Journeying into gender with Words for Granted!

Hot on the heels on my previous podcast appearance, I joined Ray from the popular and long-running etymology podcast Words for Granted to talk about grammatical gender – what it is, why it exists, where it comes from and how English managed to completely lose it!

You can listen to the episode in full here:

The Proto-Indo-European Puzzle: Interview with Laura Spinney – Words for Granted – An etymology and linguistics podcast

In this episode, Ray chats with author Laura Spinney about Proto-Indo-European, the ancestral language of hundreds of modern languages spoken by billions today ranging from Western Europe to India. They explore how linguists reconstruct this unwritten language through comparative methods, what its vocabulary reveals about ancient society, and why its story remains relatively unknown despite its global importance. The conversation highlights the interdisciplinary nature of Indo-European studies—drawing on linguistics, archaeology, and especially recent breakthroughs in ancient DNA—which strongly support a migration of steppe pastoralists around 5,000 years ago as a key driver of language spread.  To buy Laura's excellent book Proto, click here.

1. The Proto-Indo-European Puzzle: Interview with Laura Spinney 50:17
2. The Science and History of English Accents: Interview with Valerie Fridland 46:20
3. The History of the Alphabet: Interview with Danny Bate 44:49
4. Lessons on Language with the Grammar Girl (Mignon Fogerty) 31:45
5. The Marvels of Translation: Interview with Keith Khan-Harris 37:50

The recording experience was a real pleasure; Ray is a natural host, and asked good questions that gave me the chance to explore some big ideas and even sound half knowledgeable while doing so. Gender is a massive topic and a syntactic phenomenon that I’m personally fascinated by. I’m keen also to share some of it positives and to potray it in a good light, since this might go some way to counteracting a little of the mental pain that it causes learners.

I hope you give the episode a listen and support the show. Any questions, do let me know!