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Is "R" a Vowel?

Season 3 Episode 2 | 6m 41s

There's a good argument that the letter R is, at least sometimes, not a consonant at all, but a vowel. Does that mean your 1st grade teacher was lying to you? Not exactly. R is an incredibly weird letter, with so many different sounds and functions, it's a wonder that we use one symbol to represent them all. And how people pronounce that one letter can speak volumes about their history and social

Aired: 02/22/23
Extras
We're gonna have to ask you to go ahead and watch this video. "
It's one of the most contentious debates in linguistics!
The ways we use negation in language can be pretty complex, even AI can’t seem to make sense of it.
Join us as we try to figure out how our body parts got their names.
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We already know that English borrows from everybody, but can it be considered a Creole language?
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The English language is chock full of sailing jargon but why is that?
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We're gonna have to ask you to go ahead and watch this video. "
It's one of the most contentious debates in linguistics!
The ways we use negation in language can be pretty complex, even AI can’t seem to make sense of it.
Join us as we try to figure out how our body parts got their names.
Children are sponges for language acquisition. Which leads us to ask the question: how much does TV
We already know that English borrows from everybody, but can it be considered a Creole language?
How do you teach children to read? This question is at the heart of a decades-long battle.
The English language is chock full of sailing jargon but why is that?