Speaker 1: Hello, Puzzlers, Welcome to the Puzzler Podcast the group hug.
Speaker 1: At the end of your very special puzzle episode, I
Speaker 1: am your host, AJ Jacobs, and today's guest is the
Speaker 1: wonderful Erica Okrant. She's a linguist, journalist and author of
Speaker 1: Highly Irregular, Why Tough Through, and Doe Don't Rhyme, and
Speaker 1: other odyssees of the English language. Welcome Erica, great to
Speaker 1: be here.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: So, Erica. This puzzle today is inspired by a book
Speaker 1: that you wrote before, Highly Irregular, called In the Land
Speaker 1: of Invented Languages, which received a rave review in The
Speaker 1: Washington Post from author AJ Jacobs.
Speaker 2: I that is great.
Speaker 1: I read it and I loved it, and it was
Speaker 1: it was so fun. And it is about all sorts
Speaker 1: of languages, including Esperanto and oh you talk about a
Speaker 1: cling on insult. You talk you learned cling on? So
Speaker 1: which is I believe something like your mother has a
Speaker 1: smooth forehead?
Speaker 2: Yeah, watch it. Watch what you're saying there. I know
Speaker 2: that one.
Speaker 1: Well, do you remember how to say it in klingon?
Speaker 2: Coub in your head? I don't remember the rest of it.
Speaker 1: There were so many cub something like that.
Speaker 2: It will come to me.
Speaker 1: I'm insulted. Well, I also remember that Esperanto, the the
Speaker 1: language meant to unite the world, split up into several
Speaker 1: warring sects of different types of Esperanto, which always made
Speaker 1: me sad. But maybe a commentary on human.
Speaker 2: Behavior most most utopian movements do that.
Speaker 1: Oh so crushing. But a wonderful book and the inspiration
Speaker 1: for this puzzle, which was not written by me, but
Speaker 1: was written by our chief puzzle Officer, Greg Pliska, who
Speaker 1: has come up from the puzzle lamp to give you
Speaker 1: this special treat.
Speaker 3: Welcome Greg, Thank you. Aj I always like being let
Speaker 3: out of the lab once in a while. And Erica,
Speaker 3: thanks for doing this with us. I realized you two
Speaker 3: also have in common that you both have been speakers
Speaker 3: at the Wonderful World of Words weekend at Mowonk Mountain House.
Speaker 2: It is wonderful.
Speaker 3: It has written some of my favorite books, including Land
Speaker 3: of Invented Languages. All that aside, I have to admit
Speaker 3: this puzzle is not about any actual languages, natural or invented,
Speaker 3: but instead we're playing with one of the suffixes that
Speaker 3: is often used to form the names of languages. Ish okay, right,
Speaker 3: it's like English and Irish and span and so on.
Speaker 2: For some reason, when you said that, I thought of
Speaker 2: something I had heard once about ferbie Ish, the language
Speaker 2: of the furbies.
Speaker 3: That was the first.
Speaker 2: So the first one that came to my mind with ish.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Why furbish, and if you did it again, you would
Speaker 3: be refurbish.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 3: Well, in this game, each answer is a word that
Speaker 3: ends with ish. I'll give you a clue to that
Speaker 3: word and a clue to the fake or invented language
Speaker 3: that sounds the same. So for example, it's a word
Speaker 3: that means to hold deer, or it's the language of
Speaker 3: the seats at a table.
Speaker 2: Ooh, okay, okay, I get it to hold deer, and
Speaker 2: the seats at a table are chairs, so chaer ish. Okay.
Speaker 2: I was trying to think of a nationality, and that's
Speaker 2: not what you're doing here, exactly.
Speaker 3: None of the languages they're totally invented as languages of
Speaker 3: things like chairs. So they would speak cherish, which is
Speaker 3: also sounds just like the word to cherish. So that's
Speaker 3: an example.
Speaker 2: So Furbish will not be in here. I didn't give
Speaker 2: anything away with that, okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, furbish will not appear in this puzzle. No, no
Speaker 3: actual languages have been harmed in the making of this puzzle,
Speaker 3: except perhaps English has been slaughtered slightly. But here we go.
Speaker 3: All right, your first one, it's garbage, or it's a
Speaker 3: language spoken in massage parlors.
Speaker 2: Okay, trash, garbage, massage parlors. Oh, it is rubbish.
Speaker 3: Rubbish, rubbish, exactly, the language spoken in the massage parlor.
Speaker 3: All right, here's another one. It's easily frightened. Or it's
Speaker 3: the language spoken during sketches on SNL.
Speaker 2: Okay, there's a lot of stuff going on here. Easily frightened, scared,
Speaker 2: a timid oof. Okay, let me switch over to this.
Speaker 3: It's another word for a sketch like you would have
Speaker 3: on Saturday Night last.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's helpful.
Speaker 3: Skittish, skittish, skittish, exactly language spoken earing sketches on SNL.
Speaker 1: By the way, I once wrote an article about SNL
Speaker 1: and they got angry at me for using the word
Speaker 1: skit because skit has a negative like a high school production.
Speaker 3: So fair point. I retracted the clue spoken during sketches
Speaker 3: in my high school daughter's.
Speaker 1: Sorry Lorn.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now, town he'll never be a guest on the show.
Speaker 3: All right, here's another one. It means slightly hungry. Or
Speaker 3: it's the language spoken by chickens getting food in the barnyard.
Speaker 2: Okay, it is. Oh, the chickens in the barnyard are pecking,
Speaker 2: so it's peckish.
Speaker 3: Pish exactly, actually said. It's a language spoken by actor
Speaker 3: Gregory Gregory, all right, it's what an interior decorator helps
Speaker 3: do to your home. Or it's a language spoken by
Speaker 3: spore producing plants.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the spore producing plants are mushrooms, fungus fungus ish.
Speaker 3: No, no, not those plants.
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, spores. Uh. Oh, you know this is I'm
Speaker 2: getting there in a very un conventional way. But Ferbyish
Speaker 2: is taking me to furnish very good.
Speaker 3: I can't how did I don't know how ferby you
Speaker 3: had interior decorator come and put Furbyish furbish.
Speaker 1: That's what I was thinking too, because I actually haven't
Speaker 1: seen it. So yeah, refurbished to Furbyish to furnish. I
Speaker 1: got you. I'm with you. There you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Instead of connecting it to my my vast network
Speaker 2: of vocabulary through my entire life, I'm connecting it to
Speaker 2: three minutes ago conversation, so that's.
Speaker 3: More immediate three minutes ago. All right, here's here's another one.
Speaker 3: It's what one does to wrongdoers. Or it's the language
Speaker 3: of the lowest form of comedy.
Speaker 2: Oh well this, Yeah, the language of the lowest form
Speaker 2: of comedy has got to be puns and it's punish.
Speaker 2: Punish said like this, this show should be more appreciative of.
Speaker 1: That's right, I know you we are. We are biting
Speaker 1: the hand that feeds us.
Speaker 3: There the whole puzzle is punish, right, I mean a
Speaker 3: very bleak nature.
Speaker 1: We put the lowest form of comedy in quotes, so
Speaker 1: you didn't see their quotes. But that's what some snobs
Speaker 1: might say.
Speaker 3: All right, one more for you. It's a word meaning
Speaker 3: put out a fire. Or it's the language spoken by
Speaker 3: Gordon Sumner when he gives up his stage name.
Speaker 2: That's funny because I got the word right away and
Speaker 2: I thought, oh, how are you possibly going to get
Speaker 2: to X Sting for extinguish? But you found a way.
Speaker 3: There we go.
Speaker 2: Congratulations.
Speaker 3: Sting gives up his stage name and starts speaking speaking extinguish.
Speaker 3: Nicely done, well done, Well done, you knock these right out.
Speaker 1: Erica, Where can we read more of your delightful work
Speaker 1: on the craziness of the English language?
Speaker 2: Well, highly Regular is out? I should all so mentioned.
Speaker 2: There is an audio book of Highly Irregular, and I
Speaker 2: am the audiobook presenter, So if you enjoy the way
Speaker 2: I'm talking and explaining things, you might enjoy listening to
Speaker 2: the book Highly Irregular, where I get to pronounce all
Speaker 2: these difficult things in there that they couldn't get anyone
Speaker 2: else to do because it would be too much.
Speaker 1: What was the hardest word you had to pronounce?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, there was a lot of old English and
Speaker 2: some Dutch words, stuff.
Speaker 1: Like that liket yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Those those old old English and Dutch words. Those can
Speaker 2: be hard. But also Latin, because a lot of Latin.
Speaker 2: You know, you've seen it in books a lot, but
Speaker 2: you never say it, and you have no idea that
Speaker 2: you've actually been pronouncing it in your head wrong this
Speaker 2: whole time.
Speaker 3: To be fair, there is no one a lot. We
Speaker 3: have no recordings of the Romans speaking Latin, so we
Speaker 3: don't know for sure, do we.
Speaker 2: True we don't, But there is a large academic enterprise
Speaker 2: devoted to figuring that out. And you do not want
Speaker 2: to cross those guys.
Speaker 1: That's right, we will not. Greg, do you have an
Speaker 1: extra credit?
Speaker 3: I do have an extra credit, and I'm gonna throw
Speaker 3: a little curveball to our listeners. This is not a
Speaker 3: word ending with ish. It's using another common language suffix,
Speaker 3: and I'm not even going to tell you which one,
Speaker 3: but you can probably guess. There's a very common suffix
Speaker 3: that makes up the name of many languages. And here's
Speaker 3: your clue. It's a soft cow's milk fromage, or it's
Speaker 3: a language spoken by people who are born feet first.
Speaker 1: Okay, I like it. I'm going to think on that,
Speaker 1: and in the meantime, puzzlers, please tune in next time
Speaker 1: to get the answer, and don't forget to tell your
Speaker 1: friends if you're enjoying the podcast, and we'll meet you
Speaker 1: here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Speaker 3: Hello, puzzlers, this is Greg pliska up from the Puzzle
Speaker 3: Lab with the extra credit answer. From our previous show,
Speaker 3: we played I rhymes with the great Erica okrant, in
Speaker 3: which each answer is a pair of words that look
Speaker 3: like they should rhyme, but they don't. And we gave
Speaker 3: you a double extra credit. One clue was actor Connery's Levi's,
Speaker 3: which of course are Sean's genes, and the other clue
Speaker 3: was misplaces red flowers for Valentine's Day, and that would
Speaker 3: be loses roses. We hope you didn't lose your roses
Speaker 3: while listening to the Puzzler podcast, and we hope you'll
Speaker 3: be back with us again for the next episode.