I'm Alan Olga and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating. I had the first part of the title for a long time, says who, and I worked on the subtitle,

that one took much longer.

And so a kinder,ner usage guide for everyone who cares

about words and I chose the word funner I think for a couple reasons one is I do hope

the book is a fun read.

It also suggests rightly that this book is going to be a little bit irreverent,

that it's going to push on what you think you know.

And then probably the third thing is I thought,

well, maybe people will pick up a book and say,

who is this English professor who is willing to put funner

in the subtitle of her book and so they might pick it up just to disagree with me which is completely fine.

That's Anne Curzan. She's an expert on words and how over time as people use them, they can change their meaning.

She seems to love that about words.

I have to admit I can get a little peeved by words that don't seem to mean what they used to mean.

But as for that word Funner in the subtitle of her book says who,

well as you'll hear Ann has good reason to think that one day, thanks to kids,

Funner will not sound so funny anymore.

This is great to be talking with you because we talk a lot about communication here and many of us use words to communicate.

Many of us do and I'm thrilled to be here because it's exactly what I love to think about which is how can we use

words and language effectively and have fun doing so.

Well I really need your company here because you break the world into two kinds of

people. Wordies who are fascinated to see how language changes and gromandos who don't like to see language change at all and they're always correcting people on it.

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