词汇大师-- 'House' or 'Home'?

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: using the Internet to help make sense of words that are closely related. RS: Like house and home, for example. Both describe a living situation. But house refers to the building,

词汇大师-- Advice Not 'Advices'

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: A listener, Akbar Gandi in Iran, is asking for an explanation of countable and uncountable nouns and the difference between a name and a noun. RS: English teacher Lida Baker has t

词汇大师-- A Classic Children's Story

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: Our theme is food, or more precisely, slang having to do with food. So we're dusting off a vintage WORDMASTER: a segment we did with our old friend, David Burke, better known as S

词汇大师-- A Busy Shopping Day for Sure

AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on WORDMASTER: With the national observance of Thanksgiving Day coming up this Thursday, we turn to a linguistic mystery about the day after, which traditionally opens the Christmas holiday shopping season in America

词汇大师-- 'Ms.' Has a Longer History

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: our language-hunting friend Ben Zimmer has been tracking the origin of the female title Ms., which, unlike Mrs. for a married woman and Miss for someone who's single, does not ind

词汇大师-- 'It's This or It's This'

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: more of our conversation with Kelly Maxwell, co-director of the Program on Intergroup Relations at the University of Michigan. The program centers on a class called Intergroup Dia

词汇大师-- To Catch On to Phrasal Verbs

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- English teacher Lida Baker joins us from Los Angeles to talk about phrasal verbs. RS: The first word is a verb. The second word, sometimes even a third, is usually a preposition

词汇大师-- Want to Learn Some Slang?

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: Slangman revisited. RS: A listener from Libya, Radwan Al-karash, sent us an e-mail earlier this month: I enjoy listening to your interviews with different people from different co

词汇大师-- the Right Language Means More Than Just the Wo

AA: I'm Avi Arditti, and this week on WORDMASTER: choosing the right language for advertising. The December issue of the Journal of Consumer Research contains a paper by Rohini Ahluwalia at the University of Minnesota and Aradhna Krishna at the Unive

词汇大师-- A Few Words About Politics

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: The election of 2008, in the words of 1828, the year Noah Webster published his epic American Dictionary of the English Language. We wanted to know how the man known as the foundi

词汇大师-- American Political Lingo

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: slang and idioms in American politics. RS: Slangman David Burke in Los Angeles told us a story about one candidate who had no problem with name recognition: DAVID BURKE: Once upon

词汇大师-- Would a Top Banana Run Around Like a Chicken

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: English teacher Nina Weinstein explains some common idioms in American English. She likes teaching idioms in categories to help her students remember them. NINA WEINSTEIN: Often w

词汇大师-- Think People Always Know

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: what do you call it when someone says one thing but means the opposite, trying to be funny or biting? RS: Are you being sarcastic? AA: Yes -- well, actually, no. I wasn't being sa

词汇大师-- Talking in Rhythm

AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on WORDMASTER: our guest is linguist Herb Stahlke to talk about rhythm in English speech. HERB STAHLKE: Learners of English really have to master the rhythms of English early, and the teaching has to be aimed at rhyt

词汇大师-- Words of 2007

ADAM PHILLIPS: Welcome to Wordmaster. I'm Adam Phillips sitting in for Avi Arditti and Roseanne Skirble. Today we look at some of the interesting English words that popped up in 2007. My guest today is author, editor and public radio host Grant Barre

词汇大师-- Wise Writing Instead of '-Wise'

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER, our guest is the author of a new book called On Words: Insight Into How Our Words Work -- and Don't. RS: Paula LaRocque has worked for many years as a writing instructor and newsp

词汇大师-- Writer Says Bias Against Sayers

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: our guest is writer Michael Erard, author of a new book called Um... MICHAEL ERARD: People who have studied speech patterns notice that there are really two groups of people: one

词汇大师-- How to Use Small Talk

AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on WORDMASTER: small talk. It's a topic we've discussed before, and some of you would like us to continue the conversation -- like Said, an English teacher in Egypt, and Thynn, a computer programmer from Burma, now h

词汇大师-- What Aphorists Have to Say

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: we continue our conversation with James Geary about his new book, Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists. An aphorism is a philosophical saying whose author is known. Two ye

词汇大师-- a Black Bird and a Blackbird

AA: I'm Avi Arditti. Rosanne Skirble is away, but joining me from Los Angeles is English teacher Lida Baker to explain our topic on Wordmaster this week. It's a feature of the language called compounding. LIDA BAKER: Compounding is when we take two w