Multilinguish: Words Of The Year 2020

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No matter who you are, 2020 was probably a rough year. It felt like each month was its own era of history bringing with it deadly pandemics, devastating fires, massive protests and combative elections. It can be hard to sum up this year in a few sentences, and yet — like every year — dictionaries and various other organizations picked a single word to capture the overall theme of the past 12 months. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the coronavirus was a common motif.

In this episode of Multilinguish, we look at all the words of the year. And to avoid talking purely about COVID-19 for the entire time, we dug deeper to look at all the words that defined 2020. It’s a chance to look back on everything that went wrong (and some things that went right!) as we prepare for a whole new year.

Multilinguish: Words Of The Year 2020

Like last year, producers Thomas Devlin, Jen Jordan and Dylan Lyons gather together to look at all the words of the year. We discuss the top words of the year and how the Coronavirus has added a huge number of new words to everyone’s vocabulary.

Moving away from pandemic talk, we examine the word of the year runners-up, from malarkey to mukbang. We also talk about how the word kraken made a splash in both the sports and political worlds, and whether the kraken is more memorable for its role in Clash of the Titans or Pirates of the Caribbean. Lastly, each producer picks their own personal word of the year.

Show Notes

This episode was produced by Thomas Devlin and edited by Brian Rosado. Jen Jordan is our executive producer. Our logo was designed by Ally Zhao.

Iso Australian National Dictionary Centre
Pandemic Merriam-Webster
Pandemic Dictionary.com
Quarantine Cambridge Dictionary
Corona-pandemie Society for the German Language
Mitsu Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation
Systemrelevant, coronagraben, pandemia and mascrina Zurich University of Applied Sciences

Transcript

Thomas Devlin: From the language app Babbel, this is a bonus new year’s episode of Multilinguish. I’m producer Thomas Devlin.

Every year, several different organizations put out what they consider to be the word of the year. Each organization chooses it a little differently. Merriam-Webster uses dictionary search data to see which words we looked up a significant number of times, the society for the German language has a panel of people who choose the word, and the United Daily News in Taiwan has readers vote on a word and so on. What usually happens is that there end up being a wide array of different words, each of which give a unique perspective on the past year. While there might be a few words of the year that cluster around the same concept, last year there were a lot of words around the climate change movement. There’s usually enough diversity to cover several topics.

And then 2020 happened. Every single word of the year is about the coronavirus pandemic. So rather than focusing on just the official words of the year, we here at Babbel wanted to look at the broader language trends of the year. But before we get started, a quick reminder to subscribe to Multilinguish, so you never miss an episode.

Joining me in the studio today, our fellow producers, Dylan Lyons and Jen Jordan. Hello.

Jen Jordan: Hello.

Dylan Lyons: Hey Thomas.

Thomas Devlin: I’m going to start by listing the words of the year, the official ones. And you two can let me know if you figure out the theme that unites them all. So Collins Dictionary chose lockdown, the Australian National Dictionary Center chose iso, Cambridge Dictionary chose quarantine, the society for the German language chose Corona-pandemie, the Macquarie Dictionary shows doomscrolling, The Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation shows mitsu, which means close or dense. And for the first time ever, Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com chose the same word of the year, pandemic.

Dylan Lyons: I don’t see any pattern at all.

Thomas Devlin: None at all?

Jen Jordan: I’m sensing a slight theme.

Dylan Lyons: Very, very subtle.

Thomas Devlin: Yeah. So just to explain at least one of them, because mitsu, which means close or dense is probably the slightly more obscure one. That is specifically when they were talking about sanitary conditions, they were talking about close and dense conditions is what will spread coronavirus, which is what we’re going to talk about first. Because I’ve been personally fascinated when not depressed by the news of coronavirus, by just how much it’s changed the language that we use, because there’s this whole COVID dictionary of terms.

Dylan Lyons: Very true.

Thomas Devlin: Yeah. We’ve got the usual ones. I personally like Blursday, which as you may know, is just the absence of time and all the days blurring into each other. Because you may not notice, but it’s been nine months since we all stopped working in the office.

Jen Jordan: I’m still glad I took my plant with me.

Thomas Devlin: I know. It’s just one of those things. I feel like we all gather around the fire and tell the stories of our last days in the office and the madness that happened.

Dylan Lyons: Yeah. I’m glad we’re kind of explaining this in case this podcast ends up in a time capsule.

Thomas Devlin: So to go through a few other corona-oriented terms, because there are quite a few that dictionaries listed. We also have coronacation, coronacoaster, which has to do with the emotions that we feel. There’s Coronababy, which is a weird one.

Jen Jordan: Is that like the baby boom?

Thomas Devlin: Yeah. I guess it has been nine months now, so I guess we will see if there’s a sudden uptick in the children born.

Jen Jordan: I like the term coronials.

Dylan Lyons: Yes, I was going to say there was a generational term, right? Coronials.

Thomas Devlin: I’m not familiar with that one. Is that just the people who will have been born?

Dylan Lyons: Like millennials, but for the corona time.

Thomas Devlin: Weird. I also want to highlight a few other language terms that came up because the Zurich University of Applied Sciences chooses four different languages to represent Switzerland. So they have the German systemrelevant, which means systemically relevant, which sounds very weird, but it’s basically just the same as essential worker here. There’s French coronagraben, which is… It refers specifically to the fact that the different linguistic zones of Switzerland dealt with the sanitary conditions differently. And so was about the weirdness of when you go from one place to another and the conditions aren’t the same, which I think is something that people can relate to. If you’ve traveled at all this year, it’s very strange to go to another state where people are not wearing masks or something. Yes. Dylan, you went to Florida, right?

Dylan Lyons: Yes, and I made it out alive. No offense to any of our listeners in Florida, but they don’t really follow any rules there.

Thomas Devlin: Yeah. It’s definitely not just a United States phenomenon where the situation is different and then there’s just so much confusion. And again, I think the language is interesting that it’s changed, but also the incredible amount of language can be extraordinarily confusing. Just to go through the last two, Italian just chose pandemia and Romansh chose mascrina, which means pandemic and mask respectively. And one of my favorites though that was a runner up for German was Masksünder, which means mask sinner.

Jen Jordan: They really do have a word for everything.

Dylan Lyons: That’s incredible.

Thomas Devlin: That’s the great thing about the German language. We have anti-masker, but there’s something about masks center that’s just…

Dylan Lyons: Perfection.

Jen Jordan: Mm-hmm.

Thomas Devlin: But I don’t want to spend the entire time talking about coronavirus, because I’m sure anyone listening to this has heard enough discourse over the past years. So I wanted to take a cue actually from the Oxford Dictionaries, which for the first time since their tradition began, did not choose a single word of the year. Instead, they decided to look more generally at the broader language trends and on their list were words like coronavirus, lockdown and social distancing. But also they have cancel culture, net zero, and a lot more. So I thought we all go around and share some of the words that we picked out from some of the runners-up that gives us a better look at all of the trends that have happened this year. And Jen, if you want to go first.

Jen Jordan: Sure. I want you guys to think about several months ago, back in January and in the midst of… Actually this was before Corona. I think we kind of knew it might be coming, but this was mid to late Jan. We impeached the president. Do you remember that?

Dylan Lyons: Oh my God, that was this year?

Jen Jordan: That was 2020. So this word is impeachment, and it was an Oxford English Dictionary runner-up. Of course the definition of impeachment is, the process by which a legislative body addresses charges against a government official. Trump was acquitted. So he was not removed from office, and the resulting effects of the pandemic and a lot of other stuff were fought by that. It would have been a very different year had he not been acquitted. I believe acquittal was also one of the Oxford English Dictionary words of the year or runners-up.

To keep it in a political vein, I think it’s important we address the political part of the year, because it was such a huge force to be reckoned with, aside from the pandemic and so many other things that happened. We have the word malarkey from Merriam-Webster, which means insincere or foolish talk. And I think Joe Biden has successfully branded himself as the no malarkey candidate. He really owns that word for better or for worse.

Dylan Lyons: He brought it back.

Jen Jordan: Yeah, he brought it back. And looks like it peaks right around the third presidential debate, which I think is when he pulled it out and brought out malarkey into the public forum once again. It looks like really the only times it spikes are around Joe Biden and things he has said. So it’s interesting to see that it’s so closely associated with him, but we have malarkey once again.

Thomas Devlin: I don’t think I knew that word existed before Joe Biden’s run for president. And then he just came out with it as though we all knew. And I was like, “Do we?”

Jen Jordan: It’s about as old as he is.

Thomas Devlin: Do I have malarkey? Are we getting rid of it? What’s happening?

Dylan Lyons: It makes me think of lunch meat, and I don’t know why.

Jen Jordan:

It’s like ’20s, ’30s old-timey.

Dylan Lyons: Yeah.

Thomas Devlin: Yeah, definitely.

Jen Jordan: So my last word is Karen, which comes to us as Macquarie’s people’s choice 2020 word. You guys, I could talk about Karen forever. It’s a fascinating word in our culture. It’s a derogatory word, a term used predominantly to refer to a middle-class White woman, often in Gen X, who is regarded as having an entitled condescending and often racist attitude. And I think the part I really want to focus on for the 2020 definition is the last part, which is the often racist attitude. I think when you look at the use of this term Karen, the early definitions maybe 10 or 15 years ago were much more along the lines of like, “Let me speak to your manager.” And all about the spiky haircut and the entitlement. And I think in May, we had Amy Cooper who was the White woman that called the police on the African American birder in Central Park after he asked her to leash her dog. And she was known as the Central Park Karen.

And I think that this term Karen started to become even more shorthand for somebody who is racist and entitled and privileged. So it’s a really interesting word. If you’re interested in the various uses of Karen, I believe that Slate Decoder Ring has a great episode that’s just about Karen. And it goes into a bunch of history about the term and where it came from, and it’s really interesting.

Dylan Lyons: Fascinating. It’s a controversial one too, right? Because people on the internet, I guess mostly Karens themselves, were saying things like, “This is a derogatory term. You shouldn’t call people this. It’s like a slur.”

Jen Jordan:

I feel terrible for people named Karen.

Thomas Devlin:

That’s the real victims, but let’s go to Dylan next.

Dylan Lyons: Sure. So my first word is kraken, which is a great word. It’s fun to say, and it is one of Merriam-Webster’s runner-ups this year. It is a mythical Scandinavian sea monster. And you may know it from Marvel Comics. It was in the 2000 remake of Clash of the Titans. Zeus said, “Release the kraken.” Which people quote a lot. But it came up this year, because Seattle got a new NHL hockey team and they chose kraken as their team name. And I believe it also came up again during the election relitigating where Trump’s lawyers were saying they were going to release the kraken of evidence, which we’ve yet to see. But it is a fun word, and I enjoy it.

Jen Jordan: I always thought kraken was specifically a giant squid. Is that not correct?

Dylan Lyons: I think it looks like a squid, but I guess it’s just a sea monster that resembles a squid. I don’t know if it’s specifically a squid.

Jen Jordan: Because giant squid were kind of the first sea monsters, right?

Dylan Lyons: Yeah. I guess that’s what they saw out of their boats and we’re like uh-uh (negative).

Thomas Devlin: I also want to point out everyone refers to Clash at the Titans with kraken, but I feel like Pirates of the Caribbean was so much more of my upbringing when Davy Jones had the kraken.

Dylan Lyons: Okay. So my next word is also a fun one. It is Megxit, which was a runner-up in Collins Dictionary. So it’s a portmanteau of Meghan and exit, and it was used to describe the withdrawal of Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, from their royal duties. They peaced out from the royal family, and of course it’s also a playoff of Brexit, of Britain leaving the EU. So, Megxit.

Jen Jordan: Team Meg. Get out of there. Especially after this last season of The Crown, get out of there. It’s toxic, girl.

Dylan Lyons: No spoilers!

Thomas Devlin: It’s history, Dylan.

Dylan Lyons: So my final word, which is actually three words, is Black Lives Matter. But the interesting thing is, it was chosen as a runner-up by the society for German language, which I found kind of moving, and nice that this German organization chose these English words as one of their potential words of the year. So for anyone who doesn’t know Black Lives Matter, is a movement that encourages peaceful protesting against racial-motivated violence and police brutality targeting Black people. It’s been in the news a lot this year. We had the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis and a lot of protesting across the country. And I think the movement is largely focused on the US, but we have seen support around the world, particularly in Europe. So I guess that is why it was also important to Germany. So I thought that was really interesting.

Jen Jordan: What I think is interesting is BLM has been active for a number of years now, but it really seems like this year was the year it went global in this way. I think we’ve seen with like our colleagues in Europe that they’re really starting to understand and talk more about this racial and social movement. So I think it’s great.

Dylan Lyons: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s definitely a positive thing that people are engaging with it more than ever.

Thomas Devlin: Yeah. It’s not so good to include this word just to show. I think even if coronavirus had never happened, this year would still be top three wildest I’ve lived through, because there is just so much that’s happening. This Black Lives Matter in June was kind of completely dominant. And just when you thought nothing could break through the kind of noise of coronavirus, it’s really heartening in a way to see so many people coming together to talk on important issues of race and diversity, both in the United States and around the world.

So I chose some less serious words just because I was entertained by them for various reasons, and I thought they did reflect something about society this year. The first is cottagecore, which is a lifestyle characterized as being a rustic or old-fashioned involving pastimes, including handcrafting, baking, gardening, et cetera. And this is from the Macquarie Dictionary runners-up. I like the concept a lot, of cottagecore. And I think we were all making bread earlier, people were gardening. I think it’s still related to the year, even though it’s a little strange a choice.

Dylan Lyons: I actually hadn’t heard of it until this year, but I started seeing it on, I think, Twitter or other queer social media spaces in regards to a type of lesbian, I think. Is that some form of it, a cottagecore lesbian? That was coming up a lot on Twitter.

Thomas Devlin: I think that’s an intersection. And I do think that queer communities have definitely taken this a lot, possibly more than straight communities. Though I’m not entirely sure, but that does sound right. As we have explored in previous podcast episodes though, it is generally queer spaces where language change really happens.

Dylan Lyons: Very true.

Jen Jordan: I do think it’s interesting, cottagecore. I feel like at least I personally had not really heard about it until this year. And I do think it’s interesting we started thinking about more rustic and comforting ways during quarantine to like you said, baking bread, gardening, buying canned goods. But I also really like it because I started getting into TikTok this year. And my favorite type of TikTok is farm TikTok and homesteaders. There’s someone I follow where her video every morning is just her saying good morning to all her animals while she lets them out. It’s very soothing. And I feel like it’s cottagecore adjacent.

Dylan Lyons: I love that.

Thomas Devlin: Yeah. I’m usually a little bit nervous around this kind of nostalgia for the old ways, because like farming, it’s not actually that great an activity. Despite some people who live in cities really idolizing it. But I do think especially this year, just doing things with your hands was a good distraction from the rest of what was going on.

Thomas Devlin: So my second word is irregardless, which comes from one of the Merriam-Webster runners-up, and is my favorite really, just because I think it’s funny. As you might know, irregardless means the same thing as regardless, but it’s a double negative, which makes some people very angry. This…

Jen Jordan: Does it make you angry, Thomas? I feel like this would get you worked up.

Thomas Devlin: Honestly, no. I’m on the other side, because I’m on the side that I just think, if it’s enough people have started that, just let it go. And it’s not going to mean the end of Western civilization. But I think it’s most entertaining that this became popular this year because of actor Jamie Lee Curtis, who is famous for her roles in Halloween, Freaky Friday, and those yogurt commercials. She claimed that it was added to the dictionary this year, and that it was some horrible thing. Which is actually not true, because Merriam-Webster clapped back, as the kids say, and mentioned they added this back in 1934.

Dylan Lyons: I think that one bothers me more than any other, just because it was drilled into me from a young age throughout school. Never to say it’s incorrect. And with most things, I’m like, “Oh, it’s fine. It’s just how people talk.” But that one stuck with me for some reason as just it sounds weird.

Jen Jordan: Yeah. I had an English teacher who would really just ground her gears to hear irregardless.

Thomas Devlin: I do get that. Because I think when you’re told from childhood not to do something… And then it’s so annoying when you have to get over it later on. Splitting infinitives was a thing for me, where I really had to just change my ways, because…

Jen Jordan: Her disdain for the word made me just want to use it more.

Dylan Lyons: We got a little rebel over here.

Jen Jordan: I really didn’t like her.

Thomas Devlin: See you’re a linguistic innovator. There’s probably a lot of language that just happens to piss off older people, honestly.

Dylan Lyons: True.

Thomas Devlin: And I will end with mukbang, which is one of the Collins Dictionary runners-up. And this refers to a video or webcast in which the host eats a large quantity of food for the entertainment of viewers. To check first, are either of you familiar with this?

Dylan Lyons: Yes. But I only learned about it maybe last year or the year before.

Thomas Devlin: Have either of you watched videos?

Dylan Lyons: No, thank you.

Jen Jordan: So many. There’s so many. I’m so tired of YouTube serving me content that’s like, “Keith tries everything on the Dunkin’ Donuts menu.” It’s just like somebody who orders every single type of food and then tries to eat it on camera or tries each item and talks about it. I think it’s the lamest type of content, honestly. I think it’s so lazy and it’s so overdone, but I apparently feel very strongly about it.

Dylan Lyons: Wow.

Thomas Devlin: I was not expecting that strong a reaction. Well, in any case, I’m including it because it’s definitely a phenomenon. In preparing for this episode, I looked into it more, and it’s one of those things that makes me feel like I truly do not understand certain things about society, but that’s okay. For just a brief history, it was popular in Korea first and now it’s popular everywhere. There’s a lot of kimchi videos from what I saw in my brief search of the internet for these, but I’m personally not into it. But I thought it was interesting that apparently one of the big reasons why these are popular, is that it’s related to loneliness and people will put these videos on TV when they’re eating. And so they’re feeling like they’re eating with someone.

Dylan Lyons: That’s interesting.

Jen Jordan: I can hard relate to that. I think in the videos I see often, they just seem so wasteful. Because somebody will get a whole bunch of food and you know that they’re throwing a lot of it out, because how much can you really eat at once as one person? I just think it’s wasting food.

Thomas Devlin: That is definitely fair. I also think sometimes people make fun of this trend. But also, the Coney Island hot dog thing has been going on for years. And I find that far more disgusting than any other things I saw. Those disgusting hot dogs.

Dylan Lyons: I don’t like that at all.

Thomas Devlin: Nothing’s new is my general ending notes. But the actual ending note for the episode is as is tradition. This is the second year, but it’s not a tradition. We’ll be calling each other until the end of our lives doing this.

We’re all choosing personal words of the year, because I think it’s a good way to look back on the year and just kind of try to think about if there were any uniting themes. I’m going to cheat and go first by choosing two words, which is the combined phrase, good grief.

Jen Jordan: This is such a you phrase, oh my God.

Thomas Devlin: I know. It is obviously popularized by Charlie Brown from hit cartoon Peanuts, which is old and it’s not that new. But I have been watching the peanuts holiday specials as a former starter and that is part of the reason why I choose it. But I also think there’s something interesting in the phrase, which is that this year has been hard for I think everyone. Probably everyone. Maybe not the people who were in the Imagine video earlier, but everyone else.

A big moment for me this year was when I let myself feel bad for what was happening this year. A lot of my plans were being canceled. I am of, course, very fortunate in many ways, but I think everyone just allowing themselves to kind of grieve for the lives that they’re not living. I’ve not seen a lot of people this year because I simply cannot. And allowing us certain kind of grief into my life has really helped me get through some of the harder points of it without getting too emotional. I feel I’ve gone too dark. But I also think in general, American society looks down on grief and I think bringing it back is a way. And I think the phrase good grief is… We think of grief as a bad thing, but there is good grief. It’s an important emotion to feel once in a while.

Jen Jordan: I think that’s interesting because we’ve really gone through a whole cycle with COVID and quarantine and everything that’s brought with it. The cycle of realizing that it’s here, reckoning with the changes and then grieving them. And now what I think is really interesting that will continue into 2021, is the fact that you have to qualify your grief by saying, “Well, of course, there are people who are in worse positions and my grief isn’t as bad as theirs.” And we’re doing that almost like a comparison trap with how bad our grief is compared to others and qualifying it when really you’re just as validated to grieve your stuff as everyone else. Which I think is a very interesting whole exhausting full cycle thing we’ve gone through this year.

Thomas Devlin: Yeah. Well hopefully, one of you will bring the mood to a higher crescendo for the end of the episode, but I’ll go next to Dylan.

Dylan Lyons: Yeah. So mine is way less serious than yours. But anyway, mine is actually a name, but also a word. And it is Dua as in Dua Lipa, the pop star. No one is surprised by this. So I chose it for two reasons. The first is that Dua Lipa released her new album just before, I think, we all went into quarantine earlier this year and that of course is her album, Future Nostalgia, which is awesome and amazing. And I love it. I think it helped a lot of us, at least me, get through part of this year, because it’s really fun and poppy, and just nice to dance to and bop to. So I think it just lifted some spirits.

Dua Lipa is British Albanian, and I found out Dua means love or want in Albanian. I thought that was kind of nice too, because a couple things out of this year is that we really had to tune into love, to things that we love and people that we love to survive. And also want is as what we want for the future, which is for things to get better, right? So I thought that was perfect, that her name means those things. And mostly I just wanted to talk about Dua Lipa, because she’s amazing.

Jen Jordan: She was one of my top played songs this year in my Spotify Wrapped. But also, I have the dumbest question. Is Dua Lipa her real name?

Dylan Lyons: Yes. It is her given name.

Jen Jordan: What? I thought it was like a Lady Gaga situation.

Thomas Devlin: I also thought so.

Dylan Lyons: I think Lipa is like… From what I could tell, it comes from Polish and it is related to lime trees. But I couldn’t fully confirm that, but maybe it’s a love of lime trees.

Jen Jordan: That’s incredible. I love her even more now.

Thomas Devlin: All right, well, let’s end on Jen.

Jen Jordan: I have a word, but it’s sort of more wrapped up in this philosophy, which I’m going to apologize in advance. I’ve been listening to a lot of interviews from Barack Obama for his new book, and it really got me thinking this weekend. My word of the year is intensify, which is a transitive verb that means to make more intense. But more helpfully, it means to sharpen or make more acute. And I think there’s two reasons this word comes to mind for 2020. I think first, because we get our news and our information through this 24/7 news coverage and social media, Google algorithms. Everything feels like the most extreme version of itself. Nothing with a half measure. This year, everything was just full-on intensity. I think you guys felt it. I felt it.

Dylan Lyons: Yes. A hundred percent.

Jen Jordan: I think part of it simultaneously sort of felt our society growing more politically divided, because these algorithms amplify the most extreme opinions and those less gray area for us to actually have discussion, and it’s more just reaction versus rational thought.

The second reason though I chose this is because a lot of things we took for granted like relationships and ideologies and ways of working our health science, our habits, a lot of things have been challenged because of everything we’ve gone through this year. But in some ways, it’s accelerated the way we think about maybe some outdated institutions or traditional structures. So we’re thinking more about remote work. It’s been a thing that we can actually do for a long time, but now we’re making real progress to maybe actually having these remote workforces. Especially in tech, we’re seeing a lot of companies offer remote work, which could potentially democratize more people to have jobs in the future they would normally not have access to.

We’re talking about more constraints on executive power and our government, which I think is a welcome discussion after this year. We’re even talking more about healthcare, and healthcare is a human right. And universal health care, which is something I feel very strongly about. But I think it’s a good discussion to have as a result of everything that’s happening. So it’s been a lot, but I think there will hopefully be some silver linings and growth out of this year. And I think it’s interesting to think about this verb that means to make things more intense and some of the challenges, but also the fact that it is potentially a thing that will accelerate growth in other areas.

I do think that constant intensity though, for everyone has been exhausting. I think a lot this year about that. I think it’s attributed as a Chinese proverb: may you live in interesting times. But the proverb was popularized in a Robert F. Kennedy speech in the ’60s. And it’s actually unclear exactly where it came from. But I don’t know about you guys. I’m ready for boring times, all I want is a yoga retreat for next year.

Dylan Lyons: Yeah. You make a great point. And I think I would add to that other conversations too, like climate change, because we kind of saw emissions drop for a bit when everyone stopped going places and doing things. And also wages for our essential workers like grocery store workers and restaurant people, delivery people. So many important conversations that came up, but you’re right. It is time for a break, for a rest. Please, no more interesting times.

Thomas Devlin: That’s a great note to end on, because we all hear it. I wish you a good break and rest over these next few weeks. Thank you, Jen and Dylan for joining me to talk about the 2020 words of the year.

Dylan Lyons: Thanks.

Jen Jordan: Thanks Thomas.

Thomas Devlin: Multilinguish is production of the language app Babbel. This episode was produced by me, Thomas Devlin, with help from Dylan Lyons and Jen Jordan. Editing and sound design by Brian Rosado. You can read about today’s topic and more on Babbel Magazine. Just visit B-A-B-B-E-L.com/magazine. Say hi on social media by finding us at Babble USA. Finally, please rate and review this podcast, we really appreciate it. Multilinguish will be back to its regularly scheduled season three episodes in two weeks. Until then, we wish you all a safe and happy holiday season.