Talkin' About Talk is a collection of fascinating insights into language:  a series of 52 little essays--conversational in tone, light and anecdotal in style--that encourage language study and invite listeners to look further into the subject of each essay.  The series, part of the 2005: The Year of Languages celebration, was co-sponsored by the College of Charleston (SC) and the National Museum of Language.  The material was written by a wide-ranging group of experts, including some of the most well-known linguists in America.  The architect and voice of Talkin' about Talk is Dr. Rick Rickerson, professor Emeritus at the College of Charleston.  Brief biographies of the authors can be found on the College of Charleston website:  www.cofc.edu/linguist. 

These segments have been made available gratis by the program host and narrator, Rick Rickerson.  Please send him an e-mail at erickerson@comcast.net indicating how you are using the material.  At least one school is broadcasting the segments for students through the school intercom system as part of their Year of Languages celebration.

Also, you may want to contact your local radio station about broadcasting the series.  If your radio station is interested, please contact Rick about providing a demo disk to the station. This includes campus radio stations as well as commercial or public radio. All you need to do is send the name of the station and, if possible, the name of someone to contact to Rick at erickerson@comcast.net.  Thanks for your support for this excellent endeavor!

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Sit back and relax and enjoy these programs with your students!

The following files are now available in MP3 format.  You will need an audio player such as RealPlayer or QuickTime, for example.

To download the files, RIGHT CLICK on "Listen" and choose "Save Target As" or the equivalent. After left-clicking on "Listen" please allow time for the file to open.
JANUARY
Program #1	Robert Rodman "What's special about language?"	Listen
Program #2	Paul Lewis "How many languages are there in the world?"	Listen
Program #3	Barry Hilton "What was the first language?"	Listen
Program #4	Allan Bomhard "Did all languages come from one source?"	Listen
FEBRUARY
Program #5	Marty Abbott/Steve Ackley "What is the Year of Languages?"	Listen
Program #6	John Algeo "Where Did English Come From?"	Listen
Program #7	Rick Rickerson "Whatever happened to Esperanto?"	Listen
Program #8	Orin Hargraves "Who owns English?"	Listen
MARCH
Program #9	Walt Wolfram "Do all Southerners have the same dialect?"	Listen
Program #10	Catherine Ingold  "Is there a language crisis in the US?"	Listen
Program #11	Nina Garrett "What does it take to learn a Second Language?"	Listen
Program #12	June Phillips "What's the History of Language Study in the US?"	Listen
Program #13	Gerald Lampe "Should we be learning Arabic?"	Listen
APRIL
Program #14	Leila Monaghan "Is sign language a universal language?"	Listen
Program #15	Walt Wolfram "Are dialects dying the the US?"	Listen
Program #16	John McWhorter  "Why Do Languages Change?"	Listen
Program #17	John Lipski "Is Pidgin English Just Bad English?"	Listen
MAY
Program #18	Nancy Nenno "Was German Almost the Language of America?"	Listen
Program #19	Roberta Golinkoff/Kathy Hirsh-Pasek "How Do Babies Learn Their Mother Tongue?"	Listen
Program #20	Katie Sprang "Can Monolingualism Be Cured?"	Listen
Program #21	Barry Hilton "Why is Chinese so hard to learn?"	Listen
JUNE
Program #22	Gladys Lipton "Should we teach languages in elementary school?"	Listen
Program #23	Peter T. Daniels "Where did writing come from?"	Listen
Program #24	Steven Weinberger "What Causes Foreign Accents?"	Listen
Program #25	Amelia Murdoch "How can you keep languages in a museum?"	Listen
Program #26	Marianne Mithun "How many Native American languages are there?"	Listen
JULY
Program #27	Ben Rifkin "Should we still be studying Russian?"	Listen
Program #28	Geoffrey K. Pullum "Does Language influence the way we think?"	Listen
Program #29	Erin McKean "How are dictionaries made?"	Listen
Program #30	Robyn Holman "What's Cajun and where did it come from?"	Listen
AUGUST
Program #31	Dennis Preston "Can you set standards for language?"	Listen
Program #32	Maria Carreira "What is the future of Spanish in the US?"	Listen
Program #33	G. Tucker Childs "Is it a dialect or a language?"	Listen
Program #34	Blaine Erickson "Is Japanese related to Chinese?"	Listen
SEPTEMBERSEPTEMBER
Program #35	Pardee Lowe Jr.  "Why are linguists interested in Icelandic?"	Listen
Program #36	Michael Erard "Why is language a National Security issue?"	Listen
Program #37	Donald Osborne "Is Swahili the language of Africa?"	Listen
Program #38	Robert Rodman "Is each person's language unique?"	Listen
Program #39	David Savignac  "How good is machine translation?"	Listen
OCTOBER
Program #40	Kevin Hendzel "What does it take to be an interpreter?"	Listen
Program #41	David Goldberg "Who speaks what languages in the U.S.?"	Listen
Program #42	Sheri Spaine Long "Why study abroad?"	Listen
Program #43	Dr. Michael Erard "What does language have to do with national security?"	Listen
NOVEMBER
Program #44	Dr. Michael Erard "How many languages is it possible for a person to speak?"	Listen
Program #45	Dr. Henk Haarmann "Is there such a thing as too much language learning?"	Listen
Program #46	Dora Johnson "What does it mean to be bilingual?"	Listen
Program #47	Chris Moseley "Why do languages die?"	Listen
DECEMBER
Program #48	Akira Yamamoto, Marcellino Berardo, Tracy Hirata-Edds, Mary Linn, Lizette Peter, and Kimiko Yamamoto "Can threatened or dying languages be revived?"	Listen
Program #49	Chris Moseley "Does anybody here speak Klingon?"	Listen
Program #50	Dr. Paul B. Garrett "Is language important enough to fight about?"	Listen
Program #51	Dr. Frederick Jackson "Can you make a living loving languages?"	Listen
Program #52	"What don't we know about language?"	Listen