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Do you have any words that you only use within your family? We asked this question on social media a while back and you had some great responses!
In this episode, we get enthusiastic about familects. Also written family-lects, this is the term linguists use for the unique vocabulary that develops among families and similar tightly-knit relationship groups. Many familect words are for household objects, especially the remote control, which has dozens of reported familect terms! Familect terms are meaningful to us because they often come from some sort of shared story, such as a childish mispronunciation that catches on, a language or dialect found at home but not much in the surrounding community, or an adaptation from an existing word or name to a new meaning.
Patrons can share their own familect words in the comments below!
Pre-order Gretchen's book and ask a question!
Because Internet, Gretchen's book about internet language, is out July 23rd and you can pre-order it now! If you like this podcast, you'll definitely like this book -- you can even listen to it as an audiobook read by Gretchen herself to get a maximally Lingthusiastic experience. (Here are Gretchen's tweets about recording the Because Internet audiobook.) Pre-orders are super helpful because they tell the publisher and booksellers that people are excited about linguistics and they should promote it more! Here are some photos from Gretchen of what the book is going to look like.
We're going to do a special Q&A bonus episode with a behind-the-scenes look at how the book came together, so get your hands on it as soon as it comes out and then send us your questions about internet linguistics or the book-writing process by emailing [email protected] by August 15th!
Listen to this bonus episode (and get access to 28 more bonus episodes in the archives) by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon!