Dmitry Zhemerov
@yo-le.bsky.social
Pre-master student of linguistics at Leiden University, ex-JetBrains. https://yole.page
It's been a while since I shared an update about my studies, but late is better than never. Here's a new one: yole.blog/2026/02/04/f...
February 2026 Study Update
It’s been a while. :) My life in the past year was quite eventful, and updating the blog wasn’t on the top of my mind, but now I’m back to my usual routine and it’s worth sh…
yole.blog
February 4, 2026 at 9:33 PM
It's been a while since I shared an update about my studies, but late is better than never. Here's a new one: yole.blog/2026/02/04/f...
Reposted by Dmitry Zhemerov
it's ridiculous how some people seem to think the only possible reason to do a humanities phd is to become a tenured professor. i use the considerable fruits of my philological training all day every single day to overanalyse every word anyone says to or around me within an inch of its life
October 6, 2025 at 6:46 PM
it's ridiculous how some people seem to think the only possible reason to do a humanities phd is to become a tenured professor. i use the considerable fruits of my philological training all day every single day to overanalyse every word anyone says to or around me within an inch of its life
Reposted by Dmitry Zhemerov
Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.
April 15, 2025 at 2:56 AM
Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.
I'm on the organizing committee of the 19th T.W.I.S.T. Student Conference in Linguistics, taking place in Leiden on April 12-13th, and the team has put together a really interesting program. Check the schedule at conference.studieverenigingtwist.nl/2025/schedule and stop by if you're in the area!
T.W.I.S.T. Conference - Schedule
Saturday
conference.studieverenigingtwist.nl
March 31, 2025 at 7:51 PM
I'm on the organizing committee of the 19th T.W.I.S.T. Student Conference in Linguistics, taking place in Leiden on April 12-13th, and the team has put together a really interesting program. Check the schedule at conference.studieverenigingtwist.nl/2025/schedule and stop by if you're in the area!
Reposted by Dmitry Zhemerov
The ALILI podcast is back!!
The third series of the language-loving podcast gets underway with a Canadian linguistic survey/survival guide from none other than Lingthusiasm's own @gretchenmcc.bsky.social!
Listen here:
Acast: shows.acast.com/a-language-i...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/64oh...
The third series of the language-loving podcast gets underway with a Canadian linguistic survey/survival guide from none other than Lingthusiasm's own @gretchenmcc.bsky.social!
Listen here:
Acast: shows.acast.com/a-language-i...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/64oh...
March 10, 2025 at 10:17 PM
The ALILI podcast is back!!
The third series of the language-loving podcast gets underway with a Canadian linguistic survey/survival guide from none other than Lingthusiasm's own @gretchenmcc.bsky.social!
Listen here:
Acast: shows.acast.com/a-language-i...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/64oh...
The third series of the language-loving podcast gets underway with a Canadian linguistic survey/survival guide from none other than Lingthusiasm's own @gretchenmcc.bsky.social!
Listen here:
Acast: shows.acast.com/a-language-i...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/64oh...
I'm now seriously learning about (natural language) syntax trees for the first time, and it feels so striking and weird that these trees have mother and daughter nodes, rather than parent and child, as the (programming language) syntax trees. Do we actually need this gendering in 2025?
February 19, 2025 at 9:35 AM
I'm now seriously learning about (natural language) syntax trees for the first time, and it feels so striking and weird that these trees have mother and daughter nodes, rather than parent and child, as the (programming language) syntax trees. Do we actually need this gendering in 2025?
Reposted by Dmitry Zhemerov
Call for Abstracts is closing soon!
The 19th T.W.I.S.T. Student Conference in #Linguistics is looking for student speakers. The deadline is in about a week (21 Feb).
Have any interesting research to share? Submit an abstract! You can find more information at conference.studieverenigingtwist.nl
The 19th T.W.I.S.T. Student Conference in #Linguistics is looking for student speakers. The deadline is in about a week (21 Feb).
Have any interesting research to share? Submit an abstract! You can find more information at conference.studieverenigingtwist.nl
February 14, 2025 at 7:10 PM
Call for Abstracts is closing soon!
The 19th T.W.I.S.T. Student Conference in #Linguistics is looking for student speakers. The deadline is in about a week (21 Feb).
Have any interesting research to share? Submit an abstract! You can find more information at conference.studieverenigingtwist.nl
The 19th T.W.I.S.T. Student Conference in #Linguistics is looking for student speakers. The deadline is in about a week (21 Feb).
Have any interesting research to share? Submit an abstract! You can find more information at conference.studieverenigingtwist.nl
I don't like it that so many of our linguistics courses show examples that are quotes either from Trump or about Trump. I'd rather we didn't cede to him this little bit of influence over our lives.
February 13, 2025 at 7:02 AM
I don't like it that so many of our linguistics courses show examples that are quotes either from Trump or about Trump. I'd rather we didn't cede to him this little bit of influence over our lives.
@sellmair.dev it's probably a bit out of the blue, but I think it's important to say: in my opinion, your work on Compose Hot Reload was the most impressive and impactful thing all of JetBrains accomplished in all of 2024.
February 6, 2025 at 10:09 PM
@sellmair.dev it's probably a bit out of the blue, but I think it's important to say: in my opinion, your work on Compose Hot Reload was the most impressive and impactful thing all of JetBrains accomplished in all of 2024.
So much good progress on the literature review for my pre-master thesis today. Turns out, what Etymograph is doing is called 'Computational Forward Reconstruction' (Sims-Williams 2018 'Mechanizing Historical Phonology'), and there's a very similar project at github.com/clmarr/DiaSim
GitHub - clmarr/DiaSim: Work in progress: A Java-written architecture, built in phonology theory in the Neogrammarian tradition, which can simulate diachronic sound change, given the starting phonolog...
Work in progress: A Java-written architecture, built in phonology theory in the Neogrammarian tradition, which can simulate diachronic sound change, given the starting phonological forms for the le...
github.com
February 3, 2025 at 4:55 PM
So much good progress on the literature review for my pre-master thesis today. Turns out, what Etymograph is doing is called 'Computational Forward Reconstruction' (Sims-Williams 2018 'Mechanizing Historical Phonology'), and there's a very similar project at github.com/clmarr/DiaSim
The 10th anniversary of Android Studio is a good opportunity to tell the story of the small role I played in its creation. Read the story on my blog: yole.blog/2025/01/27/m...
January 27, 2025 at 9:46 AM
The 10th anniversary of Android Studio is a good opportunity to tell the story of the small role I played in its creation. Read the story on my blog: yole.blog/2025/01/27/m...
Following your recent example: We spent many hours rewriting the explanations of co- and contravariance in "Kotlin in Action". Would ChatGPT be able to generate a passable (to some degree) explanation of those concepts? I'm pretty sure it would. Was this time wasted? Absolutely not.
January 13, 2025 at 5:37 AM
Following your recent example: We spent many hours rewriting the explanations of co- and contravariance in "Kotlin in Action". Would ChatGPT be able to generate a passable (to some degree) explanation of those concepts? I'm pretty sure it would. Was this time wasted? Absolutely not.
Because, while some people value hand-crafted things over machine-produced ones, despite the benefits that machines bring to production, I value brain-crafted thought over machine-produced one. And as long as I can have the choice to not have any machine-produced thought in my life, I will.
January 13, 2025 at 5:23 AM
Because, while some people value hand-crafted things over machine-produced ones, despite the benefits that machines bring to production, I value brain-crafted thought over machine-produced one. And as long as I can have the choice to not have any machine-produced thought in my life, I will.
Recap of my first semester as the pre-master student of linguistics at Leiden University: yole.blog/2025/01/11/f...
First Pre-master Semester Recap
Now that the exams are over and the grades are coming in, I think it’s a good time to recap my first semester as a pre-master student of linguistics at Leiden University. While my previous po…
yole.blog
January 11, 2025 at 10:05 AM
Recap of my first semester as the pre-master student of linguistics at Leiden University: yole.blog/2025/01/11/f...
I've got some very positive feedback from the teacher on my paper for the Academic Skills course, "Father noster na nebesi: Errors in Andreas Müller's collection of Lord's Prayer translations", so I've decided to upload it to academia.edu. Here's the link: www.academia.edu/126910603/Fa...
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academia.edu
January 9, 2025 at 8:20 AM
I've got some very positive feedback from the teacher on my paper for the Academic Skills course, "Father noster na nebesi: Errors in Andreas Müller's collection of Lord's Prayer translations", so I've decided to upload it to academia.edu. Here's the link: www.academia.edu/126910603/Fa...
Worlds collide: I was looking into the research of a professor my thesis advisor mentioned to me, and I noticed that his website is made with Obraz, a fairly niche static web site generator created by Andrey Vlasovskikh, my former colleague from the PyCharm team.
January 8, 2025 at 9:22 AM
Worlds collide: I was looking into the research of a professor my thesis advisor mentioned to me, and I noticed that his website is made with Obraz, a fairly niche static web site generator created by Andrey Vlasovskikh, my former colleague from the PyCharm team.
Yay, it looks like I now have a topic and an advisor for my pre-master thesis! Great start of an academic year :) And what's even better is that I have a great head start on the thesis - it will be about my work modeling Proto-Germanic to Old English sound changes in Etymograph.
January 7, 2025 at 2:49 PM
Yay, it looks like I now have a topic and an advisor for my pre-master thesis! Great start of an academic year :) And what's even better is that I have a great head start on the thesis - it will be about my work modeling Proto-Germanic to Old English sound changes in Etymograph.
But the mechanics are (mostly) still solid, and the improved graphics quality works really well with the same old quirky style. We'll definitely play the DLC when it comes out :)
January 3, 2025 at 9:38 AM
But the mechanics are (mostly) still solid, and the improved graphics quality works really well with the same old quirky style. We'll definitely play the DLC when it comes out :)
We played Rise of the Golden Idol over the holiday break, and as much as we loved the first game, the second one wasn't as good. The story is not as coherent, the stakes are weird, the difficulty ramp is not really there, and the big reveal at the end is not foreshadowed or motivated.
January 3, 2025 at 9:38 AM
We played Rise of the Golden Idol over the holiday break, and as much as we loved the first game, the second one wasn't as good. The story is not as coherent, the stakes are weird, the difficulty ramp is not really there, and the big reveal at the end is not foreshadowed or motivated.
With all my skepticism for LLMs and the complete lack of desire to use them for my own work, I'm still trying to remain aware of the developments in the space. And for that, I found Simon Willison's post a great read, with a reasonably balanced view of the space: simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/31/...
Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
A lot has happened in the world of Large Language Models over the course of 2024. Here’s a review of things we figured out about the field in the past …
simonwillison.net
January 1, 2025 at 6:31 PM
With all my skepticism for LLMs and the complete lack of desire to use them for my own work, I'm still trying to remain aware of the developments in the space. And for that, I found Simon Willison's post a great read, with a reasonably balanced view of the space: simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/31/...
Reposted by Dmitry Zhemerov
The point of learning Latin is that it makes it easier to learn Greek, which makes it easier to learn Hittite, which really helps with your Akkadian, in turn does wonders for your Middle Egyptian.
December 21, 2024 at 12:47 PM
The point of learning Latin is that it makes it easier to learn Greek, which makes it easier to learn Hittite, which really helps with your Akkadian, in turn does wonders for your Middle Egyptian.
This is literally why I couldn't play Highland Song, even though I love Heaven's Vault, hiking and Scotland, and I was really looking forward to the game. I could imagine too well what Moira was going through, with the cold and the physical pain, and for me there wasn't enough hope to offset it.
This mini review of A Highland Song nails it for me. When writing I was always aware this was a game about a child in extreme, crazy mortal danger. There’s nothing cozy about the Highlands, or about any journeys taken under duress. For me it was always a game about hope under the darkest skies
After consulting with a Tumblr expert (my friend Maxie), I'm gonna make these GOTY posts as separate posts instead of constantly reblogging the one post
Anyway, here's why I love the beauty and terror of "A Highland Song"
www.tumblr.com/stiltsthegm/...
Anyway, here's why I love the beauty and terror of "A Highland Song"
www.tumblr.com/stiltsthegm/...
December 18, 2024 at 8:14 AM
This is literally why I couldn't play Highland Song, even though I love Heaven's Vault, hiking and Scotland, and I was really looking forward to the game. I could imagine too well what Moira was going through, with the cold and the physical pain, and for me there wasn't enough hope to offset it.
Later today I'll join @sebi.io's stream, and together we'll solve some Advent of Code in Kotlin :) Join the stream at www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECTs...
December 10, 2024 at 1:04 PM
Later today I'll join @sebi.io's stream, and together we'll solve some Advent of Code in Kotlin :) Join the stream at www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECTs...
Picked up this 1846 Old English grammar at the study association book sale for just 1 EUR. Love old linguistics books!
December 4, 2024 at 6:28 PM
Picked up this 1846 Old English grammar at the study association book sale for just 1 EUR. Love old linguistics books!