Linguists Are Nihilists | Interview: Colin Gorrie

There’s a certain ache in the bones—no, more like pain behind the eyes brought on by fatigue with the world—that overtakes a man when he’s gone too long without talking about etymology. We here at The Remnant have been feeling that deeply, and we know you have too. That’s why Jonah Goldberg is sitting down with fellow word nerd Colin Gorrie to talk about everything he’s ever wanted to know about language. Jonah and Colin cover Old English dialects, prescriptive vs. descriptive, the world’s biggest language, Latinization, early dictionaries, class, accents, linguistic hygiene, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, metaphors, the euphemism treadmill, borrowed words, Shakespearean coinages, Australian English, gender in language, Basque, and the hardest European language to learn. 

Show Notes:

—Colin’s Substack

—Colin speaking Old English 

—John McWhorter Remnant

—Paul Bloom - Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil

—George Lakoff and Mark Johnson - Metaphors We Live By

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices