Interviews from NerdCon Stories 2016

Our director Adele was at NerdCon: Stories in Minneapolis on October 14 and 15. She met a lot of cool authors and creators, and took the opportunity to interview some of them about their favourite words. They had some interesting choices to share!
Thanks to all the people who appeared in our video:
Paolo Bacigalupi, Writer: windupstories.com/
Rachel Kann, Poet: rachelkann.com/
Liz Andrews, Comic artist: frequentlyfall...
M.T. Anderson, Writer: mt-anderson.com/
Blue Delliquanti, Cartoonist: www.bluedelliqu...
If you liked this con report, you might also like our interviews from VidCon 2016: • Interviews from VidCon...
Or last year's NerdCon: • NerdCon Stories 2015: ...
Or maybe you are interested in other ways we use language, like for wordplay: • Wordplay
Or about actually how approach processing language: • How Do We Interpret Se...
And we'll be back next week with a regular episode! A regular Halloween episode, no less. ^_^
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And at our website, www.thelingspa... !
You can also check out our store: thelingspace.s...
We also have forums to discuss this episode, and linguistics more generally.
Looking forward to next week!

[@KathyTrithardt]

I made a bracelet with you two VidCon's ago (from rug scraps) and then was too awkward when I saw you on the Creator floor this year to say hi, so, hi!

[@thelingspace]

Aw, hi! It's great to hear from you (and I still have that bracelet). Feel free to come say hi any time if you see me at a thing in the future!

[@KathyTrithardt]

The Ling Space I still have mine, too :)

[@GregSanders]

I'm going to go with solidarity. I just looked it up and it has its origins in French and being bound together. So it is a straightforward term for making common cause, but I think in English it also has extra heft coming from its first two syllables.

[@qwertyTRiG]

With Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching, I'll say _sussuration_.

[@thelingspace]

That's a really good one. And that's like the one series of Discworld books I haven't yet really tried - I read Wee Free Men, but not the others. I'll get there some day, though!

[@qwertyTRiG]

Do. They're worth it.

[@Pining_for_the_fjords]

Some of my personal favourites: Soliloquy Scoliosis Innuendo Isthmus Dyslexia Plethora Verbose Cathartic Rhododendron And just about every word in Welsh and Icelandic.

[@thelingspace]

Yes, that was one of the best parts about our trip to Iceland - the language is just really cool. For English, I'd probably say "sphere", although I must admit that I'm rather ripping off my PhD supervisor on that one.

[@Pining_for_the_fjords]

The Ling Space Yes, sphere is a great word. There are far too few English words that begin with sph or sf. Having two word-initial fricatives is very rare in English. Usually English silences consonants in unusual word-initial consonant clusters, like in 'knee', 'psycho' or 'pneumonia', so I wonder why 'sphere' kept both the S and F sounds together. I'd be interested to know of other words that have rare phonological features.