This is our hundredth episode that's enthusiastic about linguistics! To celebrate, we've put together 100 of our favourite fun facts about linguistics, featuring contributions from previous guests and Lingthusiasm team members, fan favourites that resonated with you from the previous 99 episodes, and new facts that haven't been on the show before but might star in one of the next 100 episodes in greater detail. 

In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne talk about brains, gesture, etymology, famous example sentences, languages by the numbers, a few special facts about the word "hundred" and way more! This episode is both a fun overview of the vibe of Lingthusiam if you've never listened before, and a bonus bingo card game for diehard fans to see how many facts you can recognize. 

We also invite you to share this episode alongside one of your favourite fun facts about linguistics and help more people find Lingthusiasm in honour of our 100th episodiversary! Whether you pick something new that resonates from this episode, or share the fact you were sitting on the edge of your seat hoping we'd mention, we look forward to staying Lingthusiastic with you for the next 100 episodes. 

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMjAxMDg1Njk3MQ
Read the transcript here: lingthusiasm.com/post/772874564563845120/transcript-episode-100

Announcements:
In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about some of our favourite deleted bits from recent interviews that we didn't quite have space to share with you! First, we go back to our interview with phonetician Jacq Jones, previously seen talking about how binary and non-binary people talk. Then, we return to computational linguist Emily M. Bender to talk about how Emily's students made a computational model of Lauren's grammar of Lamjung Yolmo and how linguistics is a team sport. Finally, we return to our group interview with the team behind Tom Scott's Language Files to talk about sneaky Icelandic jokes and the unedited behind-the-scenes version of the gif/gif joke.

Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds: patreon.com/posts/118982443

For links to things mentioned in this episode: lingthusiasm.com/post/772874257193730048/lingthusiasm-episode-100-a-hundred-reasons-to-be

100: A hundred reasons to be enthusiastic about linguistics

🎙️ LexTalk: Exploring English and Linguistics in Thailand – S1E7
Episode 7: How Age Affects Language Learning

Welcome back to LexTalk, where we discuss exciting topics in English teaching and linguistics! 🌏

In this episode, we explore the fascinating topic of how age impacts language learning. From young children to adults, each age group has unique strengths and challenges in acquiring a new language. Learn how teachers can tailor their methods to suit learners of different ages and maximize success in the classroom.

💡 What you’ll learn in this episode:

The Critical Period Hypothesis and its implications for language learning.
Strengths and challenges for children, teenagers, and adult learners.
Practical teaching tips for each age group to build confidence and communication skills.
Examples of successful strategies for different age ranges.
📚 Episode Highlights:

How younger learners excel in pronunciation while adults leverage motivation and strategies.
Classroom activities that work best for different ages (e.g., role-playing, discussions, and real-life scenarios).
Tools to enhance learning, such as language apps and interactive games.
👉 Perfect for English teachers, linguists, and anyone curious about the psychology of language learning!

LexTalk Podcast S1 E7: How Age Affects Language Learning

🎙️ LexTalk: Exploring English and Linguistics in Thailand – S1E8
Episode 8: Building Confidence in Speaking English in Thai Classrooms

Welcome back to LexTalk, where we share insights and strategies for effective English teaching in Thailand! 🌏

In this episode, we tackle one of the most common challenges in English classrooms: building confidence in speaking English. Many Thai learners struggle with the fear of making mistakes, but with the right strategies, teachers can help students overcome their hesitation and develop strong communication skills.

💡 What you’ll learn in this episode:

Why confidence is critical for effective language learning.
Common reasons for low confidence in Thai learners, including fear of judgment and cultural factors.
Practical strategies to build a supportive and engaging classroom environment.
Activities like role-playing, guided dialogues, and storytelling to boost speaking confidence.
📚 Episode Highlights:

Real-world examples of students improving through gradual exposure to speaking activities.
Tools and apps for private speaking practice to reduce anxiety.
How to celebrate small victories to motivate learners.
👉 Perfect for English teachers, linguists, and anyone interested in helping learners overcome communication barriers!

🌐 Follow Us Everywhere!

📢 Subscribe, like, and share this episode to support our mission of enhancing English education in Thailand. Let us know how you’ve helped students build confidence in the comments below!

🎧 Next Episode Teaser: “Error Correction: When and How to Do It Effectively.”

#LexTalk #SpeakingConfidence #TeachingEnglish #ESL #Thailand #Linguistics #LanguageEducation #RolePlaying #ConfidenceInESL #EnglishSpeakingSkills

LexTalk Podcast S1 E8: Building Confidence in Speaking English in Thai Classrooms

🎙️ LexTalk: Exploring English and Linguistics in Thailand – S1E9
Episode 9: Error Correction – When and How to Do It Effectively

Welcome back to LexTalk, where we explore the best strategies for teaching English in Thailand! 🌏

In today’s episode, we’re talking about error correction—one of the trickiest aspects of ESL teaching. Should teachers correct every mistake? How does correction impact confidence and fluency? In this episode, we break down the best practices for handling errors without discouraging learners while ensuring progress.

💡 What you’ll learn in this episode:
✅ Why error correction is essential for language learning.
✅ When to correct different types of mistakes (grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary).
✅ The best correction methods: self-correction, peer correction, implicit vs. explicit feedback.
✅ Balancing correction with motivation—avoiding overcorrection.
✅ Real-life examples and practical classroom strategies.

📚 Episode Highlights:

How to encourage students to self-correct and take ownership of their mistakes.
When fluency is more important than accuracy and when to intervene.
Examples of correcting students without disrupting communication.
👉 Perfect for English teachers, linguists, and language educators who want to improve their correction techniques!

🌐 Follow Us Everywhere!

📢 Subscribe, like, and share this episode to support better English teaching in Thailand! Let us know your favorite error correction methods in the comments!

🎧 Next Episode Teaser: “Balancing Speaking, Listening, Reading, and Writing in Lessons.”

#LexTalk #ErrorCorrection #TeachingEnglish #ESL #LanguageTeaching #Thailand #Linguistics #LanguageEducation #GrammarMistakes #FluencyVsAccuracy

LexTalk Podcast S1 E9: Error Correction – When and How to Do It Effectively

🎙️ LexTalk: Exploring English and Linguistics in Thailand – S1E10
Episode 10: Balancing Speaking, Listening, Reading, and Writing in Lessons

Welcome back to LexTalk, where we dive into the best strategies for teaching English in Thailand! 🌏

In today’s episode, we explore how to effectively balance speaking, listening, reading, and writing in ESL lessons. Many teachers struggle with focusing too much on one skill while neglecting the others. A well-rounded approach ensures learners develop strong communication skills and become confident English users.

💡 What you’ll learn in this episode:
✅ Why integrating all four skills leads to better fluency.
✅ The challenges learners face with speaking, listening, reading, and writing.
✅ Practical strategies for task-based learning, storytelling, and real-life simulations.
✅ Lesson planning tips to ensure a balanced skill rotation.
✅ Examples of interactive activities that naturally develop all four skills.

📚 Episode Highlights:

How to structure a lesson so that all four skills are practiced.
The 80/20 approach: balancing interactive speaking/listening with structured reading/writing.
Real-world classroom examples to implement immediately!
👉 Perfect for English teachers, linguists, and educators looking to create more engaging, effective lessons!

🌐 Follow Us Everywhere!

📢 Subscribe, like, and share this episode to support better English teaching in Thailand! Drop a comment and let us know how you balance speaking, listening, reading, and writing in your classroom!

🎧 Next Episode Teaser: “Using AI and Technology to Enhance English Teaching.”

#LexTalk #LanguageSkills #TeachingEnglish #ESL #Education #Fluency #SpeakingListeningReadingWriting #Linguistics #EnglishTeachingTips

LexTalk Podcast S1 E10: Balancing Speaking, Listening, Reading, and Writing in Lessons

🎙️ LexTalk: Exploring English and Linguistics in Thailand – S2E1
Episode 1: Language Anxiety – Why Students Fear Speaking English

Welcome back to LexTalk for Season 2! 🎉 This season, we’re diving into the cognitive and psychological aspects of language learning, starting with one of the biggest challenges students face—Language Anxiety.

Many ESL learners feel nervous, hesitant, or even fearful when speaking English, especially in front of others. In this episode, we explore why students experience language anxiety, how it affects learning, and practical ways teachers can help students overcome it.

💡 What you’ll learn in this episode:
✅ What language anxiety is and how it impacts learning.
✅ The main causes of fear in speaking English (fear of mistakes, judgment, past experiences, etc.).
✅ How anxiety affects fluency, confidence, and retention.
✅ Practical classroom strategies to help students feel more comfortable speaking.
✅ How to balance error correction while maintaining a supportive environment.

📚 Episode Highlights:

Why fear of mistakes and social pressure make speaking English stressful.
Teaching techniques to reduce anxiety, from role-playing to gradual exposure.
Encouraging students to focus on communication, not perfection.
👉 Perfect for English teachers, linguists, and anyone working with language learners!

🌐 Follow Us Everywhere!

📢 Subscribe, like, and share this episode to support better English teaching in Thailand! Drop a comment and tell us—how do you help students overcome language anxiety?

🎧 Next Episode Teaser: “Motivating Students in an ESL Classroom.”

#LexTalk #LanguageAnxiety #ESL #TeachingEnglish #SpeakingConfidence #OvercomingFear #Fluency #ClassroomStrategies #Linguistics #EnglishLearning

LexTalk Podcast S2 E1: Language Anxiety – Why Students Fear Speaking English

LexTalk Podcast S2 E2: Motivating Students in an ESL Classroom

When we first learn about nature, we generally start with the solid mid-sized animals: cats, dogs, elephants, tigers, horses, birds, turtles, and so on. Only later on do we zoom in and out from these charismatic megafauna to the tinier levels, like cells and bacteria, or the larger levels, like ecosystems and the water cycle. With language, words are the easily graspable charismatic megafauna (charismatic megaverba?), from which there are both micro levels (like sounds, handshapes, and morphemes) and macro levels (like sentences, conversations, and narratives). 

In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch take advantage of the aptly numbered 101th episode to get enthusiastic about linguistics from the micro to macro perspective often found in Linguistics 101 classes. We start with sounds and handshapes, moving onto accents and sound changes, fitting affixes into words, words into sentences, and sentences into discourse. We also talk about areas of linguistics that involve language at all these levels at once, including historical linguistics, child language acquisition, linguistic fieldwork, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. Plus: why we don't follow this order for Lingthusiasm episodes or Crash Course Linguistics and how you can give yourself a DIY intro linguistics course. 

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: https://episodes.fm/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMjAzOTAyNTM3Ng
Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/776045991069728768/transcript-episode-101-ling-101

Announcements:

To celebrate Lingthusiasm now having more than 100 episodes, we have compiled a list of 101 places where you can get even more linguistics enthusiasm! This is your one-stop-shop if you want suggestions for other podcasts, books, videos, blogs, and other places online and offline to feed your interest in linguistics. Even with a hundred and one options, we're sure there's still a few that we've missed, so also feel free to tag us @ lingthusiasm on social media about your favourites! 

In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about what psycholinguistics can tell us about creative writing, with Julie Sedivy, psycholinguist and the author of Memory Speaks and Linguaphile! We talk about moving from the style of scientific writing to literary writing by writing a lot of unpublished poetry to develop her aesthetic sense, how studying linguistics for a writer is like studying anatomy for a sculptor or colour theory for a painter, and how you could set up an eyetracking study to help writers figure out which sentences make their readers slow down.

Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds.

For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/776045579375640576/lingthusiasm-episode-101-micro-to-macro-the

101: Micro to macro - The levels of language

This short audio clip of an AI-generated conversation contains a couple examples of interjection slip-ups. In the first example, the listener interjects in an inappropriate way. In the second, the “expert” of the interview flips from one “person” to the other.
You can read more about interjections in the related article authored by Bob Holmes at Knowable Magazine:
https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/mind/2025/interjections-important-for-conversation-flow

How AI slips up when using speech interjections

Season 2, Episode 5: Mother Language Day, February 21st every year

What is International Mother Language Day?  What’s going on around the world in the linguistic scene this year?

Lanték in Argentina: https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/89-year-old-had-to-speak-up-to-save-believed-extinct-indigenous-language-that-reveres-silence/
Linguistic Oppression in Sudan: https://newlinesmag.com/spotlight/sudans-struggle-to-preserve-native-languages/
Old Nubian Resurrected: https://newlinesmag.com/spotlight/in-egypt-and-sudan-nubians-are-trying-to-bring-an-alphabet-back-from-the-dead/ 
Scottish Gàidhlig: https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/articles/the-growth-of-gaelic
Mixtec: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MhDRRaqB8w

Mother Language Day: Dead Tongues Rising (Season 2, Episode 5)

Aandigo is all about language.  Right now, we are teaching English to advanced learners (B2/C1/C2).   Focused on Business, Travel, and How to Learn Languages.

A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. "A fascinating listen that will change the way you see everyday communications." –New York Times. "Joyously nerdy" –Buzzfeed.  

Weird and deep half-hour conversations about language on the third Thursday of the month.

Listened to all the episodes here and wish there were more? Want to talk with other people who are enthusiastic about linguistics? Get bonus episodes and access to our Discord community at www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm 
Shownotes and transcripts: www.lingthusiasm.com

Sound science, smart stories. Journalism that makes scientific knowledge accessible to all. https://knowablemagazine.org/

New tracks tagged #Linguistics