BBC 4 radio show/podcast that is probably worth a listen.

Annoyingly, I can’t record that on my home system so I’ll have to make sure I tune in, but thanks.  Your link to the works to be discussed is broken, btw.

Interesting comment about Bragg’s nationalism - it’s always easier to see nationalism in others. It never failed to amaze me that some highly educated South Africans in the apartheid era were totally blind to the fact that their arguments were based not on logic, but on nationalism and self-interest.  When I listen to Bragg’s programme, I’ll try not to be guilty of bias as I have a declared interest - my father used to visit his father’s pub, The Throstle’s Nest.

Link fixed. Thanks.

After the shows have aired, they will be available as downloadable podcasts. I love podcasts for driving time.

Thanks, happydog.  I’ve just learned that putting spaces between words was invented by the Irish in about the 7th century.  Didn’t the Chinese or Japanese or indeed anyone else do this, though?

The first two episodes are available as podcasts now. But I haven’t listened to the them yet.

Didn’t the Chinese or Japanese or indeed anyone else do this, though?

No, and they still don’t, as you’ll see if you look at Wikipedia articles in those languages.  The concept “word” is a relatively modern one, and surprisingly hard to define.

two new ideas. “The Greeks called them Phonecians, we don’t know what they called themselves.”

Second, we use the word “Alphabet” because these were the first two letters of the Phonecian Alphabet: Aleph (Ox) and Beth (house). I always thought that these came from the Hebrew Alphabet. So Hebrew borrowed from Phonecians.