AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: word order and the mind. A new study suggests that people naturally gesture in the order of subject-object-verb, regardless of the rules of their spoken language. Susan Goldin-Mea...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: expanding on reductions. When speakers compress a phrase like going to into gonna, or what do you into whaddaya, that's a reduction. We mentioned their importance when we talked l...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on WORDMASTER: our guest is linguist Herb Stahlke to talk about rhythm in English speech. HERB STAHLKE: Learners of English really have to master the rhythms of English early, and the teaching has to be aimed at rhyt...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: what do you call it when someone says one thing but means the opposite, trying to be funny or biting? RS: Are you being sarcastic? AA: Yes -- well, actually, no. I wasn't being sa...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: remembering a comedian who took a serious interest in language. George Carlin died of heart failure at a hospital in Santa Monica, California, on June twenty-second. RS: The stand...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: English teacher Nina Weinstein explains some common idioms in American English. She likes teaching idioms in categories to help her students remember them. NINA WEINSTEIN: Often w...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: more political terms. RS: New York Times language columnist William Safire is the editor of the newly updated Safire's Political Dictionary, and a former White House speechwriter....

AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on WORDMASTER: another in a series of chats from the recent TESOL, or Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, convention in New York. AZADEH LEONARD: My name is Azadeh Leonard and I teach English at the C...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on WORDMASTER: meet Safwan Abdulsalam Kadoora. He's the director of the English department at Karma. That's an English and French language center that opened in Damascus, Syria, in two thousand six. SAFWAN KADOORA: W...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on WORDMASTER: we're going to repeat a segment from two thousand two. It was an interview with an English professor who, after going blind, devoted his time to making the Internet more accessible. As it turned out, t...