Who invented the English language?

Summary

Summary of "Who Invented the English Language?" - But Why: A Podcast for Curious Kids

Release Date: August 8, 2025
Host: Jane Lindholm
Guest: Dr. Erica Brzozofsky, Sociolinguist and Host of PBS's Other Words*

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Introduction to Linguistics and Sociolinguistics

The episode begins with Jane Lindholm introducing the topic of language evolution and the vastness of the English vocabulary. Highlighting the dynamic nature of languages, Jane emphasizes how new words are continuously created while others fade away. To delve deeper into these concepts, Dr. Erica Brzozofsky, a sociolinguist, joins the discussion.

Notable Quote:
Jane Lindholm [00:54]: "Languages are described as living or alive because they change all the time."

Origins and Development of the English Language

Dr. Brzozofsky explains that English doesn't have a single inventor. Instead, it has evolved over thousands of years, transitioning through phases like Old English, Middle English, and finally, Modern English. Each phase significantly altered the language's structure and vocabulary.

Notable Quote:
Dr. Erica Brzozofsky [04:08]: "If you speak English, you can be an inventor of some parts of English."

Evolution of the English Alphabet

The discussion traces the English alphabet back to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, highlighting the transition to the Phoenician alphabet and eventually the Latin alphabet used today. Dr. Brzozofsky details how the alphabet adapted over time, including the addition of letters like 'U' and 'J' and the removal of others such as 'thorn' and 'eth.'

Notable Quote:
Dr. Erica Brzozofsky [04:23]: "The Alphabet has its origins, actually, in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics... which then developed into the Phoenician Alphabet."

Challenges of English Spelling

Jane and Dr. Brzozofsky delve into the complexities of English spelling. The inconsistent relationship between spelling and pronunciation is attributed to historical shifts like the Great Vowel Shift and the influence of the printing press, which locked in outdated spellings despite pronunciation changes.

Notable Quote:
Dr. Erica Brzozofsky [10:01]: "Words are spelled the way that they are because someone put them in a dictionary and claimed that is the correct way for them to be spelled."

Accents and Regional Variations

The episode explores why English accents vary both between countries and within regions of the same country. Factors include the linguistic backgrounds of speakers, geographical separation, and social interactions. Dr. Brzozofsky explains that our brains filter sounds based on the languages we grow up hearing, leading to distinct accents.

Notable Quote:
Dr. Erica Brzozofsky [15:26]: "Accents develop when there are separations between people... sometimes we'd end up with different names for the same things."

Silent Letters in English

Listeners inquire about the presence of silent letters in English words. Dr. Brzozofsky attributes many silent letters to historical pronunciation shifts and the standardization of spelling through dictionaries and printing practices. Examples include words like "knife" and "island."

Notable Quote:
Dr. Erica Brzozofsky [20:58]: "A lot of the silent letters are thanks to the great vowel shift... the printing press kind of helped lock in those outdated spellings."

Plural Forms and Exceptions

The conversation covers the formation of plurals in English, noting the regular addition of 's' or 'es' and the exceptions stemming from the language's diverse origins. Words borrowed from Latin and other languages often retain their original plural forms, adding to the complexity.

Notable Quote:
Dr. Erica Brzozofsky [25:43]: "But some words like radius and alumnus do get an 'I' at the end, and they are never said alumnuses or radiuses."

Language Evolution and Youth Influence

Dr. Brzozofsky encourages young listeners to embrace their role in language evolution. She highlights how new words and slang introduced by youth can naturally integrate into the language over time, emphasizing that language change is an organic process driven by its speakers.

Notable Quote:
Dr. Erica Brzozofsky [32:06]: "Language is always changing... you don't need to come up with things or try to make changes. They're gonna happen naturally."

Conclusion and Encouragement

Jane Lindholm wraps up the episode by inviting listeners to contribute their own invented words, fostering participation in the ongoing evolution of the English language. Dr. Brzozofsky commends the listeners for their curiosity and encourages them to continue exploring and shaping language.

Notable Quote:
Dr. Erica Brzozofsky [33:06]: "Keep it up. And I'm excited to see where you take it next... what innovations and cool, new, fun, weird, awesome things y'all come up with."

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This episode provides a comprehensive exploration of the English language's origins, its complex spelling system, regional accents, and the ongoing evolution influenced by its speakers. Dr. Erica Brzozofsky's insights offer young listeners a deeper appreciation of the dynamic nature of language and their role in its future development.

Transcript

[Vermont Public]

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[Jane Lindholm]

This is but why? A podcast for curious kids from Vermont Public, I'm Jane Lindholm. On this show, we take questions from curious kids just like you, and we find answers. I don't know about you, but I feel like I learn a new word all the time, even though I've been an English speaker my whole life. Some researchers estimate There are roughly 1 million words in the English language, so there's no way I will ever be able to know every single one of them. But it's a fun goal to have. Did you know new words get invented all the time? I bet there are words you use with your friends that didn't exist when the adults around you were growing up. And there are words our grandparents or great, great grandparents used that you may never even hear because they're no longer popular. Lots of people describe languages as living or alive. Now, they're not technically alive, but they seem kind of that way because they change all the time. Our guest for today's show is someone who studies words and how we use them. Dr. Erica Brzozofsky is a sociolinguist, and she hosts the PBS show Otherwords, all about words and sounds. When we started talking to Erica for this episode, I needed to ask her for a word definition before we even got into the interview because I wasn't sure exactly what a sociolinguist would does.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

So linguistics is the study of language, and sociolinguistics is the study of language related to who we are as people. So like where we're from or who we spend time with or even what other languages that we speak.

[Jane Lindholm]

Erica says there are lots of different ways to study languages and things to study within the field of linguistics. Some linguists are really interested in the sounds we make, and others study the meaning behind words. Some linguists specialize in languages that used to be spoken a long, long time ago. Erica says she decided to pursue sociolinguistics because she's interested in what's happening in the world around us here and now.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

I like talking to people. That's why I'm Here today, and it's cool to think about what's actually happening. So why is it that I speak differently than you? Based on any number of factors like where we're from or who we spend our most time with or things like that. Okay.

[Guest Host]

We have a lot of words questions and language questions from kids. So I'm gonna get out of the way and jump right in.

[Maya]

My name is Maya. I'm 8 years old, and I live in Fairfield, California. Who invented the English language? I'm west. I'm seven years old. I live in Arcadia, California. Where did the English Alphabet originally come from?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

So the English language doesn't just have one inventor the way that things like popsicles or earmuffs or trampolines do, which were all invented by kids, by the way. Whoa. Yeah. It developed over thousands and thousands of years. So what we're speaking right now is called modern English. But before that came Middle English and Old English, which didn't really sound like English that we speak today at all. I took an old English class, and it was like learning a completely new foreign language. But language is like. It's changing all the time. So I would say if you speak English, you can be an inventor of some parts of English.

[Guest Host]

Yeah. I don't think of this as modern English. I think of what we're doing as, like, super wicked cool English. No cap.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

And we're like, oh, cringe. Oh, no.

[Guest Host]

So where did the Alphabet that we use come from?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

So the Alphabet has its origins, actually, in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, which were. Those were pictures. So they would carve or draw pictures that might be, like, a jar that would talk about jars. Or there'd be some animal. There'd be that animal.

[Hugo]

Right.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

So Semitic workers In ancient Egypt, 4,000 years ago came up with an alphabetic script that was kind of adapted from hieroglyphics in order to write down their language. And that then developed into the Phoenician Alphabet, which is how we got the name Alphabet, which is from the first two letters. So aleph meant ox, and bet meant house. And it doesn't mean ox, house or house ox now, but that's where we get the letters from. And then the Phoenicians brought their Alphabet to Greece, and then it spread to Italy and inspired the Latin Alphabet. So English itself used to be written in a runic Alphabet called the Futhark until the 600s. Like, not 1600s, the 600s, when it became replaced by the Latin Alphabet. And then after some. There were some adjustments, like removing the letters thorn and eth, which were the th sounds. Th and th. Maybe you've seen stores called, like ye olde Candy Shoppie, that Y comes from the eth, so really it would have been pronounced the old candy shop.

[Guest Host]

Oh, really? So it wasn't ye olde, it was the old.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

Yeah, it sounds fun and cute now, but it comes from the eth. So they removed those letters and they added some new ones like U and J. So beforehand, voice and U were kind of V was used for both U and for V, and I was used for both J and for I. So now there's one of each. So we ended up with our 26 letter Alphabet.

[Guest Host]

And there are other languages that use the same Alphabet as English.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

Correct. So Spanish, for example, uses the same Alphabet, although they also have an N with a little tilde over it called an enye.

[Guest Host]

Right. And Welsh has a double L that's pronounced by blowing air through the edges of your mouth, which is very fun. So we have some different letters, even if we're using the same alphabets for some different languages.

[Jane Lindholm]

But then some languages use totally different.

[Guest Host]

Styles of writing and alphabets.

[Maya]

My name is Hugo. I come from Congress. I'm living in London. I'm six years old. Why are the words that we use now the words that we use now?

[Guest Host]

Why are the words we use now the words we use now? So nobody invented the English language. We can all be inventors.

[Hugo]

But why?

[Guest Host]

Why do we. How do we have the words that we all know how to say and share?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

That's a really good question. It's kind of hard to answer, but I have an idea. So words are really powerful. They can make us feel sad or happy, hurt or excited, bummed out or on top of the world.

[Hugo]

Right?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

And we get to choose what words we use, Right? They say, use your words. So through these choices that we make every day, we. With the words that we decide to speak or to write or to sign, we build friendships and connections with the world around us. And if you've ever heard a baby copy what a grownup says, you know that we like to repeat things. So the words that we use now are the ones that have been repeated over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. So some words have been lost to history and we don't even know what we don't even know. But the words you know and say now are what you've learned or been taught that's been passed down from someone else.

[Guest Host]

Where do the words we use now mostly come from? Do they Come from other languages or were they sort of invented by English speakers over time?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

Yes, both of those things. So a lot of the words in English were borrowed or from dozens of other languages. So many of them, like the word copy coffee, comes from Arabic, French influences. You have German influences. You have so many ones. And also we invent them. So when you're thinking of a lot of slang terms, they sometimes get invented by somebody. So, like the word okay, which may be one of the most common words or popular words in the world. I don't know. Lots of languages say okay is thought to come from a kind of a joke. It was in a newspaper in Boston, and it stood for all correct, but it was like O L L correct, K O R, E, C, T. Because they were trying to make a joke, and it kind of stuck. After there was a presidential candidate who was from. I think it was from, from the area of Kinderhook, and they called him Old Kinderhook and said old Kinderhook is okay. There was a whole thing about that becoming this big popular word. And now, a long time later, we use the word okay all the time.

[Jane Lindholm]

I had no idea, even though I really do say okay all the time. Also, just in case it wasn't clear because you're listening and not seeing things written out, all correct would be spelled A, L, L C O R R, E C T, not O L, L, K O R R E C T. So the joke was that it's obviously not all correct if you can't even spell correct correct correctly.

[Maya]

Hi, my name is Hakeem. I live in Chicago, Illinois. I'm eight years old. Why do words spell the the way they are?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

Well, words in English are spelled all sorts of wonky different ways. Fun fact, the spelling bee is an English thing. They don't typically have spelling bees in other languages because their languages are not spelled so wonky the way that ours is.

[Jane Lindholm]

Do you know what a spelling bee is? It's a competition where someone says a word and you have to spell it correctly without being able to look at it. We did an episode a while back with a national spelling bee competitor. We'll link to it in our show notes today. But if you speak a language where it's less confusing how things are spelled, there's not much need for a spelling bee competition.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

Exactly. Exactly. Sounded out right. But in English, it isn't quite so simple. So I think that this is kind of two questions in one. So words are spelled the way that they are because someone put them in a dictionary and claimed that is the correct way for them to be spelled. And we all just went along with that. So before we had reliable dictionaries, people spelled things any which way that felt right to them, and maybe even spelled the same word different ways every time they wrote it. There was no right way to write it. But now spellings have been standardized, thanks to the dictionary. But I think this question is also asking how did we get things to be the way that they are? If you ask me, I think English spelling is kind of a mess, and it's been that way from the very beginning. So to explain that, we'll kind of need a mini Alphabet history lesson. So Old English, as we mentioned earlier, was a Germanic language spoken by Anglo Saxons in what is now England. And like I said, it's not anything like the English we speak today in the 21st century. So old English, some people say, some experts say it was spoken, let's say, in the 400s to the 1100s, and they used the runic Alphabet known as the futhark. So in the 600s, the Latin missionaries came in and replaced the futhark with the Latin Alphabet. But the Latin Alphabet wasn't designed for a Germanic language, and there were sounds that Anglo Saxons used that didn't exist in Latin. So they had to improvise. And things got even more complicated when the French invaded English in 1066 and changed a lot of English spelling to make it more familiar for their French readers. So English spelling was a jumble of Germanic, Latin, and French rules. And then came the Great Vowel Shift, where lots of pronunciations changed. So, like, the oo sound became ow, so whose and hound became house and hound.

[Jane Lindholm]

Historians are not sure exactly why or how the Great Vowel Shift happened, but. But it happened gradually between the years of 1400 and 1700, so it took many, many generations of people. It wasn't like your adult said to you, could you please get the hoond into the hoose?

[Guest Host]

And you were like, huh?

[Jane Lindholm]

What are you talking about? I can't even understand you. Do you mean get the hound into the house Hound? Or hound being a kind of dog, by the way.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

And then there's even more. The printing press came about right in the middle of all these pronunciation changes. So printers would spell things as they saw fit, adding extra letters or changing spelling so that the words would reflect their history. So, for example, the word dumb ends with a B, which you can't really hear. So some printers started mistakenly adding a B to the end of words like crumb and numb, which is an error that we call hypercorrection. So it's, like, more than correct. It's so correct that it's actually wrong. And words from Latin like sign and doubt had letters that were added in to remind readers where they came from. Signum and dubatare.

[Guest Host]

And then we still use that today, kind of, because it got put into dictionaries and into books by printing presses, which were pretty new. And why don't we just drop the dumb B from dumb?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

I think it makes a lot of sense to have things be spelled the way that they sound. But we are people of convention. We just stick with the things that we know. Apparently, when it comes to writing, it would be a big shift to change things for everybody across the world. So we're kind of. It seems stuck where we are.

[Maya]

My name is Ita, and I'm five years old, and I live in Germany. Why is English so hard to learn? Hi, my name is Isaac, and I'm nine years old, and I'm from Kamloops, B.C. why is the English language so complicated?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

English is difficult, I think, because there are so many exceptions to every single rule. Think of the spelling rule, like I before e except after C, or when sounded as a. As a neighbor and way. That's a lot of exceptions just for one little rule. And that doesn't even cover how you spell the word weird, Right?

[Jane Lindholm]

Right.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

So it's complicated because English is not just invented by one person.

[Hugo]

Right.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

It's like. Like a rubber band ball. So, like, as you add rubber bands to the ball, it gets bigger and more colorful and the stripes overlap and it gets a little disorganized looking. So, similarly, English, over the years, we borrowed words and grammar and expressions from lots of different languages and ended up with this mishmash that we speak today.

[Maya]

My name is Grayson. I live in St. Louis, Missouri. I'm nine years old. Why do different countries have different accents?

[Guest Host]

Why do different countries have different accents? And Jack in Ireland notes, you know, even people in the same country but different parts of the country can have different accents. So let's take English. But I think this is true in many languages. How can we speak the same language but have different accents and different ways we pronounce words?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

Well, first things first, we all have accents, every single one of us. Some accents will make it clear we where you're from or what languages you speak or who your friends are. Even if everybody around you sounds pretty similar, you still have an accent. You just all have the same accent.

[Hugo]

Right?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

So to answer the question, if we're talking about someone, let's say, from a non English speaking country, speaking English and having a foreign accent. That's because the sounds that make up each language are different. So, for example, in Spanish, there are five vowels and there are five vowel sounds. A, E, I, O, U, which are A, E, I, O and U. In English, we have the same vowels, I, A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes y. But between 15 and 20 different ways of pronouncing those vowels, depending on where you're from. So when we're babies, we can hear all the different sounds that make up every language in the world. Hundreds of different sounds. So when we're babies, we can, we can hear all the differences, but we learn to focus on only the ones that are in the language that we are learning to speak. Because our brain doesn't have room or time for every single sound in every single language.

[Hugo]

Right?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

So if you only learned five vowel sounds growing up, you might have a tough time not only pronouncing a bunch of different sounds, more sounds than you're used to, but also hearing the difference between them. And now, accents within the same country or within the same general area or same language come from how you spend your time. Where do you live? Who do you spend time with? Usually, accents develop when there are separations between people. So maybe you live in the US and you say tomato, or you live in the UK or Australia, you say tomahto. There is a whole ocean of distance between those places. And there are lots of different social groups too, even in the same area who can develop different accents. Sometimes when you're talking with someone who has an accent that's really different from yours, you might even accidentally start copying their accent, and that is called speech accommodation. So you're accommodating towards what they sound like.

[Jane Lindholm]

We just talked about differences in pronunciation, like tomato and tomahto. But sometimes we have different words for the same thing depending on where we live, even though we speak the same language. You might throw things away in the trash can in the US but the rubbish bin in the uk or enjoy soccer in the United States, but find that it's called football elsewhere. We have an episode all about that too, by the way. Check out our show notes if you.

[Guest Host]

Want to hear it.

[Jane Lindholm]

Here's another example.

[Maya]

My name is Natalie, I'm 11 years old and I live in Rutherford, New Jersey. Why are some people in England that say biscuits while we say cookies?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

So for me, English biscuits and US cookies aren't exactly the same kind of thing. They are very similar I'd say, like the cookie part of an Oreo is a biscuit. So Oreos could be like a chocolate sandwich biscuit, but chocolate chip cookies, like fresh out of the oven, those are definitely not biscuits. So we say cookie because of the Dutch word kuki, meaning little cake. And there was a lot of Dutch influence in New Amsterdam, which is now New York, so that's where we got cookie from. Biscuit comes from the Latin bis and coctus, meaning twice cooked. So originally, biscuits were a really, really, really hard bread because they didn't go bad very easily. Soldiers would carry them around for a super long time, and they dip them in water or soup or whatever was around to soften them up. And it was a good source of fuel, but that's really about it. Probably didn't taste very good. The texture, it's not a snack that I'm excited about. Eventually, when sugar became more common, they started to get tastier. So in the middle of the day before lunch was invented, because it was invented at one point, people would have tea and biscuits to tide them over until supper. That's kind of the long answer. But the short answer to the question of why do we say different things in different places is because we have different, different influences around us. So, like how we got cookie from Dutch. It didn't used to be as easy to communicate with people far, far away. So sometimes we'd end up with different names for the same things.

[Jane Lindholm]

Okay, I think it's time for a little cookie break. Or should it be a biscuit break? Or if you're in Australia, a break for some bickies? When we come back, why do we have silent letters? And my favorite, if more than one tooth is teeth and more than one goose is geese, what do we call more than one mo. Niece.

[Guest Host]

Stay with us.

[Jane Lindholm]

This is. But why? I'm Jane Lindholm, and today we're talking with sociolinguist Erica Brzofsky, host of the PBS streaming show OtherWords. Before the break, we asked Erica, where did the English language come from in the first place? And why do we have accents? And why is spelling so confusing in the English language? Speaking of spelling, you know what makes spelling a word extra confusing?

[Guest Host]

Silent letters.

[Maya]

My name is Wesley, and I'm five years old and I live in Chicago. Why do words have silent letters? My name is Madeleine from Brisbane, Australia. I'm eight years old. Why do some words like knife have silent letters? My name is Annabelle. I'm eight years old and I live in Utah. Why does the word island have an S in it that is silent.

[Guest Host]

Wesley, Madleef and Annabel have all noticed that there are words in English with silent letters.

[Jane Lindholm]

What's the deal with silent letters?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

They are tricky. That's why we have those spelling bees.

[Hugo]

Right?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

So a lot of the silent letters are thanks to the great vowel shift, which happened hundreds and hundreds of years ago. So some words used to have two syllables, but with the shift, they lost their second half. So name and like became name and like we spell those with the e at the end. That kind of represents that. That's the silent E. Right. Other consonant sounds faded away as well. So dumb, like with a b sound became dumb without the B sound. Nykt and liked became night and light, knife and knight became knife and night. And some scholars wanted to update the spelling to match the new pronunciation. But the printing press kind of helped lock in those outdated spellings. And specifically the S in island. That's an example of hypercorrection, as we mentioned before. So the word isle, isle had the S added because it came from the Latin word insula, which has an S in it. But island is from the Old English island, island, I with a long bar over it, E, L, A, N, d. And people thought they were related, so they added the s. So why did.

[Guest Host]

We get rid of those sounds, though? Why don't we still say name? Why do we say name instead? I mean, I see how the letter just kind of stuck around, but why did we change the way we say it?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

Hmm. I don't know if I have an exact answer for that, but think of when you're speaking quickly, like, things fall away. You might drop a couple syllables or sounds here and there just because you're speaking quickly. Or maybe other words will get mixed in with there. So, for example, the word apron used to be napron. So you know how when you spell things that start with a vowel, you have to have an an in the article beforehand instead of just a, you have an. So it used to be a napron and now it's an apron or the word newt, like the salamander kind of creature. Used to be ute, and it was an ute, and now it's become a newt.

[Guest Host]

So a lot of the way we speak, it's just to make it easier for us when we're saying the words. Even if the spelling then becomes more complicated when we write it.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

Yes, exactly.

[Maya]

My name is Sydney. I'm 10. I live in Rutland, Vermont. Why? Some words sound like other words, like bear and bear.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

So words that sound the Same but are spelled differently are a type of homonym called a homophone. So we end up with homophones mostly through sound merging. So, for example, the words meet and meet. So m E e t used to be pronounced like mate, almost, and m e, a t was met, and now they're pronounced the exact same way. Just meet. And f o, u r used to rhyme with tour, and f o r e used to be two syllables, so fore. And now they're both pronounced for so. Homophones can also occur when words are borrowed into English from different origins. For example, the word tire, the sleepy version, has potential Germanic roots, while the wheel version comes from French.

[Guest Host]

Even though those in American English are spelled the same.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

Exactly. There's a y in the other.

[Guest Host]

Yeah. In British English, tire that you use on your car is T Y, R, e. Here's another tricky thing.

[Jane Lindholm]

In the English language, when words go from singular meaning 1 to plural meaning 2 or 3 or 5 or more, we generally add an s or an es to the end of the word, like cow becomes cows, fox becomes foxes, horse becomes horses. But of course, there are exceptions to this rule.

[Maya]

Hi, my name is Grace. I'm 10 years old. I live in Rocky Mountain House, Canada does everything that ends with us, like octopus or cactus could end with I like cacti or cactuses. I know about cactus and octopus, but I'm looking for, like, anything that has those things.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

So the answer is nope. In Latin, the US Words end in I, which gives us octopi. However, it is a Latinized version of the Greek word octopus, and we borrowed it into English. And generally, when we borrow words, which we do all the time, we make it plural as an English word. So in addition to octopi, we can also say octopuses as an acceptable form of the plural. Cacti can also be cactuses, even though it sounds more sometimes more like fancy to say cacti. Some words like radius and alumnus do get an I at the end, and they are never said alumnuses or radiuses. You know, radii and alumni.

[Hugo]

Right.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

But some words that end in us never dict to C and I. I've never heard of boni and campi, because those are actually bonuses. In campuses, there's always exceptions to every rule.

[Guest Host]

So if you're trying to figure out if you know a word and you don't know how to say many of them, how are you supposed to guess? If you don't know whether it's bonuses or boni or octopuses or octopi, how.

[Jane Lindholm]

Do you figure it Out.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

My rule of thumb if I don't know how to pluralize something in English is just to add the S sound at the end, because most words do end in s. And of course, sometimes it'll be like es, or maybe it sounds like a Z sound, but it's that general S or Z sound at the end of it. Like dog, dogs. Bonus bonuses. There may be times when you're less grammatically correct, but I think that's okay. It's okay to be creative with your language, too. So I'd err on the side of the adding the S sound at the end of all the words.

[Guest Host]

People will probably know what you're trying to say.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

They'll know what you're talking about. Yeah. And if they feel the need to correct you, that's okay, too.

[Jane Lindholm]

Speaking of plurals, my name is Oliver.

[Maya]

I'm 8 years old, and I live in North Carolina.

[Jane Lindholm]

Raleigh.

[Maya]

If two tooths is teeth, and if two goose is geese, then why is two moose not mees?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

That'd be kind of fun if they were meese. They're kind of big, though. I feel like meese sounds like a small thing instead of like a big, huge animal.

[Hugo]

Right.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

So the reason why is because tooth and goose are words with Germanic origins. So the word goose comes to us from Old English, where the plural of goose was geese. And that's because of some sound changes over time that led from gooseies to geesees to geese, which we say now. But anyway, the reason why we don't say mies is because the word moose doesn't have Germanic origins. It was borrowed into English sometime around the 1600s from a native American language in the Algonquin family, likely either Narragansett or Abenaki, which were spoken in what is now the northeastern region of the United States, New England. So the plurals are different because they have different origins.

[Guest Host]

So, Erika, is it actually helpful if you don't come from a family or a culture where you already speak multiple languages to learn some other languages so you can start to see how these words in English even come together?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

Absolutely. I think of being able to speak multiple languages as kind of a superpower. I. English is my primary language. It's the one that I'm the best at. But I've spent some time studying Mandarin and studying Spanish, and it's definitely helped me see the world in different ways. There's different ways of explaining things in different languages. Some languages have words that we don't have in English that describe certain feelings that we might really know. But don't have words for. Like there's a word kochi sabishi in Japanese. And it's like when your mouth is bored, like you're eating because you're not really hungry, you're not eating because you're hungry, but you're eating because your mouth or your mouth is lonely, not bored. Your mouth is lonely and it needs something to occupy it. And there's tons of other words that kind of explain fun, interesting experiences that we have as people, but we just don't have one word for in English. So if you learn other languages, you get to know that you also get to experience more of the world. And sometimes it helps you with learning your primary language too.

[Maya]

Hi, my name is David. I am five and a half. I live in a thousand oaks. Why do 11 and 12 knot end in the word teens?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

Well, if they did, then we wouldn't be able to call 11 and 12 year olds preteens. But this seems like another two part question. So why is T E E N not part of those numbers? Which I do have an answer for. And then why did the people who came up with the number names do it that way? Which I have, I can make an educated guess for. So 11 and 12 come from the Old English and leofan and twelf, which even further back were ain plus leif, so einleaf and twa leaf, which is one leaf and two leif. But scholars aren't exactly sure what leaf means. One theory, because we don't always know. Sometimes it's in the past and it's gone. One theory is that it means leftover. So like 1 left after 10 and 2 left after 10. So teen was just a form of 10. You know, you can see how they kind of sound alike. So like you say teen, teen, teen, teen, teen, teen, it might eventually get to 10. There was other variations too, but that was just one of them. So 13 and up were just 3 teen, 4 teen, 5 teen or 3 10. 4 10, 5 10.

[Hugo]

Right.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

But why were they different? Why weren't they like the ain lif toilet? Why wasn't it just three lif, four lif, Right. It's hard to know for sure. We don't have a for sure for sure answer. But back a long time ago, there wasn't much reason to talk about more than 10 of something. You have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, several, many. You just have a lot of things. So if it's more than the numbers that you count, it's just a lot.

[Hugo]

Right?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

But most of us have 10 fingers right. So it's easy to count to 10 on your fingers and maybe your toes, if you prefer that. But sometimes you need just a little bit more than the ones on your finger. So you would say, ah, a little more than 1011 Einliff or 12 Twalif. And we got so used to that. So even when we needed to count up to 310 and 410 and 5 10, the pronunciation of 11 and 12 stuck. Huh.

[Guest Host]

But we're not sure about that.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

We're not sure exactly why 3 10, 4 10, 510 is exactly that way. But the guess is that we or why 110 and 210 didn't end up. It's probably because they were like that before, and we just stuck with what we knew.

[Guest Host]

So do you think if suddenly all the kids listening today decided together we're gonna change it, and we're gonna start calling 11 one teen, and we're gonna start calling 12 two teen, and so it's like, how old are you? I'm two teen, and next year I'll be 13. Do you think we could change the English language?

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

Absolutely. It would take a long time, perhaps, or like a big amount of kids deciding to do this, but it could definitely happen because language is always changing. You might even notice it when you hear some slang that you're like, so over at this point. Like, if I try to use any Gen Alpha slang, they're like, I'm just gonna sound super Ohio, right? Oh, it's so embarrassing. So all of our listeners here get to decide what happens next, where our language is going. You don't need to come up with things or try to make changes. They're gonn happen naturally. But if you wanted to make one teen and two teen be the next cool thing, by all means, absolutely do it, and we'll see if it actually sticks.

[Jane Lindholm]

The truth is, every single day, new words get invented. For those of us listening who are adults, that means we sometimes get confused when you kids tell us something using a slang word you and your friends use. But on the flip side, the really.

[Guest Host]

Cool thing is you.

[Jane Lindholm]

You kids are the ones at the forefront of language change.

[Dr. Erica Brzozofsky]

Y' all are the ones who are doing the big things. So I'd say keep it up. And I'm excited to see where you take it next. Like what innovations and cool, new, fun, weird, awesome things y' all come up with.

[Jane Lindholm]

If you were to invent a new word, what would it be? I'd like to invent a word that describes the feeling when you love something or someone so much that you wish you could just squeeze wish yourself together with them and become one being. Like how two water droplets pushed together blob into one big water droplet. What would the word be for that? Send us a video of what word you would invent and what it would mean and we'll put it on our Instagram page. Thanks to sociolinguist Dr. Erica Brzozofsky for answering so many of our questions today. If you found this episode fascinating, you should check out the show she hosts on PBS called Other Words. Otherwords investigates fun, interesting and sometimes totally strange things about language. You can find it on YouTube [e-mail] we'll link to it in our show.

[Guest Host]

Notes for this episode as well.

[Jane Lindholm]

As always, if you have a question about anything, have an adult record you asking it on a smartphone using an app like Voice Memos. Then have them email the file to questionsoutwhykids.org but why is produced by Melody Beaudet, Sarah Bake and me, Jane Lindholm at Vermont Public and distributed by prx. Our video producer is Joey Palumbo and our theme music is by Luke Reynolds. If you like our show, please have your adults help you give us a thumbs up or a review on whatever podcast platform you use to listen to us. It helps other kids and families find us. We'll be back in two weeks with an awesome new episode. Until then, stay curious.

[Maya]

From PRX.