The Visual Thesaurus is a proud sponsor of public radio's A Way with Words, a "freewheeling joy ride through the English language," that airs every weekend in San Diego, the Midwest and around the world via podcasts. When the ninth season of the show kicks off this Saturday, host Martha Barnette will be joined by a new partner, lexicographer Grant Barrett (read our interview with Grant here). We caught up with Martha to talk about her show, her work and her latest book, the delightful Ladyfingers and Nun's Tummies.

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Martha Barnette, the host of public radio's A Way With Words, recommends these books on language, written by some of her favorite guests on the show:

Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods by Michael Wex

Word Origins ... and How We Know Them: Etymology for Everyone by Anatoly Liberman

Crossworld: One Man's Journey into America's Crossword Obsession by Marc Romano

Do You Speak American? by Robert MacNeil and William Cran

And one more by her predecessor on the show:

The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations by Charles Harrington Elster

Martha Barnette, the host of public radio's A Way With Words, recommends these sites on language:

World Wide Words (See our interview here)

Word Origins

It's official: The American Dialect Society has voted "plutoed" as their 2006 Word of the Year. The word derives from Pluto, which lost its "planet" status last year, of course. Wondering what plutoed means? Please click here.

Visual Thesaurus subscriber Antonio P. from Bogota, Colombia, writes: "As a professional English-Spanish translator I'm always fascinated (and frustrated) by the speedy arrival of neologisms into the English language. When I'm translating Internet-speak into Spanish, my "neologism" alarm is working overtime. Check out this link, you'll be amused." Many thanks for your contribution, Antonio!

Professor David Crystal is one of the world's foremost experts on the English language. The author of over 100 books, he also runs an acclaimed website with his son called Shakespeare's Words and has just launched a new blog. We got curious when we came across David's new book, called The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left, his answer to the best-selling "Eats, Shoots & Leaves." Fight for English? We called David at his home in Great Britain to discuss his book, and the state of the English language.

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