Allusionist 146. Survival: Today, Tomorrow part 1

November 24, 2021 The Allusionist

The Icelandic language has remained so stable over the centuries, speakers can read manuscripts from 900 years ago without too much trouble. And when they need a new word for more recent concepts, there are committees to coin one, so that the modern Icelandic lexicon includes such things as the internet, helicopters and mansplaining. Defending the language from the encroachment of English, however, is rather more challenging.

Allusionist 145. Parents

November 7, 2021 The Allusionist

When you're trans and pregnant, some of the vocabulary of pregnancy, birth and parenting might not fit you. In face, some of it might not even work for people of ANY gender. Trans parents Freddy McConnell and CJ talk about gender-additive language, inclusive for women and other genders, and about how in English law, the word 'mother' becomes semantically very complicated indeed.

Allusionist 144. Aro Ace

October 26, 2021 The Allusionist

The word 'asexual' has been used by humans describing themselves for several decades; 'aromantic' is newer. Both words enable people to voice identities that were unacknowledged for centuries, to find each other and build communities together, and to provide counternarratives to what the allosexuals are pushing.

Allusionist 143. Hedge Rider

October 13, 2021 The Allusionist

Today it's the etymologies you requested! And a few you didn't! We've got witches, wizards, warlocks; conjurers and cloves; wood shavings, nice gone nasty, and a whole lot more. Plus, a bold method of scaring away a ghost, if you must.

Allusionist 142. Zero

September 25, 2021 The Allusionist

Did any number cause as much trouble as zero? It stranded ships; it scrambles the brains of mathematicians, calendar users and computers; it even got itself banned in Florence. Math(s) communicator and drag queen Kyne explains the Terminator of numbers.

Allusionist 141. Food Quiz

September 10, 2021 The Allusionist

Quiz time! Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway of Home Cooking podcast join to deliver questions about food etymology, as well as what are the two words that make a dance track, and whether 'za' is an acceptable abbreviation for 'pizza'.

Play along and keep track of your score using the interactive scoresheet further down this post.

Stream the new live show!

September 5, 2021 The Allusionist

A new Allusionist live show has arrived! The first performance was yesterday, and I haven’t booked in other gigs yet*, so it might be the only performance, TBD.

Good news though: the show is still available thanks to the Kings Place player for a month! So you can watch it HERE until 4 October 2021. Get it, get it now!

And you should, because the show is packed full of entertainment, music and EPONYMS. We’ve got the Bechdel Test, uzis, the Thatcher Effect, pilates, Shirley Temples, saxophones AND saxtubas. Venn diagrams, the Myers-Briggs test, Morse Code, Veuve Cliquot and Uranus.

Allusionist 140. Num8er5

August 30, 2021 The Allusionist

We use verbal numbers and we use numerals - why do we need both? Why do we have the ones we have? What happened to Roman numerals? And what's loserish about the fiftieth Super Bowl?

Stephen Chrisomalis, professor of anthropology and linguistics and author of the book Reckonings: Numerals, Cognition and History, returns to the Allusionist to explain our current numbers, and why we shouldn't get too arrogant about them.

Tranquillusionist: 282 Salads

August 14, 2021 The Allusionist

This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, read all the salads from the 1950 recipe book 282 Ways of Making a Salad, with Favourite Recipes by British and American Personalities and Stars by Bebe Daniels and Jill Algood, with the purpose of giving your internal monologue a break by replacing it with some absolutely inconsequential words.

Allusionist 139. Ladybird Ladybug

July 12, 2021 The Allusionist

They're not ladies and they're not birds; they're not even technically bugs! But that's not the most surprising thing about ladybirds/ladybugs and their brilliant variety of names.

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TL;DR version:

For the show's financial survival (hopefully), over the next few weeks I'm having to switch on programmatic advertisements. This means, for the first time in the show's nearly 12-year existence, you may be subjected to ads that are not voiced, scripted and individually approved by me.
If you would prefer to listen to the show without ads in it, patreonise the show at the Gravy, Wedge or Check tiers, which include the perk of an ad-free RSS feed.

Click through to read the rest of the post about why I’m doing this thing I don’t want to do.

Allusionist 231. Lingthusionist

“Linguistics and language is such a good mechanism for being curious,” says Lauren Gawne, linguistics prof, author of the book Gesture, and cohost of the podcast Lingthusiasm. I'm in vacation mode (although not on actual vacation alas), so today's episode is a fun chat with our nice pal about making language podcasts, the firey digestive punishments for linguistics researchers, working in reality television, and cute tame nouns versus scary intimidating verbs.

Allusionist 230. Draculae part 4: Transformation

Throughout the Draculae miniseries, about the Swedish and Icelandic translations of Dracula that played fast and loose with the original text, I've been wondering a couple of questions: why are cover versions of songs and remakes of films so normal and acceptable, whereas cover versions in book form cause such a stir? And do these Scandinavian Draculae count as fan fiction? And if not, why not? Fansplaining.com's Elizabeth Minkel explains what fan fiction can mean.

Allusionist 229. Draculae part 3: Hunting Down the Count

Many mysteries accompany the revelations that Powers of Darkness, the Icelandic and Swedish versions of Dracula, are not direct translations of Bram Stoker's original, but stories that significantly differ in character names, plot and runtime. Like: did Bram Stoker write it himself, to publish some raunchy content that British censors would forbid? Was Powers of Darkness based on his early drafts? And did he really not copyright Dracula in the USA was that a deliberate ruse? Welllll... brace yourself for ole thrill-destroyer Zaltzman to pop your balloons of excitement.

queer playlist

Allusionist 228. Draculae part 2: Surprises in the Vaults

Happy World Dracula Day to all who celebrate!

This is the second episode of the Draculae miniseries, about a literary mystery which came to me via a meme: “Someone translated Dracula into Icelandic, and it took over 100 years for anyone to point out he just made a fanfic rewrite of what he wanted the story to be.”

In Draculae part 2, Ásgeir Jónsson explains how he got that Icelandic adaptation of Dracula back into print, to little fanfare - but then Dutch scholar Hans Corneel de Roos set about making an English translation. Following that: like me, Will Trimble also got meme-struck, and that propelled him to get a translation of the Swedish version that begat the Icelandic one.

Before listening to this, check out the first episode of the Draculae miniseries explaining the three versions of Dracula: Dracula published by Bram Stoker in 1897; the Icelandic version Makt Myrkranna by newspaper editor Valdimar Ásmundsson, serialised in his newspaper Fyallkonan in 1900-1901; and the Swedish version Mörkrets makter by an author known only as A—e, and serialised in a couple of Swedish newspapers 1899-1900.

Allusionist 227. Draculae part 1: Enter the Castle

A literary mystery came to me via a meme.

Allusionist 226. Suburbia

"The word ‘suburbia’ sort of evokes a very fixed idea of a place that is identikit, that all suburbs are the same, that within the suburb everything is the same, that all people are the same, all experiences are the same," says social historian and author John Grindrod. "I think it has this kind of flattening-out facility, that word, that isn't true."

Allusionist 225. Hues

You know what's an absolutely pesky kind of word to define in a dictionary? Colour names. A passel of lexicographers spent years - decades, even - trying different ways to describe colours in words for Webster's Third International Dictionary. It was such a huge, complicated effort that it took twelve years for former Merriam-Webster lexicographer Kory Stamper to write a book about it.

Allusionist 224. Cosmic Hairball

Pack your oxygen tank, we're going up to space. There’s a lot of etymology up there.

Allusionist 223. Bonus 2025

Allusionist 222. A Christmas Carol

Today, we read the novelisation of The Muppet Christmas Carol, also known as the 1843 festive lit hit A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Allusionist 221. Scribe

"I have never felt so naked. That's how exposed I felt at the idea that my handwriting was going to be seen by the world," says Tim Brookes, founder of the Endangered Alphabets Project and author of the new book about handwriting By Hand: Can the Art of Writing Be Saved? Writing the book (yes, by hand!) celebrates the act of handwriting, even overcoming the shame arising from his own.

Allusionist 220. Disobedience

“The more we look into social structures, the more many of us realize we don't fit into them," says So Mayer, author of the new book Bad Language, "So each phrase or set of vocabulary is another piece of that dismantlement.” We discuss finding vocabulary for oneself, coming out as a speech act, growing up under Section 28, busting through oppression and shame, and joyous listening.

Allusionist 219. Making Trouble

A change of scene for one episode: recently the brilliant poet and performer Molly Naylor interviewed me for her podcast Making Trouble, about creativity, and she kindly let me run a version of that episode here for you. We're talking about ideas, but also long-term creative careers, mortality, podcasting, external validation, and Molly offers some great prompts for either sparking ideas or making a dinner conversation a bit more lively.