Do you want to shape the future of the Irish language?☘️ Wikimedia Community Ireland is seeking an Irish Language Officer to lead our efforts in developing the Irish language across Wikimedia projects, with a special focus on #Vicipéid! For more: wikimedia.ie/2025/10/17/o...

It wouldn't be the Friday of the first week back to teaching without a small meltdown the pecularities of English orthography Related: "Subtly" needs more vowels

Sometimes being social scientist makes you very sincerely say things like "I have at least one more paragraph on rurality marinading in my brain"

New piece. The data presented by @thejcpa.bsky.social and @counterhate.com about antisemitism on X is stark: it is being spread to hundreds of millions of people. Not just antisemitism, but OVERT antisemitism. And that shift means far more than people realize. It won't be long before it leaves X.

A weird immigrant thing is the acute joy in realising that four of the top five people you have most recently texted are actually local. Making friends in Germany can be so hard, but after three years, I seem to have cracked it

For #parents: "fostering #bilingualism doesn’t require fancy programs but consistency & genuine value" #Educators: can "change how #multilingualism is treated in schools. . . [by honoring] the full range of #languages students bring, they tell children that every part of their identity matters." 🗣💬

The first of the three corpora of German-English bilingual children's early speech that we've been working on for the last few years is finally publicly available! 🥳 🎉 talkbank.org/childes/acce...

I have had the great privilege of authoring this report on barriers for ISL interpreters and I’ll be presenting at its launch next week in Dublin. Attendance is free and the event has ISL and English interpretation You can register attendance at the link www.eventbrite.ie/e/report-lau...

🚨 Open PhD position in sign language #linguistics 🚨 The focus should be on the structure of signed languages, or connect to other research profiles at the department (e.g. computational linguistics, acquisition, typology, multilingualism) su.varbi.com/en/what:job/... Deadline: 15 October 2025

After the fastest Ausländerbehörde Termin of my life, I promptly sent @davesayers.bsky.social an email signed as "Mage" 🤦‍♀️

I find it endlessly frustrating that one of the biggest empirical findings from sociolinguistics is consistently ignored. Change doesn't come from children making mistakes. Change comes from adolescents incrementing existing probabilistic patterns. I haven't read this paper but hopefully it's good.

Great to see this new edition of the Mercator dossier on Gaelic education in Scotland, brought right up to date by @dringebirnie.bsky.social An authoritative overview of provision for Gaelic at all levels research-management.mq.edu.au/ws/portalfil...

This conference was so incredible that I have completely lost my voice

The place to buy a used car @ #Ll16 @mglass.bsky.social

Something I didn't get to say yesterday: We heard over and over during the event about "human-centered" approaches to "AI". But if refusal is not on the table (at every level: individual students and teachers right up through UNESCO) then we have in fact centered the technology, not the people.

Here is a useless fact, in the lead up to #LL16: just over .5% of the total Dodge-make vehicles in Germany are currently in one of five used car dealerships which are within about 20km of each other

If you’re struggling with how someone can be both an atheist & a Jew in good standing, it’s prob bc you’re assuming “Jew” and “Christian” are parallel terms. A Christian is, broadly, an adherent of the Christian religion. A Jew is a member of a people whose distinctive practices include Judaism.

Modern AI tools emulate the classic con-man tricks of mentalism, tricking people into believing that they’re far more clever - and sapient - than they actually are. Fantastic piece by @baldurbjarnason.com : softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llme...

I think this is correct. A PhD is not a signal of innate intelligence, but rather of perseverance and grit in the pursuit of knowledge. Conflating LLMs with PhDs is a category error.

Love to see my friends succeed! Looking forward to hearing more about this, @annemldrs.bsky.social

#Chancen | Am Steinheim-Institut in Essen ist im Rahmen der DFG-Forschungsgruppe 5663 Aschkenas in neuen Lebenswelten eine Stelle als wissenschaftliche*r Mitarbeiter*in zu besetzen | Details: www.jewishstudies.de/de/nachricht... Bewerbungsfrist: 31. Juli 2025

Is the semi-colon on its last legs? Insights from Elaine Vaughan @unioflimerick.bsky.social via @drivetime.bsky.social @rteradio1.bsky.social www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2...

With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.

Call for incoming researchers for 2026: Come to #Bielefeld and #CRC1646 on a scholarship and work with us on linguistic creativity! All details can be found here: www.uni-bielefeld.de/sfb/sfb1646/... #BLinguistik #linguistics

Very excited that Breathing Spaces panel I organised (with the usual suspects!) was accepted to the PLURILINGMEDIA conference in December. We've come a long way since 2019, and I can't wait to really get into it

I uncovered this yesterday while emptying a box of books from my husband's childhood home. I have no memory of buying this particular edition

a must-see plaque in glasgow

Not to restart old discourse, but I firmly believe that people who don't wash their legs do not rely on public transit, especially in hot weather

Have just seen this on FB, and made me love Tim Curry even more. From an interview he gave about an ill-fated on-set affair while filming Muppet Treasure Island.

Wonderful to hear of ‘Abhainn Burn River’, a new book by students in Donegal and Tyrone that features writing in Irish, English and Ulster Scots. The book was inspired by Flann O’Brien, who was born in Strabane, an area in which three languages and three rivers meet.

Account-Habil-ity post (yes, these are still happening!): It is possible that I have too many pictures of car dealerships. Why are there so many car dealerships

My analysis of the Scottish Languages Act 2025, passed unanimously by the Scottish Parliament this week. It mostly deals with Gaelic but also makes some provision for Scots.It's a complex,incrementalist measure whose significance will only become clear over time bellacaledonia.org.uk/2025/06/20/t...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... #lace

Small-town NRW Soundscapes: getting my nails done, listening to the nail techs chatting in Vietnamese that is frequently punctuated with „genau”

For a culture that is stereotypically thrives on negative politness, Germans get very huggy when it's your birthday! (Is that why you're expected to bring your own cake? Is it an excuse for your colleagues to give you hugs?)

Pride of the Déise is back with an incredible lineup, check it out! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ #GCNnews

I had an absolutely wonderful session in class today which started with a discussion of fronting in Yiddish English, and developed into a full discussion of the sociolinguistic situation of modern Yiddish. I introduced them to the concept of "Doikayt", and several came up to Enthuse at me after

The UK is not a single-language state. A powerful argument by @owswills.bsky.social for understanding and valuing multiculturalism. nation.cymru/opinion/the-...

Tomato frog! Ever since I saw a photo of one, I thought I should draw one, as a tomato on the vine. #Art

Okay sure yes I did have two meetings at the same time today, but I also had a meeting with @thecraftycailleach.bsky.social, and it makes my heart unfathomably happy that we are Proper Colleagues now. 12 years of shenanigans and counting

This paper makes important point that we're not talking about impact of AI on reading enough. Marking work that's full of AI is demoralising but in some ways, the threat AI poses to comprehension is bigger than the threat to what students produce... www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... #AcademicSky

Incredibly privileged to have been able to contribute to this. As scientists we should not accept the Cass review, nor the associated reviews, as scientific.

I really wish that people who talked about "[Topic/Similarity] in 'all three Abrahamic religions'" would have the common respect not to refer to the Jewish side of things as the Old Testament

The provisional conference schedule for Sport, "islands", people and politics, being held at the St Magnus Centre in Kirkwall, Orkney, Saturday, 28 June. Might have space for a few seats: please let me know. @bssh.bsky.social @northernstudies.bsky.social @morayhouse.bsky.social @insuhi.bsky.social

Language Attitudes and Ideologies day is always my favourite - My students have reported their queer friends overwhelmingly find the Hamburg variety of German the sexiest, regardless of where they're from originally, and we had a spirited conversation about why that might be

Hyped for AI? Maybe don’t be

Didn’t think I’d ever get a chance to reuse this

What was the cause of your Monday Meltdown? Mine was no one being able to tell me what the correct formatting for citations with multiple references should be. Like, obviously it's chronological, but not everyone agrees, apparently!

🧵 Yesterday we released our new risk assessments of social AI companions. They are alarmingly NOT SAFE for kids under 18—they provide dangerous advice, engage in inappropriate sexual interactions, & create unhealthy dependencies that pose particular risks to adolescent brains. tinyurl.com/2nvypku2