Matt-Rooibos

Meg in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, gets why the state highway department encourages drivers to use their blinkers when changing lanes, but placing a digital sign at the Sagamore Bridge that reads Use Ya Blinkah is, well, a lexical bridge too far. Meg’s annoyed by the sign, contending that it makes fun of the way locals talk. Rendering speech this way is known as eye dialect, and in the case of these kinds of digital signs, they do get the point across. http://waywordradio.org

1665-Caller-Meg-Use-Your-Blinkah

Ophelia in Johnson City, Tennessee, wonders about the exclamation her great-grandmother often used when something surprised her: Cat bristle! That may be her own version of a minced oath, although it fits with the idea of how a cat’s tail might look when its surprised. http://waywordradio.org

1665-Caller-Ophelia-Cat-Bristle

In 1968, students at Cheyenne High School in Cheyenne, Wyoming, compiled a collection of their own slang, including the word Clyde, used to refer to one’s head, as in Use your Clyde! http://waywordradio.org

1665-Clyde

Words of wisdom from G.K. Chesterton: The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder. http://waywordradio.org

1665-GK-Chesterton-Quote

The word preppy has undergone a considerable evolution since Boomers first used it to describe attire that reflects a conservative, polished, East-coast prep school look. For middle-schoolers today, preppy connotes an entirely different aesthetic: girly clothing that’s frilly, often Barbie-pink or decorated with animal prints. In his new book, Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language (Bookshop|Amazon) linguist Adam Aleksic shows the role social media algorithms played in the development of an entirely new sense of the word. http://waywordradio.org

1665-Lex-Bag-Preppy

When does late at night change to early in the morning? 2:30 a.m.? 3:00 a.m.? Another time? http://waywordradio.org

1665-Night-Changes-To-Morning

Besides the Use Ya Blinkah roadside sign seen in Massachusetts, seasonal messages on digital highway signs have included the Halloween-themed Hocus Pocus--Drive with Focus and the Fourth of July admonition Don’t Drive Star-Spangled Hammered. The U.S. federal government now discourages the use of such highway punnery, declaring that they are too distracting and unclear. http://waywordradio.org

1665-Safe-Driving-Signs

A listener has a suggestion for a word “a state of dread” or “not wanting something to happen,” and that word is unticipation. http://waywordradio.org

1665-Unticipation

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has been pondering the -ly often found at the of adverbs, and that inspired him to craft a puzzle about  words that seem to be adverbs, but aren’t. For example, what fake adverb is suggested by this clue: Like a sudden charge against an enemy, it does it like actor Mineo or baseballer Bando. http://waywordradio.org

1665-Word-Quiz-Fake-Adverbs

On Borders 
With Irakli Sabekia (Leisure, BA) and Axel Coumans (Food Non Food, BA) in conversation with Agata Jaworska and Arif Kornweitz

Can borders ever do justice to that which they contain? Irakli Sabekia with his project 'Voicing Borders' and Axel Coumans with his project 'Streaming Sandwaves' concern themselves with various injustices that borders are bound up with. By turning the Russian-Georgian barbed-wire fence border into a radio transmitter that emits in morse code the names of the Georgian towns that have been erased due to Russian occupation, Irakli Sabekia subverts a weapon of occupation into a tool for voicing a protest against itself. With a self-made machine that scans ripples left in the sand by a retreating tide and translates them into an audible signal, Axel Coumans underlies the integrity of the North Sea, with the longer-term ambition of contributing to the recognition of the North Sea as a political entity. Through inventive technical interventions, both projects enable alternative readings of border regions, and voice perspectives that for too long have gone unheard.

DAE Design Research Podcast - Irakli Sabekia and Axel Coumans on Borders

A selection of Bachelor and Master students from Design Academy Eindhoven talk about their final graduation projects. They share the world behind their ideas and talk about their motivation, design-process and the research that led to their work. More info: www.designacademy.nl

DAE Design Research Podcast - Irakli Sabekia and Axel Coumans on Borders

Design Research Podcast

Related tracks