I try to watch Trevor Noah's Daily Show regularly. I always have a notepad or my phone by me so I can jot down little linguistic gems from the show, and I always manage to get at least 4 good tidbits. From the most recent episodes:
- Trevor was lamenting the tragic situation happening with family separation at the border. He noted that some news outlets were describing "Tender Age Shelters," stating, "[It's] a hell of a fancy way to pronounce "baby jail"...it's a real euphemism, like calling a cross burning a "meatless barbecue."
- Trevor described Devin Nunez as having "Resting Middle Management Face" (based off of Resting Bitch Face)
- Trevor noted a recent euphemism for human trafficking, "economic migration." This is an example of gross understatement, and does the public a great disservice by lessening the gravity of what is being discussed.
- Trevor had the star from Black Panther on one evening, and they spent some time talking about the actor's work with a dialect coach. The main dialect used is the Xhosa, which is an official language of South Africa perhaps best known for its "click consonants". Omniglot has some basic information on the pronunciation of the language, along with some videos where you can hear the language being spoken: https://www.omniglot.com/writing/xhosa.htm. Here is a link to an interview with that coach: https://slate.com/culture/2018/02/an-interview-with-black-panthers-dialect-coach.html
- Trevor centered one of his segments around "The I-Word." We've used that abbreviation technique to avoid saying the full versions of "The F-Word" and the The N-Word," but in this case, the word in question is IMPEACHMENT.
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