Hilde Gunnink
@hildegunnink.bsky.social
160 followers 110 following 83 posts
Linguist, focusing on African languages. FWO postdoctoral researcher @UGent || Linguistics teacher @Leiden [ˈhɪlˠdə ˈχønɪŋk]
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Reposted by Hilde Gunnink
jennekevanderwal.bsky.social
CALL FOR COLLABORATORS
The MapLE project is looking for 5 collaborators working on African languages, to collect and analyse data on the speaker’s and addressee’s knowledge in grammar. Will you join our project?
See the website for details:
epistemicity.net/call-collabo...
Call collaborators
Call for collaborators MapLE project The NWO Vici project ‘Mapping Linguistic Epistemicity’ (MapLE) invites 5 collaborators to help with data collection and analysis. Come join the MapLE team! Desc…
epistemicity.net
Reposted by Hilde Gunnink
njas.fi
✨New issue alert (Vol 34, No 3)!✨

As always, NJAS is fully free and #OpenAccess. Check it out now!
⬇️⬇️⬇️
njas.fi/njas/issue/v...
Reposted by Hilde Gunnink
elisabethjkerr.bsky.social
Come join us in Ghent next year for #Bantu11! The first cfp is out, with workshop proposals due October 15th (the next deadline will be December 1st for abstract submissions, which can be to a workshop or the general session)

www.bantugent.ugent.be/bantu11/
Bantu 11 Conference – BantUGent – UGent Centre for Bantu Studies
www.bantugent.ugent.be
hildegunnink.bsky.social
At least Namibia is a reasonable place for alveolar click insertion
hildegunnink.bsky.social
Why does this wine have a bilabial click? It's not even South African!
hildegunnink.bsky.social
Why does this racist student club have an alveolar click in their name?
hildegunnink.bsky.social
Click insertions in the wild (thread)
hildegunnink.bsky.social
New level unlocked: whenever I see "languages" spelled correctly my first thought is that it is a typo.
hildegunnink.bsky.social
We're collecting fun trivia about African languages to put on a calendar and share with the wider public. Help us promoting African languages and share your favourite African linguistic data.
hildegunnink.bsky.social
Share your favourite words, etymologies, idioms, proverbs and riddles in African languages!
stemmenvanafrika.nl/contact/
Contact – Stemmen van Afrika
stemmenvanafrika.nl
hildegunnink.bsky.social
I have now progressed to misspelling "likelihood" as "likelihoofd"
hildegunnink.bsky.social
Who invented wine glasses? Who designed the most instable type of glass and said right, let's put the stuff that make you clumsy in it
hildegunnink.bsky.social
Yes this is a very important point that we seem reluctant to admit. Language shift is often paired with all sorts of economic progress that people are eager to embrace. In Africa language shift is also often not perceived as traumatic by those involved.
hildegunnink.bsky.social
I have now progressed to "lanugages"
hildegunnink.bsky.social
This one is more subtle: apartheid-era grammars of South African languages always have a diachronic phonology chapter. This seems like a harmless side-quest but is probably related to the apartheid goal of classifying the Bantu-speaking population into separate, linguistically based groups.
hildegunnink.bsky.social
1970's South African linguistics: Mr Volschenk, Mr ǁowaseb and Mr Satyo are all mentioned, but only Mr Volschenk is praised for his kindness and excellence
hildegunnink.bsky.social
Why is it always "my collaborators don't speak English" and never "I don't speak isiZulu"?
(from Corrigan et al. 2011, "Ethnobotanical plant uses in the KwaNibela Peninsula, St Lucia, South Africa", South African Journal of Botany 77: 346-359)
hildegunnink.bsky.social
Subtle (and not so subtle) racism in old (and not so old) publications on South African languages: a thread
hildegunnink.bsky.social
Why is it always "my collaborators don't speak English" and never "I don't speak isiZulu"?
(from Corrigan et al. 2011, "Ethnobotanical plant uses in the KwaNibela Peninsula, St Lucia, South Africa", South African Journal of Botany 77: 346-359)
Translators were used to communicate with the experts, who were not familiar with the English language.
hildegunnink.bsky.social
Auer (1977: 459) reconstructs the word *ngamote 'room' to Proto-Sotho, whose perfect regularity clearly proves that Afrikaans contact predated the break-up of Proto-Sotho. 🙃
hildegunnink.bsky.social
Metalinguistic data only it's data about which linguists hate each other, which linguists are married to each other, etc.
hildegunnink.bsky.social
No Turnitin, the student did not "swap letters with similar characters from another alphabet". They're called phonetic symbols
hildegunnink.bsky.social
How many South African place names are relics from languages that are no longer spoken there? Well, since 15% of recorded place names don't have an etymology in a known South African language, my guess is close to 15%.
hildegunnink.bsky.social
I just read and graded a thesis in less time than it took Turnitin to check it for plagiarism, but please, do tell me about how AI will make humans obsolete.