🎉 BREAKING: Maple Leaf Man uses *gasp* British spelling! 🇨🇦📚 #Linguists clutch pearls as Carney dares to add an extra 'u'—clearly the end is nigh! 🍁😱
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj69d89l8l5o #MapleLeafMan #BritishSpelling #ClutchPearls #LanguageHumor #EndIsNigh #HackerNews #ngated

Just created an international linguistics starter package. Includes linguists (all languages) and (English-speaking) linguistic institutions on Mastodon.

https://fedidevs.com/s/Njkx/

If you speak German you might also want to follow the package "Linguistik-Institutionen im DACH-Raum"

In case you are not yet included and would like to be added, let me know! (There are some accounts who commented, that I couldn't add because of their account settings)

#linguistics #linguists @linguistics

Hey masto #linguists: any idea why I can remember all the lyrics to a German song that I've been listening to a bit lately (my German is VERY rusty), but I get lost trying to remember the lyrics to songs in English and Swedish?

Swedish is my first language, and English is my second. I consider myself close to native-speaker level in both.

Wondering if there's some weird brain-link here that I can tap in to for getting better at remembering things.

#TIL that ἀδελφός isn't the only Ancient Greek word for "brother."

There was also

βρά.

So when Kids These Days call you "brah," just assume they've been keeping up on their #AncientGreek

#language
#linguists
#WordNerd

Do #linguists note the word "Boycott" as an interesting curiosity in how we didn't have a word for this concept, then your man Boycott comes along and the word got sucked into not just English, but also every other language. Almost as if the thing couldn't exist properly without the word first being invented.

Are there other examples of words being invented and being so aggressively adopted into many other languages? "Orange" maybe?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott#Etymology

Pretty sure there are some #linguists on Mastodon.
Possibly weird question: the voiceless alveolar sibilant affricate sound in North American English: I notice sometimes that it has found some adoption for initial word sounds where there's no spelling indication that sibilance is part of the word, and indeed where my own pronunciation would not include sibilance.
Is there an accessible paper or anything discussing this phenomenon that might explain theories of its origins in a way a layperson might casually absorb?
I'm really just interested, and cannot even figure out appropriate search strings which might be responsive to this request.

#linguists, riddle me this. Splice two words together. Terrible and horrific. You get, terrific? Which is a completely opposite vibe! Now clearly ific is some kind of suffix and probably doesn't carry it's own meaning that much, so let's ignore horrific for a second, but then how is that that the terr root of terrible, which is also used in terrify, became that meaning in terrific? Terrify and terrific are seemingly ridiculously close in the semantic tree, ify and ific I think being effectively variant forms for different parts of speech, and yet the actual meaning is completely opposite! Contrast with horrific and horrify, which are clearly related, one being an adjective and one being a verb, both meaning the same basic concept. Something horrific horrified you. But something terrific doesn't terrify you.... How does that make sense⁉️ How did that happen? Did the meaning used to be different? Was there some kind of morphing of the spoken or written form over time that ended up fudging one of those into that position? Am I incorrect about my preliminary analysis of the morphemes and their semantics? #linguistics #english

Hey #linguists and anyone interested in #linguistics, and ESPECIALLY native speakers of English:
Please help out this student (not me) with their study:
https://katrina.jhdesai.com/form/

hello #language bubble. in #Germany there is a concept for words called "Teekesselchen", it is for words that are spelled the same, but have more than one meaning to it in one language. Now i just stumbled about the word #inari, which i only know for being a city in northern #finnland. but here in the #fediverse i also learned is is a word for a type of #sushi in #japan. So, #linguists, is there a international version for "teekesselschen"? And what is it called?

So #GPTs are completely unsupervised, eh? No need for #linguists at all anymore? So much for my idea that learning some #NLP during my #PhD program would give me a private-sector option by the time I needed to look for work. Guess I should've checked into that when the #GPT explosion happened. *sigh*

#linguistics #NLProc

@vitalis

There has to be a pun, slang term, or larger cultural context. Are there any #Medievalists or #Linguists in the house? :flan_ranger: :flan_royal:

Random Wikipedia #criticism (rant?)...

One of the things that bugs me about (English) #Wikipedia is how aspects of it are controlled by, for lack of a better word, #pedants, without consideration of the actual #readers - without considering the purpose of an encyclopedia.

One example of this is how, when an article features aspects of another language or dialect - for instance, something from Old English, or Arabic - where the reader will not be familiar with how to pronounce something presented transliterated to a modern Latin/English alphabet, or with a word shown in a non-Latin script entirely.

It used to be common in reference works to give a simple #pronunciation key that was at least close to the correct pronunciation, but was easily understood by a normal literate reader. You know; the stuff that looked like "ED-joo-KAY-shun" or "SHEH-joo-ull" or whatever.

Well, that's not good enough for Wikipedia most of the time. Instead, they give the pronunciation in International #Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), so you get stuff like "æɪ" and "aʊ" and "/ɔː/".

These are absolutely more #accurate guides to how a word should sound. And they are absolutely, completely #useless and #uninformative to 99% of people reading the article.

You know who already knows and is completely comfortable reading #IPA?

#Linguists. Students of language.

You know, the people who *already know* how to #pronounce the words. The people who don't actually need it.

#FFS.

#pedant #unhelpful #rant

The German term "Hippen" comes from the Middle High German "hippe" and means "wafer-like pastry". It is probably derived from the Old French "huppe", which refers to the shape or decoration. In English, they are called "tuiles" (French for roof tiles), as their curved shape is reminiscent of tiles. They usually end up on or in dishes to make them even more pretty. You #linguists out there, prove us wrong!

@blabberlicious Anything by David Crystal - great linguist - his autobiography is called 'Just A Phrase I'm Going Through'.
The Unfolding of Language is a lovely book about linguistics and language evolution, I found it a pleasant challenge as an English grad but possibly familiar territory for someone who has studied linguistics specifically (any linguists who have read it please do weigh in!)
#Linguists #Linguistics #DavidCrystal

What I've taken away from last week's news & roundtable #translation #linguists #ai
https://tipap.mataroa.blog/blog/shocking-news-or-not/

“ #Linguists notice it too, pointing to Google data that shows a spike in the use of “ #coded,” with its current meaning, since the 2010s.” www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/s...

Why Everything Is ‘Coded’ Now

@ohjames
French is no better.

At this point, I’m starting to think #Apple’s allergic to hiring actual #linguists.

Are you a linguist fluent in any of these Nigerian languages: Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Edo, Efik, or Nigerian Pidgin?

Do you have a passion for preserving African languages and ensuring they’re not left behind in the digital age?

Are you skilled in phonetics, transcription, or language data annotation?

If this sounds like you, we’d love to have you on board!

Join us at @dsnai as we work to preserve and promote African languages through cutting-edge AI-powered projects.

Show your interest here: https://bit.ly/Callforlinguists

#Vacancy #datasciencenigeria #AfricanLanguages #Linguists #AIforAfrica

I'm looking for a transliteration tool for English words to Thai pronunciation, as Thai has a phonetic alphabet.

I'm learning Thai and my MIL wants to learn English so I want to make flashcard/post it's that show
the English word : LIGHT
the Thai pronunciation of LIGHT: ________
The Thai word for LIGHT: แสงสว่าง
The English phonetic of แสงสว่าง: S̄æng s̄ẁāng

Any #linguists #polyglots or #translators or #thai speakers that could help me out? Please boost until we find each other. Thanks!

I have a paper on a case of Latin gender agreement in the #ICZN in Article 30-34 that I am looking for eyes on before submitting. Any one interested in pre-review feedback?

#Latinists, #medievalists and #linguists help too!

#ornithology #taxonomy #nomenclature #linguistics Really any hashtag if you language, Latin, birds, and Linnaeus