A Word in Your Ear

A Word in Your Ear: Pub Names and Bar Chat 11.06.2024 24:09 ↓

From The Churchill Arms to Ye Old Fighting Cocks, there's a whole "alien" language associated with pub talk.

A Word in Your Ear: The Language of Music 28.05.2024 34:53 ↓

Music has the uncanny ability to be understood by anyone, anywhere. But why? And how did music develop its own kind of "language"?

A Word in Your Ear: Feminine and Gendered Language 21.05.2024 24:34 ↓

From ships and professions to family structures and pronouns, Roly Sussex navigates the complex web of gendered language.

A Word in Your Ear: Weather Words with Jenny Woodward 14.05.2024 23:09 ↓

Wind, clouds and rain... ABC's Roly Sussex discusses weather words alongside ABC TV Weather Presenter Jenny Woodward. 

A Word in Your Ear: Catchy Phrases 07.05.2024 23:34 ↓

Flat out like a lizard drinking! ABC's Roly Sussex discusses catchy phrases.

A Word In Your Ear: Phonetics and The Sounds of Language 30.04.2024 22:49 ↓

Lips, tongue, teeth and cheeks... ABC's Roly Sussex discusses the sounds of language.

A Word In Your Ear: The Anzac Legacy in Language 23.04.2024 23:48 ↓

Tell me a furphy... What is a brass razoo? ABC's Roly Sussex discusses language used during wartime.

A Word In Your Ear: New Words and The Yoghurt Debate 16.04.2024 27:20 ↓

Omnishambles? Yoghurt? ABC's Roly Sussex discusses new words and how to pronounce yoghurt.

A Word In Your Ear: Avoidance Language and Rhyming Slang 09.04.2024 18:51 ↓

A frog and toad for the road? ABC's Roly Sussex discusses avoidance language and rhyming slang.

A Word in Your Ear: Advertising Language 02.04.2024 20:54 ↓

Catchy slogans. Memorable jingles. ABC's Roly Sussex discusses advertising language and memorable catchphrases. 

A Word in Your Ear: Weather Words and Easter 26.03.2024 21:02 ↓

The Easter Bunny? It's raining cats and dogs? ABC's Roly Sussex discusses weather phrases and the origins of Easter.

A Word in Your Ear: Phrase Verbs and the Strange Origins of 'Get' 19.03.2024 28:47 ↓

Hang in there. Get over it. Put up with it. How did these peculiar and 'improper' phrases come to pervade the English language?

A Word in Your Ear: Sports Idioms 12.03.2024 25:18 ↓

Football or soccer? From kicking goals to putting the ball in their court, Roly Sussex discusses his favourite sports idioms.

A Word in Your Ear: Syllables and Full Stops 06.03.2024 22:31 ↓

White house? Mardi Gras? Roly Sussex discusses the muddling of syllables, and the changing face of the full stop.

A Word in Your Ear: Animal Words 28.02.2024 27:51 ↓

Catfishing? Dogfishing? And what about breadcrumbing? Roly unveils the surprising origins of animal-based words, and the unexpected impact those words have had on the language of dating.

A Word in Your Ear: Month Pronounciation 21.02.2024 24:08 ↓

Feb-RAR-y? Feb-RY? Feb-YOR-ary? How do you say February?

A Word in Your Ear: Love Language 14.02.2024 27:03 ↓

I love you. I adore you. I'm smitten. You drive me crazy. I need you. But why?

A Word in Your Ear: Stress & Emphasis 07.02.2024 27:02 ↓

Should you stress about stress in words? Roly Sussex explains the surprising origins for why we emphasise the things we do.

A Word in Your Ear: Pronunciation & Enunciation 31.01.2024 23:34 ↓

Kilometre or KILO-metre? Addicting or addictive? And should you drop the 't' in comfortable?

A Word in Your Ear: English spelling 24.01.2024 22:43 ↓

From utes to the quirks of the English language, Roly Sussex is here to answer all your linguistic questions.

A Word in Your Ear: Words of the Year 17.01.2024 25:49 ↓

From "authentic" to "Matildas", Roly Sussex returns with some of his favourite words of the past annum.

A Word in Your Ear: The World of Names 30.11.2023 24:12 ↓

What are the cultural origins of our names? What makes them more feminine or masculine? And when did middle names become a thing?

A Word in Your Ear: Advertising jingles 23.11.2023 23:44 ↓

From jingles about sun safety to songs about vegemite, Australia's advertising history is full of iconic earworms. But why were they so successful?

A Word in Your Ear: Insults 16.11.2023 22:06 ↓

Insults are hardly features of polite conversation, but some might say we've gotten a bit soft.

A Word in Your Ear: Capitals and Capitalisation 09.11.2023 25:51 ↓

How did we decide what should be capitalised, and what should be lowercase? And why do we capitalise 'I' but not 'me'?