This week's Lingua Franca was triggered by the words of the popsong, 'Unbreak my Heart'. The reknowned grammarian and former keyboard player in the soul group the Ram Jam Band, Geoff Pullum, uncovered the reversing 'un'-cryptotype while visiting Australia.

Kultur & Gesellschaft
Lingua Franca - Program podcast Folgen
Lingua Franca, presented by Maria Zijlstra, looks at all aspects of language: language old, modern, and even invented. Through interviews and prepared talks, the program features experts who analyse a single topic of interest to users and lovers of language. Examples of the sort of linguistic territory they traverse are: bi-lingual education, ebonics, the language of pornography, and the political use of words. Lingua Franca is published every Saturday.
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Folge vom 26.01.2013RN summer series, part 5: Why can't you un-hear this!
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Folge vom 19.01.2013RN summer series, part 4: Ulimaroa - a misnomer for AustraliaA number of maps made in north-eastern Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries featured the name 'Ulimaroa' for the continent of Australia. How that came about is a wonderfully complex story that has now been unravelled, and in which a pivotal part is played by Polynesian pigs.
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Folge vom 12.01.2013RN summer series, part 3: Elephants talk low downElephant communication consists of a much wider repertoire than previously known, with significant vocalisations expressed at such low frequencies they are inaudible to the human ear.
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Folge vom 05.01.2013RN summer series, part 2: The Space between Words...For most of the history of Western civilisation, reading was not a silent activity. Indeed, according to Professor Paul Saenger, Curator of Rare Books at the Newberry Library, Chicago, all the evidence indicates that silent reading really only became possible around the 7th century AD. What stopped silent reading before that, he says, was the lack of word separation in texts: the use of continuous script.