A Word in Your Ear
Emeritus Professor Roly Sussex from the University of Queensland discusses the wonderful and odd aspects of English and many other languages.
ABC
Show overview
A Word in Your Ear has been publishing since 2019, and across the 7 years since has built a catalogue of 258 episodes. That works out to roughly 100 hours of audio in total. Releases follow a fortnightly cadence.
Episodes typically run twenty to thirty-five minutes — most land between 22 min and 27 min — and the run-time is fairly consistent across the catalogue. None of the episodes are flagged explicit by the publisher. It is catalogued as a EN-language Society & Culture show.
The show is actively publishing — the most recent episode landed 3 weeks ago, with 10 episodes already out so far this year. Published by ABC.
From the publisher
Emeritus Professor Roly Sussex from the University of Queensland discusses the wonderful and odd aspects of English and many other languages.
Latest Episodes
View all 258 episodesA Word In Your Ear: Soccer It To Me!
A Word In Your Ear: Creative Language
A Word In Your Ear: Do the Rules of School Still Apply
A Word in Your Ear: May Free For All
A Word In Your Ear: The Language of Booze
A Word In Your Ear: Clothes and Fashion
A Word In Your Ear: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Accents
A Word In Your Ear: LOL with Acronyms and Initialisations
A Word In Your Ear: Prison Slang
A Word In Your Ear: What Words Can You Do Without?
A Word in Your Ear: Christmas Language
Professor Roly Sussex explains the phrases of the festive season.
A Word in Your Ear: Politeness
What does it mean to be polite, and has that changed in recent years?
A Word in Your Ear: Pronunciations
Professor Roly Sussex clarifies some common pronunciation problems and why different places have differing ways of saying the same thing.
A Word in Your Ear: Neologisms
Everyone loves a fresh turn of phrase, a new saying or an untested expression. These newly coined phrases are called neologisms.
A Word in Your Ear: Broken Rules
It might shock you, but Professor Roly Sussex says some language rules are made to be broken.
A Word in Your Ear: CB Radio Slang
From "10-4" to "hammer down", Professor Roly Sussex unlocks the secret language of the roads.
A Word in Your Ear: French Influences
Professor Roly Sussex takes us on a journey through history and language to explore France's lasting influence on the English vocabulary.
A Word in Your Ear: Words of the Kitchen
Have you ever thought about why we call the objects in our kitchen whatever we call them?
A Word in Your Ear: Female Phrasing
Professor Roly Sussex unpacks the different ways women communicate, and how these contrasts emerged.
A Word in Your Ear: Analysing the Alphabet
Professor Roly Sussex discusses the origins and uses of our 26 letters, and explains why we don't use a phonetic alphabet.