Exhaling Words

Welcome to Pride 2021!

This year for Pride Month, I wanted to do a series of episodes dedicated to my community, the LGBTQIA+ community, aka the Queer Community. In this third part, I sit down with @…

Welcome to Pride 2021!

This year for Pride Month, I wanted to do a series of episodes dedicated to my community, the LGBTQIA+ community, aka the Queer Community. In this second part, I talk about gra…

Welcome to Pride 2021!

This year for Pride Month, I wanted to do a series of episodes dedicated to my community, the LGBTQIA+ community, aka the Queer Community. In this first part, I talk about my j…

Some of the most common questions that I receive are: Should I study MSA or colloquial Arabic? Which dialect should I pick? Which should I learn first- MSA or colloquial? So join me in part 3 of this…

One of my favorite topics to discuss is Arabic diglossia and dialectology! So here is the second part in a multi-part series looking at Arabic dialects. In Part 2 I’m talking about the different dial…

One of my favorite topics to discuss is Arabic diglossia and dialectology! So here is the first part in a multi-part series looking at Arabic dialects. In Part 1 I’m talking about what it means to be…

We all joke about the Duolingo owl and its fake threats to remind you to study your target language daily. But what is the real value of Duolingo? Can you learn a language from the platform? Can it h…

One of my favorite topics to discuss, and something I get asked about a lot, is the influence of Arabic on the Persian language. This is the topic that first really got me into language contact, hist…

Something I often get asked about is the differences between the 3 major dialects of Persian: Iranian (Farsi), Afghan (Dari), and Tajik. This is a topic I’ve studied a lot, as a student/speaker of Da…

Something I often get asked about is the differences between the 3 major dialects of Persian: Iranian (Farsi), Afghan (Dari), and Tajik. This is a topic I’ve studied a lot, as a student/speaker of Da…

Passive listening is often used as an excuse or as a ploy to reel in learners; but it really has value when used properly. This week, I want to look at how passive listening can help us internalize a…

Language learning is hard on its own... but when we add to it the trauma that we can acquire through being beat down and unsupported by our teachers and peers, it becomes even harder. Sometimes previ…

Aspiration? Voicing? Ejectives? Beatboxing?! And Armenian?! This week I explore the difficulty of certain sounds for native English speakers and the idea that linguistics can be used to make language…

What makes a language difficult? How can we compared difficulty between languages? Should we even try to categorize languages by "difficulty?" This week, I want to explore the FSI (Foreign Service In…

Why do we study languages? Why motivates us? What demotivates us? And how do we know when that (de)motivation is at the tipping point? This week I explore the importance of desire and motivation in c…

The F Word? How dare we talk about FLUENCY on this podcast! Today, I want to briefly explore the world of language proficiency and fluency and problematize language proficiency tests, unbalanced lang…

What is an article? What does it do? Can articles do more than just define a noun? Could they possibly do the opposite of their surface meaning? Find out this week as I talk about the value and use o…

What words do we use to describes studying words? Today I want to talk about what is "linguistics," "historical linguistics," and philology," as these are terms that come up when I describe what I do…

What is the one thing you never as a lady? Her age! In this episode, I walk you through the diversity, and similarity, between the way a number of languages express age. Was your language not include…

The number one question Erin receives on the internet is to explain what languages she's studied, when, and how. So, in Episode 2, Erin attempts to condense 16 years of language-learning madness into…