by Word For Word with Sophia Smith Galer
Word For Word is a podcast about storytellers and the languages that made them. Each episode, award-winning journalist and author Sophia Smith Galer sits down with writers, artists and creators to explore the words behind their work: the languages they grew up with, learned, lost and gained that formed their imagination and creative practice. New episodes weekly.
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
2/20/2026
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April 14, 2026
<p>Roy Bualuan - better known online as human1011 - grew up in Indiana with Lebanese Arabic, French and English in his life.</p><p>He studied physics at Notre Dame, picked up Modern Standard Arabic as a language requirement, and emerged from that first class with a surprise: the Arabic he'd grown up with and the Arabic he was now being taught were almost entirely different languages.</p><p>In this episode, Roy and Sophia get into the sociolinguistic patchwork of Lebanon - where French, English, and Arabic code-switch in the same sentence - as well as his linguistics explainers and OF COURSE the dragon language that he made up. Because why not?</p><p>Follow Roy under "human1011" all over the internet! </p><p>If you want to buy my book, How To Kill A Language, that's here: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9780008723729</p><p>This is a Viralect original podcast created by Sophia Smith Galer. This episode was filmed by Omar Mehtab, edited by Abraham Dein and Seren Jones was the Executive Producer. Head to www.viralect.com to find our services and tools, and if you've got an iPhone, search "Sophiana app" in the App Store and take advantage of your free month using the code WORDFORWORD.</p>
April 7, 2026
<p>Zing Tseng - journalist, author, and co-host of BBC's Good Bad Billionaire - grew up navigating Mandarin classes in Singapore, a Cantonese-speaking home, and the glorious linguistic chaos of Singlish. </p><p><br></p><p>In this episode, she and Sophia trace the languages that shaped her: from a teacher who told her "foreigners speak better Chinese than you do," to discovering, decades later, on a trip to her ancestral village in Xiamen, that she was far more fluent than she'd ever believed. </p><p><br></p><p>They get into why Singlish is a Creole (and why that matters), the colonial logic behind Singapore's "Speak Good English" campaigns, what billionaires and language learning have in common, and why ordering a coffee in textbook-perfect sentences will get you nowhere fast.</p><p><br></p><p>If you want to buy my book, How To Kill A Language, that's here: <a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9780008723729">https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9780008723729</a></p><p><br></p><p>If you want to buy Zing’s amazing book Forgotten Women, that’s here: <a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9781914240690">https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9781914240690</a> </p><p><br></p><p>This is a Viralect original podcast created by Sophia Smith Galer. This episode was filmed by Omar Mehtab, edited by Abraham Dein and Seren Jones was the Executive Producer. </p><p><br></p><p>Head to www.viralect.com to find our services and tools, and if you've got an iPhone, search "Sophiana app" in the App Store and take advantage of your free month using the code WORDFORWORD.</p>
March 31, 2026
<p>Dictionary Corner's secret weapon isn't English - it's German!In this episode of Word For Word, lexicographer, broadcaster and word detective Susie Dent joins Sophia Smith Galer at Casa Italiana in Clerkenwell to talk about the languages that made her - and made her one of the most trusted voices on the English language in Britain.Come for the etymology of "muscle" (hint: squeak squeak) — and stay for the revelation that diarrhoea and the River Rhine share the same root.Susie reflects on growing up defending her love of German to a grandmother who lived through the war, how a rainy afternoon at Oxford University Press and a dusty etymological dictionary changed the course of her career, and why she said no to Countdown - more than once. Susie's mystery thriller Guilty By Definition was an absolute blinder of a book, and I highly recommend you read it - buy it here: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9781804183977If you want to buy my book, How To Kill A Language, that's here: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/13258/9780008723729This is a Viralect original podcast created by Sophia Smith Galer. This episode was filmed by Omar Mehtab, edited by Abraham Dein and Seren Jones was the Executive Producer. Head to www.viralect.com to find our services and tools, and if you've got an iPhone, search "Sophiana app" in the App Store and take advantage of your free month using the code WORDFORWORD.</p>
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Word For Word is a podcast about storytellers and the languages that made them.
Each episode, award-winning journalist and author Sophia Smith Galer sits down with writers, artists and creators to explore the words behind their work: the languages they grew up with, learned, lost and gained that formed their imagination and creative practice.
New episodes weekly.
This podcast updates daily.
This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
Yes, this podcast regularly features guests.
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