That's What They Say
Sunday at 9:35 AM
That's What They Say is a weekly segment on Michigan Radio that explores our changing language. Each week University of Michigan English Professor Anne Curzan will discuss why we say what we say with Michigan Radio Weekend Edition host Rebecca Kruth.
Latest Episodes
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In the age of the internet, if you don’t know the answer to something, you can just search it up online — even if your question is about the verb “search up.”
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If you prove something to be true, then it’s proven. Or is it proved?
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As language nerds are wont to do, they get curious about words like “wont” and its relationship with “want.”
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Geologically speaking, epicenters are dangerous places to be. They’ve also raised some usage questions which are probably less dangerous, though it may depend on who you ask.
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Given that we can be overwhelmed and underwhelmed, it's completely reasonable to ask what it means to just be whelmed.
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In the Commodores’ song “Three Times a Lady," it’s hard to imagine the lyrics being “once, twice, thrice a lady” rather than “once, twice, three times a lady.”
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When we fly, we’re in a pressurized cabin. When we’re trying to get someone to do something, some of us may pressurize them.
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When a magician performs the classic trick of sawing their assistant in half, what happens to the person inside the box? Were they "sawed" in half, or were they "sawn" in half?
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English spellings such as “knight” and “gnat” capture earlier pronunciations of these words. The same cannot be said of the peculiar assemblage of letters in “island.”
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Some of us learned that “the reason” and “because” shouldn’t be used in the same sentence. The reason this bothers some people is because it's redundant.