Making Words

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Alphabet Juice
08.01.2010
 (was 10.18.2009)

There's something magical about making words. Ask any parent what their baby's first word was. Chances are they'll remember. Words are what set us apart from all the other animals. And they're endlessly fascinating. In this hour of To Best of Our Knowledge we'll meet a variety of people dedicated to the well-chosen word: from a woman who worked for thirty years with a grey parrot named Alex, to a linguist who's fluent in Klingon.

  1. Patricia O'Conner on the English Language

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    Patricia O'Conner tells Jim Fleming that what Americans think of as a British accent is a fairly recent development.

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  2. Roy Blount Jr. on "Alphabet Juice"

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    Roy Blount Jr. is a humorist, word maven and the author of "Alphabet Juice"...

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  3. Dan Everett on "Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes"

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    Dan Everett went to the Amazon as a young Christian missionary and became captivated by the Indian people he'd come to convert and their totally unknown language.

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  4. Arika Okrent on "In the Land of Invented Languages"

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    Arika Okrent is a linguist and the author of "In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Logian Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language."

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  5. Irene Pepperberg on "Alex and Me"

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    Irene Pepperberg teaches animal cognition at Harvard and is an associate research professor at Brandeis. For thirty years, she worked with a remarkable grey parrot named Alex.

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    Average: 5 (1 vote)