Podcast: The Europeans; “Every @#$%ing quirk of the English language” 🇪🇺

At a glance

• From: Paris and Amsterdam
• Since: 2017, with a new episode every week
• This episode: 11 June 2026, 1 hour 11 minutes
• Language: English
• For fans of: The News Quiz, Freakonomics Radio

Why is “colonel” pronounced like “kernel”? Why do “though”, “through” and “tough” all sound different? In 1920, a Dutch English teacher called Gerard Nolst Trenité published a long poem full of these traps, “The Chaos”. It is still very hard to read aloud without a mistake.

That poem is one of the links that comes with this episode of The Europeans, a weekly podcast about Europe. Producer Wojciech Oleksiak has had enough of the irregularities of English. So host Katy Lee organises a kind of therapy session for him with Rob Watts, the Berlin-based creator of the YouTube channel RobWords, to talk about the strange rules of the language and the joy of being a “word nerd”.

The Europeans was created in 2017 by Katy Lee, a journalist in Paris who covered French politics for many years, and Dominic Kraemer, a London-born opera singer who lives in Amsterdam. Every week they look at European stories that are often overlooked, with a lot of humour. In 2019 the show won the Spinelli Prize, an EU award for projects that bring Europeans closer together. It is independent, and its listeners support it through Patreon and donations.

One honest limit: like most episodes, this one also has a news part. Here it is the elections in Armenia, and a debate about Dua Lipa’s wedding in Sicily. If you only want the language conversation, you can skip ahead.

Where to start

Start with this episode, especially if English is not your first language. You will recognise your own mistakes and feel better about them. Then try a more recent one, like “Why are Europeans so bad at imagining the future?” from 24 September.

If you like this, try these from Europe

• The Allusionist 🇬🇧: Helen Zaltzman’s podcast about language, named Smartest Podcast at the 2018 British Podcast Awards.
• The Globalist 🇬🇧🇨🇭: Monocle’s weekday morning news programme, presented from London and Zürich, with a review of Europe’s front pages.

Where to find it in Europe

• On the official website: the episode page.
• In a European podcast app: AntennaPod is open source, has no ads and is made by volunteers who respect your privacy. Search for “The Europeans” and subscribe.
• On the fediverse: the show is on Mastodon, the decentralised social network created in Germany.
• Support it: the podcast is free, and listeners can support it.

The European context

Since Brexit, Ireland and Malta are the only EU countries where English is an official language. But it is still the language many Europeans use to talk to each other, at work, on holiday and online. The Europeans is made in that shared, imperfect English, by people who live between countries. They even produce it with Hindenburg, audio software from Copenhagen.

Listen to the episode: https://www.europeanspodcast.com/all-episodes/every-quirk-of-the-english-language

Also on Choosing Europe

• Podcast: Plastisphere; “The Mysterious Midnight Meeting” 🇩🇪: another European podcast that makes a serious subject easy to follow.
• Podcast: La Science; “Autophagie” 🇫🇷: for listeners who also want to practise their French.