I will personally be celebrating St Scholastica’s Day by hearing from @dannybate.bsky.social and @susiedentwords.bsky.social about Danny’s book, Why Q needs U! Absolutely packed room tonight, and I highly recommend the book itself

Dutch sports commentators having read @dannybate.bsky.social's book now pronounce Song Qiwu as [kwiwi]

@Lingthusiasm recently aired a great episode interviewing @dannybate.bsky.social, linguist and author of “Why Q needs U: A history of our letters and how we use them”, about the Indo-European language family: Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/7rYy... Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1...

I have to jump in here! Not only because of the 'what a gorgeous, gorgeous place, please see pics attached' nature of Pécs, but also because opinions differ about whether 'in Pécs' is 'Pécsen' or Pécsett': www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wCa...

Budapest was created out of the cities of Buda and Pest (and the oft-forgotten Óbuda). The place-name Pest likely comes from a Slavic word meaning 'oven, furnace' – compare Slovak pec. I find it strange that one of the cities had the alternative German name Ofen (literally 'oven'), but it was Buda!

SOLD OUT! is an example of an English phrasal verb written in capital letters, both of which are concepts that could well crop up in an upcoming public conversation between me and Susie Dent, for which a few tickets are still available. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/danny-bate...

A first for me today: godfather at a ship baptism (baptising a child of a member of a ship's crew with the ship's bell).

Yes! LOVED H as well as Q, the expository on TH was brilliant. One of the things I loved most was how plainly you drew the path from hieroglyphics to Phoenician to English, and consistently referred back to previous letters to maintain that chain. Just great story telling.

For folks who are fans of linguistics, I highly recommend this book by @dannybate.bsky.social I found it fascinating, enlightening, and an all-around fun read. And even though I’ve finished it, I still bring it with me in hopes I’ll bump into Danny in Prague and have him sign it. 😆

Picked this up on my way to work today and dived straight into it, I'm already hooked. @dannybate.bsky.social is a wonderful story teller.

The guy who owns Amazon shutting down the books section of the Washington Post is beyond parody

My review of the new book 'Runes: A Concise History' is out in the latest edition of the @historytoday.com magazine! The review in brief: runes are great, so is this book, and it does a good job separating runic fact from runic fiction.

they should make a movie series about how it’s irresponsible to use technology to mess with the natural order of things for profit

«Los humanos tenemos una capacidad natural increíble para usar el lenguaje, y además hemos inventado otro sistema, la escritura, que nos permite usarlo para colaborar. Cuando estudias lingüística, la humanidad se ve como algo increíble.» — @dannybate.bsky.social, @lingthusiasm.com

Very glad that the volume ‘The Reconstruction of Indo-European Stop Systems: From the Traditional Model to Glottalic Theories’ (edited by Tijmen Pronk and myself) has now appeared. brill.com/display/titl... Looking forward to hearing reactions to it!

One of the accompanying joys of this new direction for me has been the opportunities to interact with writers and linguists I admire, with the book as my excuse and credentials. When I was 17 and first getting into linguistics, I had Gaston Dorren's books on my shelves. Now he says things like this.

In my private conversations with @dannybate.bsky.social, I've been very complimentary about his alphabet book, Why Q Needs U. But I haven't said much about it in public, I believe. Here then: Why Q Needs U is fascinating, fun and fabulously well written. Because it is.

Such a rare survival - the nave ceiling at Peterborough Cathedral dates from the C13th - it has been overpainted twice but the original design remains - and original paint from the C13th has been found beneath the nail heads...

Dia daoibh, language lovers! In time for St Brigid's Day, there's a new episode of ALILI, all about Modern Irish! The language was the choice of Liam Ó Duibhiolla, an enthusiastic, eloquent expert and the founder of the 'Learn Irish Online' platform. Listen to it here: pod.link/1703401848/e...

The pronunciation of a language is always changing. Its sounds don’t change randomly. Their articulation shifts ever so slightly. Over the centuries, though, the result can be huge. Click my video to hear and see how Proto-Germanic *staumaz became English ‘steam’ over the course of two millennia.

You know it’s gonna be a Danny Bate Banger when the h₁éḱwos drops in

My website offering for February is a labour of love about ancient peoples, migrations and languages popping up where we today might not expect them. It's a biography of an old Indo-European language that met with success in the Middle East, with some help from horses. dannybate.com/2026/02/01/a...

I found this ancient language story from @dannybate.bsky.social absolutely fascinating. #langsky

While rare things happen once 'in a blue moon' in English, in Czech they occur once 'in a Hungarian year' ('jednou za uherský rok'). It's been suggested that this is a legacy of the Ottoman wars in Central Europe, when military service in Hungary could stretch on indefinitely.

I hate to tap the sign but again: this is all made to make in-person education and access to knowledge transfer a preserve of the elite. Human education for the few, bots for the many.

'Puny' is a negative word today, but when it first appears in 16th-century English, it has the neutral meanings of 'junior' (in status) or 'younger' (in age). These archaic senses are a product of its origins: as a French compound of puis 'after' and né 'born'.

Will the real St Brigid please stand up? 👋 Here's the evidence which indicates that the Kildare woman was real - and why this is worth emphasising today, writes Dr Niamh Wycherley from the Dept of Early Irish (Sean-Ghaeilge). @ceilteachomn.bsky.social www.maynoothuniversity.ie/research/spo...

A few days ago, I was invited to the award ceremony for a prize my book 'Die goeie ouwe taal' was announced to be nominated for. As a result, I won't be able to join tomorrow's talk. ☹️ Fortunately, Danny Hieber of Linguistic Discovery will be there in my stead. 😊

This free talk about public linguistics and books is still on for tomorrow (sign up at the link), although @yvanspijk.bsky.social has had to drop out on account of being too successful. But fear not: Daniel Hieber of @linguisticdiscovery.com fame has gallantly stepped up to be the fourth speaker!

Being a journalist is sick: I just contacted a pre-eminent jaguar conservationist in Argentine with a question that has been weighing on me for ages and he wrote back right away with an informed answer.

Bloomsbury, 1933, and each week my father & his pals were going to meetings & marches to try to do something, anything, about the rising anti-semitism in Germany. Everyone was fully aware of what was happening. Fully aware. This was six years before the outbreak of war.

In Norwegian, we took the "Uhu" and threw in a "bro" – 'brother'. The owl is called "hubro". Uhu-brother.

In addition to the standard word Uhu, German names for the Eurasian eagle-owl have included Schuhu, Huhu and Buhu, and I'll be damned if there are better owl names out there.

This essay on my odd relationship to my mother tongue is still one of my favourites -- probably because I first wrote it in Romanian, basically the only essay I've ever done that for. therumpus.net/2021/10/12/t...

This article spends a lot of time in the ancient Greek region of Ionia, and a related fact that didn't fit in is that the geography of Greece has historically included both Ionia to the west and the Ionian Sea to the east, towards Italy – and the region and the sea are unrelated words.

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Mē and mec are variants of accusative 'me' in Old English. Mē is typical of Wessex texts, and mec of Mercian ones (with a final consonant that's still there in German mich). Yet the Alfred Jewel text ('Alfred ordered me made') uses "mec" – evidence perhaps of Mercians working for the Wessex king.

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“O” happy day! This fascinating tome from @dannybate.bsky.social finally arrived to my Swiss doorstep. (We had to wait for the second printing, apparently.) Výborně!

MLK = King www.aidanem.com/word-family-... #MLKDay

‘It can be fun to learn how much method there is in the madness’

New favourite example of scalar implicature

Also, I think, if I was an American President, I would probably not be keen to undermine “your boats landed there” as grounds for possession of territory. I mean, it’s a very defensible argument, but it’s not exactly one in your own interests.

A year now without this gorgeous moron, and I've thought about him and his grumpy face every day of that year – chonky cats leave behind appropriately chonky holes. I still defy any other cat to match him in quality of head-bumps.

#OnThisDay - 19 January - in AD 103 Reburrus, a Spanish decurion in the 1st Pannonian cavalry regiment, received his military diploma granting him Roman citizenship: from Malpas in Cheshire, UK. #AncientHistory 🏺 Image: British Museum (1813,1211.2). Link - britishmuseum.org/collection/o...

*john donne voice* 🎶 thou'rt so vain, thou probably thinkst this bell tolls for thee 🎶

I've just realised that the Smurfs all wear Phrygian caps – is the Smurf village intended to be an idealised Revolutionary France, with Gargamel representing the reactionary forces of the ancien régime?

Seems unfair that you only get to use the bouncy slide to get off a plane when things have gone wrong. The bouncy slide should be a treat they give to the best passengers who did the flight correctly.

Always worth trying your luck with church doors, even in January – some, like those of St George's on the almost-island of Reichenau, open onto a 10th-century series of murals in a building that dates to the 9th century. Now I can add my own photos to an old article. dannybate.com/2023/10/17/t...

Just arrived in Konstanz for a couple of nights. Nothing bad ever happens to people who travel from Bohemia to Konstanz, right? I was assured safe passage by my host.