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Should you start a sentence with 'hopefully'? Why we might not recognize alien language.

18 min•21 april 2026

1178. Do you cringe when someone says "Hopefully, he'll pass the test"? This week, we look at why "hopefully" as a sentence adverb has been controversial for decades, even though the Associated Press accepted it in 2012, and it's been common since the 1930s. Then, we look at xenolinguistics — the study of alien languages — asking what human languages have in common and why (and how) alien languages might be completely different.


The xenolinguistics segment was by Natalie Schilling.


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