lingthusiasm: > Bonus 105: World Linguistics Day | Lingthusiasm > > # Bonus 105: World Linguistics Day > > There are many occasions for thinking about linguistics-related topics, from official UN designations like International Mother Language Day, International Day of Sign Languages, and International Decade of Indigenous Languages, to sillier days that have been memed into existence, like World Emoji Day and Talk Like A Pirate Day. > > In this bonus episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about celebratory days, years, decades, and more with some relationship to linguistics. We’ve also recently learned that people in the UK have been celebrating National Linguistics Day on November 26th and many lingcommers are excited about the idea of taking those celebrations international: World Linguistics Day, anyone? What we learned putting this episode together is that celebratory days take off when groups of people decide to make them happen so…let’s see how many different locations around the world we can wish each other Happy World Linguistics Day from this year! > > Listen to this episode about celebratory days, years, decades, and more with some relationship to linguistics, and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon. World Linguistics Day is in 2 days!

lingthusiasm: > Before there was English, or Latin, or Czech, or Hindi, there was a language that they all have in common, which we call Proto-Indo-European. Linguists have long been fascinated by the quest to get a glimpse into what Proto-Indo-European must have looked like through careful comparisons between languages we do have records for, and this very old topic is still undergoing new discoveries. > > In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch gets enthusiastic about the process of figuring out Proto-Indo-European with Dr. Danny Bate, public linguist, host of the podcast A Language I Love Is…, and author of the book _Why Q Needs U_. We talk about why figuring out the word order of a 5000-year-old language is harder than figuring out the sounds, and a great pop linguistics/history book we’ve both been reading that combines recent advances in linguistic, archaeological, and genetic evidence to reexamine where these ancient Proto-Indo-European folks lived: _Proto_ by Laura Spinney. We also talk about Danny’s own recent book on the history of the alphabet, featuring fun facts about C, double letters, and izzard! > > Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here. > > **Announcements:** > > In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about celebratory days, years, decades, and more with some relationship to linguistics! We recently learned that people in the UK have been celebrating National Linguistics Day on November 26th and many lingcommers are excited about the idea of taking those celebrations international: World Linguistics Day, anyone? What we learned putting this episode together is that celebratory days take off when groups of people decide to make them happen so…let’s see how many different locations around the world we can wish each other Happy World Linguistics Day from this year! > > Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 100+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. > > **Here are the links mentioned in the episode:** > > * Danny Bate on Bluesky and Twitter > * ‘Why Q Needs U’ by Danny Bate > * Danny Bate’s 'A Language I Love Is…’ podcast (Gretchen’s episode about Montreal French and Lauren’s episode about Yolmo) > * ‘Proto; How One Ancient Language Went Global’ by Laura Spinney on Bookshop.org and Amazon > * 'Proto-Indo-European and Laura Spinney’ on Danny Bate’s 'A Language I Love Is…’ Podcast > * Simon Roper on YouTube > * Jackson Crawford on YouTube > * Wikipedia entry for 'Czech language’ > * Wikipedia entry for 'Old Church Slavonic’ > > > You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening. > > To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list. > > You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon. > > Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com > > Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. > > Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo. > > Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

lingthusiasm: > # Lingthusiasm Episode 109: On the nose - How the nose shapes language > > We often invoke the idea of language by showing the mouth or the hands. But the nose is important to both signed and spoken languages: it can be a resonating chamber that air can get shaped by, as well as a salient location for the hand to be in contact with. > > In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about the nose! We talk about why noses are so popular cross-linguistically (seriously, nasals are in 98% of the world’s languages), what the nose looks like inside (it’s bigger than you think!), and increasingly cursed methods that linguists have tried to use to see inside the nose (from giving yourself the worst headache to, yes, sticking earbuds up your nostrils). We also share our favourite obscure nose-related idioms, map the surprisingly large distribution of the “cock-a-snook” gesture, and try to pin down why the nose feels like an intrinsically funny part of the body. > > Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here. > > **Announcements:** > > We’re 9 years old! For our anniversary, we’re hope you could leave us a rating our review on your favourite podcast app to help people who encounter the show want to click “play” for the first time: we’ll read out a few of our favourite reviews at the end of the show over the next year so this could be your words! > > People have responded super enthusiastically to the jazzed up version of our logo that we sent to patrons earlier this year! So we’ve now made this design available on some very cute merch. Wear your Lingthusiasm fandom on a shirt or a mug or a notebook to help spot fellow linguistics nerds! > > We’ve also made a new greeting card design that says {Merry/marry/Mary} Holidays! Whether you say these words the same or differently, we hope this card leads to joyful discussions of linguistic variation. > > In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about our favourite words ending in nym! We talk about We talk about how there are so many kinds of nym words that are weirder and wackier than classic synonyms and antonyms, how even synonyms and antonyms aren’t quite as straightforward as they seem, and why retronyms make people mad but are Gretchen’s absolute favourite. Plus: a tiny quiz segment on our favourite obscure and cool-sounding nyms!. > > Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 100+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. > > **Here are the links mentioned in the episode:** > > * Wikipedia entry for ‘N400 (neuroscience)’ > * The Free Dictionary entry for 'Idioms - Nose’ > * 'Cross-Cultural Cognitive Motivation Of English And Romanian Nose Idioms. A Contrastive Approach’ by Ana-Maria Trantescu > * 'Cultures think alike and unlike: A cognitive study of Arabic and English body parts idioms’ by T.M. Bataineh, & K. A. Al-Shaikhli > * WALS entry Feature 18A: Absence of Common Consonants > * Wikipedia entry for 'Yele language’ > * Wikipedia entry for 'Nasal vowel’ > * WALS entry for Feature 10A: Vowel Nasalization > * Kevin B. McGowan > * Wikipeda entry for 'Nasal cycles’ > * Etymonline entry for 'thrill’ > * 'Sound–meaning association biases evidenced across thousands of languages’ by Blasi et al. > * Nez en LSF (langue des signes française) video ('Nose’ in LSF) > * Lingthusiasm episode ’When nothing means something’ > * Lingthusiasm episode ’R and R-like sounds - Rhoticity’ > * For more on the nose and scent, check out our episode ’Smell words, both real and invented’ > > > You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening. > > To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list. > > You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon. > > Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com > > Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. > > Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo. > > Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles. > > This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA). I don’t exactly know how it happened but this turned out to be one of our funniest episodes we’ve ever done. Science side of tumblr please explain to me why noses are just intrinsically funny.

lingthusiasm: > Bonus 103: ¡Pos ya está! Translating Because Internet into Spanish with Miguel Sánchez Ibáñez | Lingthusiasm > > # Bonus 103: ¡Pos ya está! Translating Because Internet into Spanish with Miguel Sánchez Ibáñez > > _Because Internet_ , our cohost’s book about internet language, now exists in four additional languages: Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Spanish. But these translations are also very much acts of creation, of figuring out which things to translate literally, which to leave in English as it’s used globally, and which to translate figuratively so that the spirit of the original comes across more clearly – all questions that are especially acute when it comes to translating a book that is itself about language. > > In this bonus episode, Gretchen gets enthusiastic about the joys and challenges of translating internet slang with Miguel Sánchez Ibáñez, linguist and translator of _Because Internet_ into Spanish. We talk about why _Because Internet_ was the toughest and also most entertaining book he’s ever translated (for some of the same reasons), from coming up with localized Spanish versions of vintage internet memes to making the silly names of pretend people in the example sentences just as silly in Spanish. We also talk about leaving breadcrumbs for future translators in the original text and the special challenge of translocalizing the title: _Arroba Lengua_ isn’t a literal translation of _Because Internet_ , but it fits similarly into Spanish internet slang. > > **Here are the links mentioned in the episode:** > > * Miguel Sánchez Ibáñez > * Miguel Sánchez Ibáñez on Bluesky > * Miguel’s own pop linguistics book in Spanish, ’La (neo)lógica de las lenguas’ > * You can get _Arroba Lengua_ , the Spanish translation of _Because Internet_ at Piodepagina, Casadellibro, and other places Spanish-language books are sold (note that the ebook edition may be more readily available if you’re outside Europe) > * You can also get English, simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Korean copies of Because Internet here > * Lingthusiasm episode ‘How translators approach a text’ > > > Listen to this episode about translating internet slang with Miguel Sánchez Ibáñez, linguist and translator of Because Internet into Spanish, and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon. I am so incredibly excited to share Miguel’s thoughtful and delightful approach to translating Because Internet! If you read this or any of the translations, I would be interested in your thoughts about how the translators approach the text.

lingthusiasm: > Linguistic research has its highs and lows: from staging a traditional wedding to learn about ceremonial words to having your efforts to found a village school disrupted by civil war. Linguistic research can also be _about_ highs and lows: in this case, looking at how high and low tones in Babanki words affect their meaning. > > In this episode, your host Lauren Gawne gets enthusiastic about the highs and lows of fieldwork in Babanki with Dr. Pius Akumbu, who’s a linguist from Babanki, Cameroon, and a Director of Research in African Linguistics at CNRS in the LLACAN Lab (the Languages and Cultures of Africa Lab) in Paris, France. We talk about Professor Akumbu’s documentation work on a wide variety of topics from the relationship of Babanki to other Grassfields and Bantu languages, what happens when words have a mysterious extra tone that is only produced under the right circumstances (floating tones), to that time he staged a false wedding to document traditional wedding ceremonial language – and led to a real couple opting for a traditional-style wedding of their own. We also talk about the process of founding a school in his home village to ensure that children have access to primary education in their own language. > > Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here. > > **Announcements:** > > Lingthusiasm has more than twenty interview episodes, and you can find them all together on our Topics page, where we have a category for our interviews. We also have over 100 bonus episodes for patrons, with a few interviews there as well. > > In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about the joys and challenges of translating internet slang with Miguel Sánchez Ibáñez, linguist and translator of _Because Internet_ into Spanish! We talk about why _Because Internet_ was the toughest and also most entertaining book he’s ever translated (for some of the same reasons), from coming up with localized Spanish versions of vintage internet memes to making the silly names of pretend people in the example sentences just as silly in Spanish. We also talk about leaving breadcrumbs for future translators in the original text and the special challenge of translocalizing the title: _Arroba Lengua_ isn’t a literal translation of _Because Internet_ , but it fits similarly into Spanish internet slang. > > Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 100+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. > > **Here are the links mentioned in the episode:** > > * Pius W. Akumbu on Google Scholar > * Pius W. Akumbu at LLACAN > * Wikipedia entry for ‘Babanki language’ > * **’ M**ultimedia Documentation of Babanki Ritual Speech’ by Pius Akumbu for Endangered Languages Archive > * 'Episode 24: Pius Akumbu on Insider Research in Babanki’ Field Notes podcast > * Lingthusiasm episode ’How languages influence each other - Interview with Hannah Gibson on Swahili, Rangi, and Bantu languages’ > > > You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening. > > To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list. > > You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon. > > Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com > > Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. > > Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo. > > Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

Back in 2017, when I was deep in the writing process for Because Internet, I was feeling stuck on the emoji chapter and Lauren Gawne, my cohost on the then-baby Lingthusiasm podcast (we were less than a year old!) offered to read the current draft. I’ll never forget her comment that led to me rewriting the whole chapter: “You realize this is all related to gesture, right?” Immediately, I wanted… April, May, & June 2025: Lauren writes a gesture book!

Title: Jan-Mar 2025: 100th Lingthusiasm episode In the first few months of 2025, we celebrated a podcast milestone: 100 episodes of Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! To celebrate, my cohost Lauren Gawne and I did a special double-feature: our 100th episode had 100 “fun fact” reasons to be enthusiastic about linguistics (including a few from former guests) and our… January, February, and March 2025: 100th Lingthusiasm episode

In 2024, I traveled to Europe to speak at several events, including the launch of the Spanish translation of Because Internet. I started studying American Sign Language through the Lethbridge Layton Mackay Rehabilitation Centre in Montreal — my first time in a language classroom since university and it’s been really fun! The 2024 lingcomm grants were awarded. And I collaborated with the Crash… 2024 Year in Review

lingthusiasm: > When we try to represent languages on a map, it’s common to assign each language a zone or a point which represents some idea of where it’s used or where it comes from. But in reality, people move around, and many cities are host to hundreds of languages that don’t show up on official records. > > In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about urban multilingualism! We talk about a recent book we’ve been enjoying called Language City by Ross Perlin, about the over 700 languages spoken in New York City, as well as how we’ve noticed urban multilingualism for ourselves in Melbourne, Montreal, and elsewhere. We also talk about organizations that work with communities interested in reclaiming space for their languages, what linguistic rights are, and how to tell if yours are being taken away from you. > > Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here. > > **Announcements:** > > In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about linguistic landscapes! We talk about contrasts between the signs in the Chinatowns of Montreal and Melbourne, renaming streets from colonial names to names in First Nations languages, how signs can show the shifting demographics of tourism in an area, and how bi- and multilingual Lost Cat signs show what languages people think their neighbours understand. We also talk about our most absurd sign stories, including the Russell Family Apology Plaque, and creative imaginings of official signage, such as the Latin no-smoking sign in a modern-day British train station. > > Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 100+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. > > **Here are the links mentioned in the episode:** > > * ‘Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York’ by Ross Perlin on Bookshop and Amazon > * Wikipedia entry for N'Ko script > * Endangered Language Alliance > * The Endangered Languages Project Mentor Program > * Wikitongues > * Living Tongues Language Sustainability Toolkit > * Living Languages > * The Global Coalition for Language Rights Global Language Advocacy Days > * The GCLR Statement on Understanding and Defending Language Rights > * How we Created the GCLR’s Statement on Understanding and Defending Language Rights > * Say it with Respect: A Journalists’ Guide to Reporting on Indigenous and Minoritized Languages > * Living Dictionaries > * Gretchen’s thread on Living Dictionaries > * Lingthusiasm bonus episode ‘Linguistic Advice - Challenging grammar snobs, finding linguistics community, accents in singing, and more’ > > > You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening. > > To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list. > > You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon. > > Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com > > Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. > > Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo. > > Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles. > > This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

lingthusiasm: > Bonus 102: Reading linguistic landscapes on street signs | Lingthusiasm > > # Bonus 102: Reading linguistic landscapes on street signs > > When we walk around a place where people live, we often see signs of how the people there are thinking about language. Literal signs, from official signage reflecting language policies to informal public notes that reflect who their writers are assuming or hoping will read them. The study of these public and commercial signs, and what they mean about how people are using language in a place, is a field known as linguistic landscapes. > > In this episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about linguistic landscapes and the inescapable linguist hobby of taking photos of linguistically interesting signage. We talk about contrasts between the signs in the Chinatowns of Montreal and Melbourne, renaming streets from colonial names to names in First Nations languages, how signs can show the shifting demographics of tourism in an area, when the menu is in one language but the “help wanted” sign is in a different one, and how bi- and multilingual Lost Cat signs show what languages people think their neighbours understand. We also talk about our most absurd sign stories, including the Russell Family Apology Plaque, and creative imaginings of official signage, such as the Latin no-smoking sign in a modern-day British train station. > > Listen to this episode about linguistic landscapes, and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon. it is a truth universally acknowledged that a linguist who spots a linguistically interesting street sign must take a photo of it

Language is mobile and liable to change … a very large number of words have two or more pronunciations current … giving life and variety to language … it is a free country, and a man may call a vase a vawse, a vahse, a vaze, or a vase, as he pleases. And why should he not? We do not all think alike, walk alike, dress alike, write alike, or dine alike; why should we not use our liberty in speech also, so long as the purpose of speech, to be intelligible, and its grace, are not interfered with? James Murray, aka the original guy behind the oxford english dictionary, being pretty damn tolerant for 1895

lingthusiasm: > We asked you if a burrito was a sandwich, and you said ‘no’. We asked you if ravioli was a sandwich and you said 'heck no’. We asked you if an ice cream sandwich was a sandwich and things…started to get a little murky. This isn’t just a sandwich problem: you can also have similar arguments about what counts as a cup, a bird, a fish, furniture, art, and more! > > So wait…does any word mean anything anymore? Have we just broken language?? It’s okay, linguistics has a solution! > > In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about why deciding what’s in and what’s out of the definition of a word is so dang tricky, why people love to argue about it, and how prototype theory solves all the “is X a Y” arguments once and for all. > > Note that this episode originally aired as Bonus 9: Is X a sandwich? Solving the word-meaning argument once and for all. We’ve added an updated announcements section to the top and a few new things about prototypes and meaning to the end. We’re excited to share one of our favourite bonus episodes from Patreon with a broader audience, while at the same time giving everyone who works on the show a bit of a break. > > Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here. > > **Announcements:** > > In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about fictional gestures with Eric Molinsky, host of Imaginary Worlds, a podcast about sci-fi, fantasy and other genres of speculative fiction! We talk about the Vulcan salute from Star Trek, the Wakanda Forever salute from Black Panther, and the three-finger Hunger Games salute, and how all three have crossed over with additional symbolism into the real world. We also talk about gestures that have crossed over in the other direction, from the real-world origins of the Vulcan salute in a Jewish blessing, the two-finger blessing in the Foundation tv series from classical Latin and Greek oratory via Christian traditions, as well as religious gesture in the Penric and Desdemona series, smiles and shrugs in A Memory Called Empire, and more. > > Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 100+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. > > **Here are the links mentioned in the episode:** > > * Original episode on Patreon: ’Is X a sandwich? Solving the word-meaning argument once and for all’ > * Lingthusiasm bonus episode ’Liveshow Q and eh’ > * Wikipedia entry for 'Prototype Theory’ > * 'Memes in Digital Culture’ by Limor Shifman > * Ann Leckie on Fangirl Happy Hour > * Jaffa cake: cake or biscuit? (UK) > * Crostini: bread or biscuit? (Aus) > * Tomato: fruit or vegetable? > * cup vs. bowl vs. vase > * cup vs. mug > * No Such Thing as a Fish (podcast) > * Wikipedia entry for 'Harlem Shake’ > * Wikipedia entry for 'Numa Numa’ > * Wikipedia entry for ’Gangnam Style’ > * Lingthusiasm episode ’Translating the untranslatable’ > > > You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening. > > To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list. > > You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon. > > Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com > > Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. > > Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo. > > Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

lingthusiasm: > TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are an evolving genre of media: short-form, vertical videos that take up your whole screen and are served to you from an algorithm rather than who you follow. This changes how people talk in them compared to earlier forms of video, and linguists are _on it!_ > > In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch gets enthusiastic about the linguistics of tiktok with Adam Aleksic, better known on social media as etymologynerd. We talk about how Adam got his start into linguistics via etymology, the process that he goes through to make his current videos get the attention of people and algorithms, and how different forms of media (like podcasts vs shortform video) relate differently to their audiences. We also talk about the challenges of writing a book about language on the internet when it changes so fast, comparing the writing process for Adam’s upcoming book Algospeak with Gretchen’s book Because Internet. > > Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here. > > **Announcements:** > > In celebration of our 100th bonus episode we’ve decided to go back into the vault and revisit our very first bonus episode - with updated sweary commentary! We’ve made this extra bonus bonus version available to all patrons, free and paid, so feel free to send it to your friends! > > In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about your linguistics questions! In honour of our 100th bonus episode of Lingthusiasm, and because our first advice episode was so popular, here’s another episode answering your advice questions, from the serious to the silly! > > Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. > > **Here are the links mentioned in the episode:** > > * Adam Aleksic’s website > * etymologynerd on TikTok, Instagram, and Substack > * Algospeak by Adam Aleksic > * ‘Where Do Memes Come From? The Top Platforms From 2010-2022’ by Aidan Walker for Know Your Meme > * Lingthusiasm episode ’Emoji are Gesture Because Internet’ > * Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch > * 'It’s Complicated - The Social Lives of Networked Teens’ by Danah Boyd (pdf) > * Lingthusiasm bonus episode ’Words from your family: Familects!’ > * 'Language and the Internet’ by David Crystal (2001) > * Lingthusiasm episode ’Helping computers decode sentences - Interview with Emily M. Bender’ > > > You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening. > > To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list. > > You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon. > > Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com > > Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. > > Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo. > > Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

lingthusiasm: > Bonus 100: Advice #2 - Fun linguistic experiments, linguistic etiquette, and language learning scenarios | Lingthusiasm > > Are there linguistics things in your life that you would like advice about? In honour of our 100th bonus episode of Lingthusiasm, and because our first advice episode was so popular, here’s another episode answering your advice questions, from the serious to the silly! > > In this bonus episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about your linguistics questions! We give advice about fun linguistics experiments you can do with your friends, aging out of the coolest slang demographic (it will happen to us all eventually!), and several etiquette questions, including how much to accommodate other people’s accents, asking about other people’s linguistic backgrounds, and getting people to stop correcting your grammar by rechanneling them into linguistic curiosity. Plus, many questions on learning languages in various scenarios: when you have mixed feelings about how they’re doing gender, when you want to connect with a heritage language, when you’re seeking opportunities to practise but don’t wanna be weird about it, and when you’re trying to learn a less popular language for your area. And finally: a lightning round of more questions! > > Listen to this episode about your linguistics questions, and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon.

lingthusiasm: > When we talk about language reclamation, we often think about oral traditions. But at this point, many Indigenous languages also have considerable written traditions, and engaging with writing as part of teaching these languages to children is important for all of the same reasons as we teach writing in majoritarian languages. > > In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch gets enthusiastic about multilingual literacy with Dr. Hanna-Máret Outakoski, who’s a professor of Sámi languages at the Sámi University of Applied Sciences in Kautokeino, Norway. We talk about growing up with a mix of Northern Sámi, Finnish, Norwegian, and English, as well as how Hanna-Máret got into linguistics and shifted her interests from more formal to more community-based work, such as “language showers” and the role of play in language learning. We also talk about the long history of literature in Sámi, from joiks written down as early as the 1500s to how people are still joiking today (including on Eurovision), and how teaching kids writing can strengthen oral traditions. > > Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here. > > **Announcements:** > > In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about the linguistics of kissing]! We talk about the technical phonetics terms for kissing (bilabial clicks…plus the classic ling student quadrilabial clicks joke) as well as how different cultures taxonomize types of kissing (the Roman osculum/basium/suavium distinction is still pretty useful!). We also talk about how toddlers acquire the “blow a kiss” gesture, how couples time their kisses around their sentences, and many ways of representing kissing in writing, such as xx, xoxo, and emoji. > > Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. If you join before July 1st you’ll get a sticker of a special jazzed-up version of the Lingthusiasm logo featuring fun little drawings from the past 8.5 years of enthusiasm about linguistics by our artist Lucy Maddox! There’s a leaping Gavagai rabbit, bouba and kiki shapes, and more…see how many items you can recognize! > > We’re also running a poll for current patreon supports to vote on the final sticker design! This sticker will go out to everyone who’s a patron at the **Lingthusiast level or higher as of July 1st, 2025.** > > We’re also hoping that this sticker special offer encourages people to join and stick around as we need to do an inflation-related price increase at the Lingthusiast level. Our coffee hasn’t cost us five bucks in a while now, and we need to keep paying the team who enables us to keep making the show amid our other linguistics prof-ing and writing jobs. > > **Here are the links mentioned in the episode:** > > * Hanna-Máret Outakoski (university profile) > * ‘Developing Literacy Research in Sápmi’ by Hanna Outakoski > * 'Giellariššu: Indigenous language revitalisation in the city’ by Hanna-Máret Outakoski and Øystein A. Vangsnes (language showers) > * 'An introduction to joik’ by Juhán Niila Stålka > * Wikipedia entry for 'Joik’ > * Sami voices / Sáme jiena (for more information on the archiving of joiks) > * 'Developing Literacy Research in Sápmi’ by Hanna Outakoski > * 'Conceptualizing fireside dialogues as gulahallan’ by Hanna-Máret Outakoski > * 'What is indigenous research methodology?’ paper on Relational Accountability by Shawn Wilson > * Northern Oral Language And Writing Through Play > * Lingthusiasm episode ’Pop culture in Cook Islands Māori - Interview with Ake Nicholas’ > * Lingthusiasm episode ’Connecting with oral culture’ > > > You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening. > > To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list. > > You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon. > > Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com > > Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. > > Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo. > > Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles. > > This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

lingthusiasm: > Bonus 99: The linguistics of kissing 😘 | Lingthusiasm > > # Bonus 99: The linguistics of kissing 😘 > > Kissing, xoxo, quadrilabial clicks, blowing a kiss, chef’s kiss, bisous, kissy-face emoji, cataglottism, and more! > > In this bonus episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about the linguistics of kissing! We talk about the technical phonetics terms for kissing (bilabial clicks…plus the classic ling student quadrilabial clicks joke) as well as how different cultures taxonomize types of kissing (the Roman osculum/basium/suavium distinction is still pretty useful!). We also talk about how toddlers acquire the “blow a kiss” gesture, how couples time their kisses around their sentences, and many ways of representing kissing in writing, such as xx, xoxo, and emoji. > > Listen to this episode about the linguistics of kissing, and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon. This is a particularly fun bonus episode and I’ve been enjoying seeing everyone’s comments on it!

Lingthusiasm was featured in the New York Times’ list of 5 Podcasts for Word Nerds! And here’s print evidence that it happened. The show is often as much about social habits as it is about language — one memorable episode had Gawne and McCulloch discuss “lopsided conversations,” those verbal interactions that can go off the rails if one person is either dominating or not contributing enough.… View On WordPress

superlinguo: > # Gesture: A Slim Guide - Five Fun Facts > > To celebrate the publication of _**Gesture: A Slim Guide**_ __ I’ve selected five facts from/about the book to share: > > 1. **The cover is a deepcut reference to my first gesture research project** > > Gawne & Kelly (2014) is actually work from my honours project in 2007 - it took us a while to write it up for publication. In that experiment, participants watched a short video narrative and marked everything they thought was a ‘gesture’ without being given a definition. On the whole, people agree at a _minimum_ level with Gesture Studies researchers about what a gesture is, but tend to include far more in their definition. The cover illustration from Lucy Maddox captures some of the key gestures from that video. Because we had no budget, I filmed the video of myself narrating the story. > > **2. Learning a signed language will affect the way you gesture in spoken language** > > Research on learners of ASL shows that learning a signed language affects the gestures of people who have spent their whole life speaking English. Gesture and signed languages are two very different uses of the same modality, but they influence each other in interesting ways. > > **3. You can make people imagine emphasis differently by changing the placement of emphatic gestures** > > Hans Rutger Bosker and David Peeters created experimental video clips that you can see here. They took inspiration for their experimental work from the classic McGurk effect in phonetics, where watching a mouth closing like a /g/ while a /b/ sound is played will make the viewer hear a /d/. > > **4. Dolphins and seals demonstrate the capacity to follow human pointing gestures** > > While there is evidence that many domestic animals can follow human pointing gestures, this is the only documented evidence to date that shows this skill in wild animals that aren’t primates. > > **5. People still gesture even if their audience can ’t see them, but the way they gesture changes** > > Speech and gesture are so closely linked up that we can’t help but gesture, even if our audience can’t see us. Experiments show that changing the audience conditions changes how large or frequent gestures are, but nothing stops us gesturing completely. > > The official launch party for _Gesture: A Slim Guide_ will be the April episode of Lingthusiasm, stay tuned! > > **Book overview** > > The gestures that we use when we speak are an important, if often over-looked, part of how we communicate. This book provides a friendly, fast-paced introduction to the field of Gesture Studies. Gestures are those communicative actions made with the human body that accompany spoken or signed language. Paying attention to gesture means paying attention to the fuller context in which humans communicate. Gesture is absolute, in that every human community that has language also has gestures as part of that language. But gesture is also relative, in that it is far more heavily context dependent than other elements of communication. This book provides a broad introduction to current understandings of the nature and function of gesture as a feature of communication. This Slim Guide covers the ways gesture works alongside speech and the different categories of gesture. The way these categories are used varies across cultures and languages, and even across specific interactions. We acquire gesture as part of language, and it is deeply entwined with language in the brain. Gesture has an important role in the origin of language, and in shaping the future of human communication. The study of gesture makes a crucial interdisciplinary contribution to our understanding of human communication. This Slim Guide provides an introduction to Gesture Studies for readers of all backgrounds. > > **Order links** > > **Bookshop .org** (affiliate link) > > **Amazon** (affiliate link) > > **Booko page** (for Australians) I’m very excited that Lauren has finally written the book I asked her for 7 years ago, when I was first encountering the gesture literature and asked her if she knew a good overview. There wasn’t much at the time so she just sent me her lecture notes, but now there is this excellent slim guide!

This summer I spent time with Finnish, Spanish, Estonian, Dutch, Italian, Latin (unexpectedly!), and… well, okay, kind of all of them, at least in museum exhibit form. So I did what any linguist would do and made myself into a guinea pig, comparing four different language learning strategies on four languages to see what happened. I’ve written up an Introduction/overview and some highlights and… July, Aug, Sept 2024: Lo! An un-detached Eurotrip!

lingthusiasm: > Gestures: every known language has them, and there’s a growing body of research on how they fit into communication. But academic literature can be hard to dig into on your own. So Lauren has spent the past 5 years diving into the gesture literature and boiling it down into a tight 147 page book. > > In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about Lauren’s new book,_Gesture: A Slim Guide_ from Oxford University Press. Is it a general audience book? An academic book? A bit of both. (Please enjoy our highlights version in this episode, a slim guide to the Slim Guide, if you will.) We talk about the wacky hijinks gesture researchers have gotten up to with the aim of preventing people from gesturing without tipping them off that the study is about gesture, including a tricked-out “coloured garden relax chair” that makes people “um” more, as well as crosslinguistic gestural connections between signed and spoken languages, and how Gretchen’s gestures in English have been changing after a year of ASL classes. Plus, a few behind-the-scenes moments: Lauren putting a line drawing of her very first gesture study on the cover, and how the emoji connection from _Because Internet_ made its way into _Gesture_ (and also into the emoji on your phone right now). > > There were also many other gesture stories that we couldn’t fit in this episode, so keep an eye out for Lauren doing guest interviews on other podcasts! We’ll add them to the crossovers page and the Lingthusiasm hosts elsewhere playlist as they come up. And if there are any other shows you’d like to hear a gesture episode on, feel free to tell them to chat to Lauren! > > Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here. > > **Announcements:** > > We’ve made a special jazzed-up version of the Lingthusiasm logo to put on stickers, featuring fun little drawings from the past 8.5 years of enthusiasm about linguistics by our artist Lucy Maddox. There’s a leaping Gavagai rabbit, bouba and kiki shapes, and more…see how many items you can recognize! > > This sticker (or possibly a subtle variation…stay tuned for an all-patron vote!) will go out to everyone who’s a patron at the **Lingthusiast level or higher as of July 1st, 2025.** > > We’re also hoping that this sticker special offer encourages people to join and stick around as we need to do an inflation-related price increase at the Lingthusiast level. As we mentioned on the last bonus episode, our coffee hasn’t cost us five bucks in a while now, and we need to keep paying the team who enables us to keep making the show amid our other linguistics prof-ing and writing jobs. In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about linguist celebrities! We talk about start with the historically famous Brothers Grimm and quickly move onto modern people of varying levels of fame, including a curiously large number of linguistics figure skaters. We also talk about a few people who are famous within linguistics, including a recent memoir by Noam Chomsky’s assistant Bev Stohl about what it was like keeping him fueled with coffee. And finally, we reflect on running into authors of papers we’ve read at conferences, when people started recognizing us sometimes, and our tips and scripts for navigating celebrity encounters from both sides. > > Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. > > **Here are the links mentioned in the episode:** > > * ‘Gesture: A Slim Guide’ by Lauren Gawne > * Lingthusiasm episode ’Emoji are Gesture Because Internet’ > * Lingthusiasm episode ’Villages, gifs, and children: Researching signed languages in real-world contexts with Lynn Hou’ > * Lingthusiasm episode ’Bringing stories to life in Auslan - Interview with Gabrielle Hodge’ > * 'Gesture, Speech, and Lexical Access: The Role of Lexical Movements in Speech Production’ by Rauscher et al. > * 'Effects of Visual Accessibility and Hand Restraint on Fluency of Gesticulator and Effectiveness of Message’ by Karen P. Lickiss and A. Rodney Wellens > * 'Effects of relative immobilization on the speaker’s nonverbal behavior and on the dialogue imagery level’ by Rimé et al. > * 'The effects of elimination of hand gestures and of verbal codability on speech performance’ by J. A. Graham and S. Heywood > > > You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening. > > To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list. > > You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon. > > Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com > > Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. > > Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo. > > Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles. > > This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

lingthusiasm: > Bonus 98: Linguistics Celebrities | Lingthusiasm > > Have you ever wondered if there are famous people who lead a hidden double life as a linguist? If you hang around linguists long enough, you’ll start hearing stories of them: musicians, athletes, politicians, and other people better known for their non-linguistic accomplishments who nonetheless have studied anywhere from one linguistics class once to a whole PhD – we’ll claim ‘em all! > > In this bonus episode, Gretchen and Lauren get enthusiastic about linguist celebrities! We start with the historically famous Brothers Grimm and quickly move onto modern people of varying levels of fame, including a fantasy author Gretchen read in high school, the former Prime Minister of Latvia and former Premier of Ontario, a curiously large number of linguistics figure skaters plus a few other athletes, several linguistics musicians, a celebrity chef, and several nerd celebrities. We also talk about a few people who are famous within linguistics, including a recent memoir by Noam Chomsky’s assistant Bev Stohl about what it was like keeping him fueled with coffee. And finally, we reflect on running into authors of papers we’ve read at conferences, when people started recognizing us sometimes, and our tips and scripts for navigating celebrity encounters from both sides. > > Know of any other celebrities with a linguistics background? Let us know, and maybe we’ll find enough of them to do a second celebrities episode someday! > > Listen to this episode about linguist celebrities, and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon.

lingthusiasm: > It’s a fun science fiction trope: learn a mysterious alien language and acquire superpowers, just like if you’d been zapped by a cosmic ray or bitten by a radioactive spider. But what’s the linguistics behind this idea found in books like Babel-17, Embassytown, or the movie Arrival? > > In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about the science and fiction of linguistic relativity, popularly known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. We talk about a range of different things that people mean when they refer to this hypothesis: a sciencey-sounding way to introduce obviously fictional concepts like time travel or mind control, a reflection that we add new words all the time as convenient handles to talk about new concepts, a note that grammatical categories can encourage us to pay attention to specific areas in the world (but aren’t the only way of doing so), a social reflection that we feel like different people in different environments (which can sometimes align with different languages, though not always). We also talk about several genuine areas of human difference that linguistic relativity misses: different perceptive experiences like synesthesia and aphantasia, as well as how we lump sounds into categories based on what’s relevant to a given language. > > Finally, we talk about the history of where the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis comes from, why Benjamin Lee Whorf would have been great on TikTok, and why versions of this idea keep bouncing back in different guises as a form of curiosity about the human condition no matter how many specific instances get disproven. > > Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here. > > **Announcements:** > > In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about two sets of updates! We talk about the results from the 2024 listener survey (we learned which one of us you think is more kiki and more bouba!), and our years in review (book related news for both Lauren and Gretchen), plus exciting news for the coming year. > > Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. > > **Here are the links mentioned in the episode:** > > * Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany on Goodreads > * Lingthusiasm episode on the linguistics of the movie Arrival > * History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences podcast episode 31: The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis > * Wikipedia entry for ‘Edward Sapir’ > * ‘The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’ by Harry Hoijer (1954) (archive.org) > * Wikipedia entry for 'Ekkehart Malotki’ > * Wikipedia entry for 'Hopi time controversy’ > * 'Key is a llave is a Schlüssel: A failure to replicate an experiment from Boroditsky et al. 2003’ by Anne Mickan, Maren Schiefke, and Anatol Stefanowitsch > * 'Do Chinese and English speakers think about time differently? Failure of replicating Boroditsky (2001)’ by Jenn-Yeu Chen > * 'Does grammatical gender affect object concepts? Registered replication of Phillips and Boroditsky (2003)’ by Nan Elpers, Greg Jensen, and Kevin J. Holmes > * 'Future tense and saving money: no correlation when controlling for cultural evolution’ by Seán G. Roberts, James Winters, and Keith Chen > * Lingthusiasm bonus episode ‘North, left, or towards the sea? Interview with Alice Gaby’ > * 'Samuel R. Delany, The Art of Fiction No. 210’ Interview by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah for The Paris Review (unpaywalled photos here) > > > You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening. > > To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list. > > You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon. > > Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com > > Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. > > Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo. > > Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles. > > This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

lingthusiasm: > Bonus 96: What makes for beautiful writing, scientifically speaking | Lingthusiasm > > Sometimes, a phrase seems to leap off the page and lodge into your mind, crisp and shining like a precious jewel. Other times, you’re reading something and it just won’t stick, your eyes wandering away no matter how hard you try. > > In this bonus episode, Gretchen gets enthusiastic about what psycholinguistics can tell us about creative writing, with Julie Sedivy, who’s a psycholinguist based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and the author of two general-audience linguistics books, _Memory Speaks_ and _Linguaphile_. We talk about moving from the style of scientific writing to literary writing by writing a lot of unpublished poetry to develop her aesthetic sense, how studying linguistics for a writer is like studying anatomy for a sculptor or colour theory for a painter, and how you could set up an eyetracking study to help writers figure out which sentences make their readers slow down. We also do a small linguistic experiment on air using the following words, which you can play along with: luggage, liminal, withstand, tremulous, pulchritude, zoo. > > Listen to this episode about what psycholinguistics can tell us about creative writing, with Julie Sedivy, and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon.

lingthusiasm: > When we first learn about nature, we generally start with the solid mid-sized animals: cats, dogs, elephants, tigers, horses, birds, turtles, and so on. Only later on do we zoom in and out from these charismatic megafauna to the tinier levels, like cells and bacteria, or the larger levels, like ecosystems and the water cycle. With language, words are the easily graspable charismatic megafauna (charismatic megaverba?), from which there are both micro levels (like sounds, handshapes, and morphemes) and macro levels (like sentences, conversations, and narratives). > > In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch take advantage of the aptly numbered 101th episode to get enthusiastic about linguistics from the micro to macro perspective often found in Linguistics 101 classes. We start with sounds and handshapes, moving onto accents and sound changes, fitting affixes into words, words into sentences, and sentences into discourse. We also talk about areas of linguistics that involve language at all these levels at once, including historical linguistics, child language acquisition, linguistic fieldwork, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. Plus: why we don’t follow this order for Lingthusiasm episodes or Crash Course Linguistics and how you can give yourself a DIY intro linguistics course. > > Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here. > > **Announcements:** > > To celebrate Lingthusiasm now having more than 100 episodes, we have compiled a list of 101 places where you can get even more linguistics enthusiasm! This is your one-stop-shop if you want suggestions for other podcasts, books, videos, blogs, and other places online and offline to feed your interest in linguistics. Even with a hundred and one options, we’re sure there’s still a few that we’ve missed, so also feel free to tag us @ lingthusiasm on social media about your favourites! > > In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about what psycholinguistics can tell us about creative writing, with Julie Sedivy, psycholinguist and the author of _Memory Speaks_ and _Linguaphile_! We talk about moving from the style of scientific writing to literary writing by writing a lot of unpublished poetry to develop her aesthetic sense, how studying linguistics for a writer is like studying anatomy for a sculptor or colour theory for a painter, and how you could set up an eyetracking study to help writers figure out which sentences make their readers slow down. > > Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. > > **Here are the links mentioned in the episode:** > > * Lingthusiasm episodes by topic > * Corinna Bechko ‘smallrus’ post on Bluesky > * Donkey Kong structural ambiguity and novel sentence example post on All Things Linguistic > * Auslan Signbank entry for 'my, mine’ > * Taiwanese Sign Language Online Dictionary handshape list > * Our aesthetic IPA chart merch! > * ASL sign for 'student’ by @aslu on YouTube - formal version and informal version > * Crash Course Linguistics > * 'Quantifier Scope Jokes’ post on All Things Linguistics > * ’Billy Mitchell’s Donkey Kong Historical Records Reinstated After Multi-Year Dispute With Twin Galaxies’ article by Kat Bailey on IGN > * Wikipedia entry for 'President of the Republic of China’ > * Wikipedia entry for Hank Chien > * Smallrus artwork by ursulav on Deviant Art > * Nix Illustration post on smallrus in the historical record > > > Lingthusiasm episodes mentioned: > > * 'Schwa, the most versatile English vowel’ > * 'All the sounds in all the languages - the International Phonetic Alphabet’ > * 'Sounds you can’t hear - Babies, accents, and phonemes’ > * 'Why do C and G come in hard and soft versions? Palatalization’ > * 'Climbing the sonority mountain from A to P’ > * Who questions the questions? > * Brunch, gonna, and fozzle - The smooshing episode > * That’s the kind of episode it’s - clitics > * Word order, we love > * The bridge between words and sentences - Constituency > * Cool things about scales and implicature > * Scoping out the scope of scope > * Layers of meaning - Cooperation, humour, and Gricean Maxims > * How to rebalance a lopsided conversation > * Corpus linguistics and consent - Interview with Kat Gupta > * Making speech visible with spectrograms > > > You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening. > > To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list. > > You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon. > > Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com > > Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. > > Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo. > > Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles. > > This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

lingthusiasm: > lingthusiasm: > >> In honour of Lingthusiasm’s 100th episodiversary, we’ve compiled this list of 101 public-facing places where linguists and linguistics nerds hang out and learn things! >> >> # 17 podcasts about linguistics >> >> 1. Lingthusiasm — A podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! >> 2. The Vocal Fries — Language discrimination and how to fight it >> 3. The History of English — From Proto-Indo-European to Shakespeare in 180 episodes (and still running!) >> 4. A Language I Love Is — Guests (some linguists, some not) talk about languages they love and why >> 5. En Clair — Forensic linguistics and literary detection >> 6. Because Language — New guests every episode discuss their linguistic interests >> 7. The Allusionist — Stories about language and the people who use it >> 8. Subtitle — A podcast about languages and the people who speak them >> 9. Field Notes — Five seasons on linguistic fieldwork >> 10. Tomayto Tomahto — Language meets cog sci, politics, history, law, anthropology, and more >> 11. Word of Mouth — A long-running and wide-ranging linguistics program on BBC 4. >> 12. Words Unravelled - A new and very well edited etymology podcast with popular creators RobWords and Jess Zafarris >> 13. Something Rhymes with Purple — Learn the background behind another word or phrase each episode >> 14. Lexitecture — A classic etymology podcast with a huge back catalogue >> 15. A Way with Words — A “lively and upbeat” public radio call-in show about language and culture >> 16. Språket — A radio program in Swedish answering listener questions about language. We don’t speak Swedish, but this was the most-mentioned non-English content in our listener survey! >> 17. Living Voices — A podcast in Spanish about endangered languages of the Amazon >> >> >> # 12 nonfiction books about linguistics >> >> 1. _Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language_ by Gretchen McCulloch (Amazon; Bookshop) — A linguist shows how the internet is transforming the way we communicate >> 2. _How Language Works: How Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning and Languages Live or Die_ (Amazon; Bookshop) by David Crystal — A journey through the different subsystems of language >> 3. _That ’s Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships_ by Deborah Tannen (Amazon; Bookshop) — A pioneering researcher on conversations gives advice on how they can go wrong >> 4. _Memory Speaks: On Losing and Reclaiming Language and Self_ by Julie Sedivy (Amazon; Bookshop) — Scientific and personal reflections on nostalgia, forgetting, and language loss >> 5. _The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building_ by David J Peterson (Amazon; Bookshop) — an accessible guide to making your own conlang >> 6. _Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don ’t Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language _by Arika Okrent (Amazon; Bookshop) — The history behind English’s many oddities >> 7. _Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language_ by Amanda Montell (Amazon; Bookshop) — A well-researched pushback on sexist language ideology >> 8. _Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries_ by Kory Stamper (Amazon; Bookshop) — A lifelong lexicographer discusses the job and the things she’s learned along the way >> 9. _Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty Languages_ by Gaston Dorren (Amazon; Bookshop) — A quick, funny tour of the quirks of 60 European languages >> 10. _Bina: First Nations Languages, Old and New_ by Felicity Meakins, Gari Tudor-Smith, and Paul Williams (Amazon; Bookshop) — The story of Australian indigenous languages’ resistance and survival >> 11. _Says Who?: A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words_ by Anne Curzan (Amazon; Bookshop) — A writers’ style and grammar guide focused on real usage, not made-up rules >> 12. _The Language Lover ’s Puzzle Book: A World Tour of Languages and Alphabets in 100 Amazing Puzzles_ by Alex Bellos (Amazon; Bookshop) — Solve puzzles about writing, grammar, and meaning drawn from real and fictional languages >> 13. _Poems from the Edge of Extinction: An Anthology of Poetry in Endangered Languages_ (Amazon; Bookshop) — An anthology of poems in endangered languages, with commentary >> >> >> # 6 linguistically-inspired novels >> >> 1. _Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators ’ Revolution_ by R.F. Kuang (Amazon; Bookshop) — Imagine a world where linguistics was as vital — and as ethically compromised — as engineering is in ours >> 2. _True Biz_ by Sara Nović (Amazon; Bookshop) — Love, friendship, and struggle at a residential high school for the Deaf >> 3. _Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters_ by by Mark Dunn (Amazon; Bookshop) — “A progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable” full of wordplay and weirdness >> 4. _Semiosis_ by Sue Burke (Amazon; Bookshop) — Human space colonists communicate with sentient plants >> 5. _Translation State_ by Ann Leckie (Amazon; Bookshop) — What does life look like for a perfectly genetically engineered alien–human translator? (Spoiler: weird, that’s what.) >> 6. _Stories of your Life and Others_ by Ted Chiang (Amazon; Bookshop) — Includes the long short story that became _Arrival_ , plus other reflections on humanity and change >> >> >> # 13 linguistics youtube channels >> >> 1. Crash Course Linguistics — A whole linguistics course in 16 videos >> 2. Tom Scott’s Language Files — Pithy language facts explained quickly and clearly >> 3. NativLang — Language reconstruction and the history of writing >> 4. Geoff Lindsay — Facts (and some scholarly opinions) about regional English pronunciation >> 5. The Ling Space — An educational channel all about linguistics >> 6. langfocus — A language factoid channel that digs deeper than many >> 7. K Klein — Language quirks, spelling reform, and a little conlanging >> 8. biblaridion — Teaching about conlanging and worldbuilding, with lots of linguistics along the way >> 9. RobWords — "A channel for lovers and learners of English" >> 10. Otherwords — "the fascinating, thought-provoking, and funny stories behind the words and sounds we take for granted" >> 11. LingoLizard — Widely spoken languages and their quirks, comparisons, and history >> 12. linguriosa — Spanish linguistics (in Spanish), including learning tips and linguistic history >> 13. human1011 — Quick accessible facts about linguistics (and sometimes other things) >> 14. Simon Roper — Language evolution and historical English pronunciation >> >> >> # 10 shortform video channels about linguistics (tiktok/reels) >> >> 1. etymologynerd — Internet speak, etymologies and more! (reels) >> 2. linguisticdiscovery — Writing systems, language families, and more (reels) >> 3. jesszafaris — Fun facts about words, etymologies, and more (reels) >> 4. cmfvoices — An audiobook director talks about the linguistics of voice acting (eels) >> 5. mixedlinguist — A linguistics professor comments on the language of place, identity, politics, technology, and more (reels) >> 6. landontalks — Linguistic quirks of the US South (reels) >> 7. sunnmcheaux — Language and culture from Harvard’s first and only professor of Gullah (reels) >> 8. dexter.mp4 — Talks about many branches of science, but loves linguistics enough to have a linguisticsy tattoo (reels) >> 9. danniesbrain — Linguistics and psychology from a researcher who studies both (reels) >> 10. wordsatwork — Quick facts on languages, families, and linguistic concepts (reels) >> 11. the_language — The Ojibwe language — plus food, dancing, and more >> > > # 8 linguistically-inspired videogames and board games > > 1. Heaven’s Vault (video game) — Decode a mystery hieroglyphic language as a space archeologist traveling with her trusty robot sidekick > 2. Chants of Sennaar (video game) — puzzle your way through uncoding the language and world of The Tower > 3. Tunic (video game) — You don’t need to decode the writing system to enjoy exploring this video game as an anthropomorphic fox, but some people have enjoyed the additional challenge of cracking the writing system > 4. Cypher & Epigraph (video game) — Test and grow your cryptographic skills with these increasingly feendish puzzles > 5. Wavelength (board game) — A relaxed and silly party game featuring comparatives and scales. Very fun for a flexible-sized group. > 6. Xenolanguage (board game) — An ethereal storytelling game about communicating with aliens featuring a unique ouija-board inspired gameplay mechanic > 7. The Gostak (interactive fiction) — A classic text adventure you need to decipher a secret language to play > 8. IPA Scrabble (board game) — Do-it-yourself instructions for making your own International Phonetic Alphabet Scrabble tiles > > > # 7 blogs, newsletters, and magazines about linguistics > > 1. Nancy Friedman’s substack — A professional name developer (that’s a thing!) weighs in on trends > 2. Language Log — One of the longest running linguistics blogs: a few professors discuss their interests > 3. Separated by a Common Language — "Observations on British and American English by an American linguist in the UK" > 4. Sesquiotica — Riffs on etymology and meaning > 5. Language Hat — Another longtime classic, featuring literature, translation, and lexical curiosities > 6. @official-linguistics-post — Sharing posts and conversations of linguistic interest from around Tumblr > 7. Babelzine — A print magazine of language and linguistics, great for school libraries to subscribe to > > > # 8 linguistically-inspired movies and tv shows > > 1. Atlantis: The Lost Empire — A linguist protagonist meets a conlang plot device > 2. Arrival — The most linguistic fieldwork you’ll ever see in a sci-fi blockbuster > 3. Darmok — The Star Trek episode that launched a thousand linguistics memes > 4. CODA — The biggest names in ASL theatre in a multilingual movie > 5. Avatar — The sci-fi epic that gave us Na'vi, one of the best loved conlangs > 6. We Still Live Here: _Âs Nutayuneân_ — A documentary about the Wampanoag scholar who revived her nation’s language > 7. My Fair Lady — A classic musical about dialect, social class, and (of course) love > 8. The King’s Speech — Based on a true story: a speech-language pathologist helps King George VI overcome his stammer > 9. Talking Black in America — A documentary series on African American English, Black ASL, and more > > > # 6 linguistics-related events and physical spaces > > 1. Planet Word (Washington, DC, USA) — An immersive language museum > 2. Mundolingua (Paris, France) — A hands-on museum with exhibits on many branches of linguistics > 3. The COSI language pod (Columbus, OH, USA) — Participate in linguistics experiments inside this science museum > 4. The SLIYS summer camp (Columbus, OH, USA) — The Summer Linguistic Institute for Youth Scholars introduces high school students to linguistics > 5. Kletskoppen Festival (Nijmegen, Netherlands) — A festival about language and language development for children, and their adults > 6. International Linguistics Olympiad (2025 in Taipei, Taiwan) — An annual puzzle-solving competition for secondary school students, with many national editions in various countries > > > # 9 places to get even more > > 1. r/linguistics — A subreddit for discussing linguistics; check out their reading list (Note that we singled out this one for being a big, public, high-traffic community — but if you’d prefer a closed Discord server or a Facebook meme group or any other platform-specific thing, ask other linguistics nerds on that platform and you’ll probably find one.) > 2. Bluesky linguistics starter pack — Some linguists who post actively about linguistics, several of which have also made starter packs for specific subfields > 3. conlang.org’s community list — Pointers to the many places conlangs are discussed > 4. Superlinguo’s list of linguistics podcasts — Many more podcasts than we had room for > 5. A very long list of pop linguistics books on All Things Linguistics — Many more books, too… > 6. Linguistic Discovery’s list of books — …and even more! > 7. High School Linguistics’ books list for teens — Get started early… > 8. Superlinguo’s list for kids _— …_ and even earlier! > 9. Mutual Intelligibility’s resource directory — Links on a wide range of subjects > 10. linguistics humor tag on All Things Linguistic — Just the funny stuff > > > We’ve been doing lingcomm since 2011 and we’re astounded by how many more pop linguistics resources have come into existences since we started and how many difficult decisions we had to make to get it down to just 101 places > > If you’re more on the lingcomm creator side, check out the lingcomm website — we’d love to hang out with you at the LingComm Conference (it’s online!). > > Many thanks to the people who filled out the Lingthusiasm survey over the past 3 years for suggesting over 1000 places where you get enthusiastic about linguistics! Please feel free to highlight your favourites from this list or add further suggestions for the benefit of other people reading!