A review of the language podcast, Lexicon Valley.

I just gave five stars and a very positive iTunes review to Slate's new weekly podcast Lexicon Valley. Lexicon Valley explores interesting and often timely questions about the quirks of the English language. The show has already covered some pretty piquant issues, such as Ebonics in public school curricula, the origin of the word fa***t as an epithet, and the reason you won't find the word "Jew" in the International Scrabble Dictionary even though it's still a playable word.

Lexicon Valley earned my top rating not only because I'm a language nerd, but because after an initial run of six episodes the Lexicon Valley producers are now conferring with the "poobahs" to determine the podcast's fate. They suggested that positive reviews on iTunes would weigh in their favor, and as it happens I wanted to give them a good review anyway. So everybody wins.

Go listen to an episode of Lexicon Valley. You don't even have to be a language nerd to enjoy it. Here is my review:

You may be surprised at how much you learn -- Lexicon Valley is a delightfully approachable podcast about the quirks of the English language. The hosts are so personable you may not at first realize that some of the language questions they tackle are pretty big ones (e.g. How much does the culture of the times influence what is considered grammatically correct? Is Ebonics an official dialect of English, and what does our answer to that say about us?). Mike Vuolo and Bob Garfield do not take themselves too seriously, and let's face it, that is easy to do when talking about language. The editing is refreshingly simple; for contrast I refer you to the almost oppressively mannered style of other intellectual shows like Radiolab. (No offense whatsoever intended to Radiolab, but I mean, really.)

I hope Lexicon Valley continues to broadcast far into the future, because English has a great many quirks to explore and I would like to hear Lexicon Valley's take on all of them.