Interview on WNYC’s “The Leonard Lopate Show” about the worst words of the year. (Dec. 22, 2010)
Ben Zimmer, New York Times magazine’s “On Language” columnist and executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus, discusses the worst words of 2010—from “enhanced pat down” to “anchor baby” to “mama grizzly.” We’ll be speaking with listeners about the words they hope disappear with the year’s end.
(Show page, streaming audio, download, related Word Routes column)
Interview on WNYC’s “The Brian Lehrer Show” about Google’s new Ngram Viewer and “culturomics” (Dec. 21, 2010)
Ben Zimmer, writer of the New York Times Magazine “On Language” column, plays with Google’s new Ngram linguistic search tool and looks through lists of comparisons.
Interview on WABC’s “The John Batchelor Show” about the significant words of 2010. (Dec. 17, 2010)
(Show page, audio, related Word Routes column. Segment begins at about 10 minutes in the podcast.)
Interview on WCBS Newsradio about notable words of 2010 (Dec. 17, 2010).
Debra Kamin, “Telling the Life Stories of Words” (University of Chicago News Office, Dec. 6, 2010)
Getting people excited about the inner lives of words is the distinctive mission for a trio of University alumni who have become ambassadors of lexicography. Harnessing their Chicago educations in linguistics and English, the three “wordinistas” are putting a public face on modern language studies.
A passion for word usage and dictionaries animates all three—Jesse Sheidlower, AB’89, Ben Zimmer, AM’98, and Erin McKean, AB’93, AM’93. All of them are helping to shape perceptions about the importance of language, each with a slightly different bent.
For Zimmer, who writes the “On Language” column for the New York Times Magazine, understanding a word means delving into its biography. He likens his work to that of an investigative reporter, unearthing stories that a broad audience would find engaging.
Read the rest here.
Interview on “At Issue with Ben Merens” (Wisconsin Public Radio) on the notable words of 2010.
They define, in part, how the year is remembered. After five, join Ben Merens and his guest in conversation about the New Words of 2010. What new words have you heard… and used… this year? Guest: Ben Zimmer, Executive Producer, The Visual Thesaurus. Editor, Online magazine. “On Language” columnist, NY Times Magazine.
(Show page, streaming audio, download, related Word Routes column)
Interview on WCBS Newsradio about the difference between “scratch paper” and “scrap paper.” (Dec. 3, 2010).
Interview on WNYC’s “The Brian Lehrer Show” about President Obama’s use of the Indonesian language. (Nov. 12, 2010)
Ben Zimmer, On Language columnist for The New York Times, follows up on President Obama’s knowledge of Bahasa, Indonesia’s language, with a discussion of other presidents’ second languages.
(Show page, streaming audio, download, related Language Log post)
Interview on WNYC’s “The Takeaway” about the 20th anniversary of the “World Wide Web.” (Nov. 12, 2010)
The “World Wide Web” has become the central way most people interact with (and describe) the network of text and media on the internet. Twenty years ago today it was a temporary name given by British computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee to an information management project he was working on. Ben Zimmer, linguist, lexicographer and “On Language” columnist for our partner, The New York Times Magazine, joins us to discuss how language describing the Web has evolved over the last two decades.
(Show page, streaming audio, download, related On Language column)
James Fallows, “American Bigshots Doing the Country Proud Overseas” (The Atlantic, Nov. 11, 2010)
Barack Obama, at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, making a speech about democracy in Indonesia, and a reprise on last year’s appeal to Islam — but also daring to talk a little bit in the Bahasa Indonesia (“language of Indonesia”) he heard around him as a child. … For expert analysis of how Obama handles the language, see Ben Zimmer at Language Log, here.
Read the rest here.