Historically, the word 'nest' consists of two parts. The part 'ne-' is related to 'nether', while '-st' is related to 'sit'. The distant ancestor of 'nest' meant "place to sit down". 'Nest' is also related to Spanish 'nido' and its Romance relatives. Click my new graphic to learn more:

Yup, that's us, Bretons... We did that. Very flattering, if may say so.

After six years living next to the Prague district of Prosek, it's lovely to visit its warmer, more famous and more alcoholic cognate.

Gone are the days when I would drag my girlfriend to unusual corners of Italy to look at classical and medieval archaeology. Now I do that with my wife.

A small piece of good news in the world: the Australian National Dictionary Centre has secured a source of funding, and forced redundancies are not being pursued.

can't really begin to explain the extent to which I do Not want to be filmed without my knowledge by someone wearing smart glasses while out and about

I was also remembering over the conversation the moment so long ago when my phonology teacher (in my 2nd or 3rd quarter with him) turned to me and said "You really like glyphs, don't you?" It's true! About half my work recently has been on the glyph side of my database instead of the word side

Now I'm excited about this book. It is these questions that people ask so often, I look forward to giving this to people! When you said at the end that really feel like you're amongst friends, it echoed exactly what I've been thinking when I'm listening to ALILI

Turning up like a bad penny, I made another appearance on @norsebysw.bsky.social's channel, in which Jackson graciously gives me the space and questions to unpack ideas and info in 'Why Q Needs U'! Also watch me struggle to accept his very nice words about the book. www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQMo...

Update: Campaigners appear to have won. Transport Minister Martin Kupka has just announced the bridge will stay. (rather it will be dismantled, restored, and then returned to its original location). md.gov.cz/Media/Media-...

Crazy how much folks see Julian as some radical reactionary whose pagan restoration was doomed to fail. That's retrospective Christian propaganda at work. Empire was still majority-pagan & his policies were popular. He just happened to die prematurely & be succeeded by Christian. That's it.

I was describing a church, but I dare believe it applies to me too

A great step forward in Anglo-Czech relations.

🎶 "As the Old Sing, So Pipe the Young" 🦜 Painting of a so-called " Jan Steen Household", ca. 1668-1670. A chaotic household, where everyone does just as he or she pleases, is still called ‘Een huishouden van Jan Steen' in Dutch! 🗃️ #arthistory #language #Dutch #earlymodern @dannybate.bsky.social

The oldest Jewish cemetery in the UK, dating back to the Norman Conquest, was just discovered. www.jpost.com/history/arti...

New ALILI! Back in Scotland for Episode 39, as @davidadger.bsky.social and I have a lovely chat about Scottish Gaelic. We discuss the language's history, from Dál Riata to the present day, and much more. Listen here: Acast: shows.acast.com/a-language-i... Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/27Pm...

New podcast! @dannybate.bsky.social and I chat about Scottish Gaelic, mediaeval sea kingdoms, the spread and retreat of Gaelic in Scotland, influence from Pictish, sounds borrowed from Old Norse, and much more 🐦🐦 podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a... or wherever you get your podcasts :)

Nieuws! 😃 Op 1 oktober verschijnt mijn boek 'Woord voor woord: de verleden tijd van taal' bij Onze Taal. Het bevat maar liefst 70 infographics vol fascinerende taalweetjes, rijk geïllustreerd door Yolanda Huntelaar. De afbeeldingen hieronder laten je kennismaken. Op de site ... 1/

I'm going to put aside the weird feeling of seeing a saint born after I was, but since we know the guy was big on halo 2 there are now people who in 2004-2005 got fragged by a saint on xbox live

"Forget, but never Forgive"

🧩 In the 16th c. complex "cyphers" were becoming increasingly fashionable, as can be seen in G.B. Palatino’s 1545 detailed book on the mechanics of their creation. ❓Can you "decypher" which name it is ? Find out here: bit.ly/42jpQ80 🗃️ #arthistory #earlymodern #skystorians @dannybate.bsky.social

Try not to live your live so that a major university still holds a grudge 550 years later.

This ancient Oxford University grudge has Ea-nāṣir vibes and levels of post-mortem infamy

in academia you have to be young, promising and exploitable or old, accomplished and entrenched, we need more opportunities for the middle-aged, mid-career and just plain mid

Seems trivial to say, but learning a foreign language so often illuminates my native English. Just today, by thinking how a Czech word for the 'primrose' plant (prvosenka) resembles the word for 'first' (první), I then realised that 'primrose' is likewise the 'prime-rose'.

The “problem” with vaccines? They so effective at preventing deaths that they create generations of people that question whether disease was a problem in the first place because they have never experienced the horrors of a world without vaccines.

Oh. My. God!! This is *so* cool!

this is really nothing new, translators have been doing this with machine translation for a long time. and research keeps saying the result is worse and/or takes longer than doing it yourself. ai spreading it to other areas is just gonna make ppl more inefficient lol

My delight in such connections between ancient points in time and space goes in the opposite direction too – like in how the Roman writer Claudius Aelianus wrote a passage in Greek centuries later that unintentionally includes our only Graeco-Roman mention of the Mesopotamian hero Gilgamesh.

It's entirely conceivable that this dude, known only through 7th century BCE Assyrian administrative tablet, would have bore witness to rise & fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire under Ashurbanipal; founding of Byzantium; Nebuchadnezzar building the Hanging Gardens of Babylon & rise of classical Greece.

Sometimes we are called on to make sacrifices, to serve our fellow humans, to do our duty when the call comes. And it is only right that we heed that call. Just saying. So, you know, if the BBC should decide to offer me the In Our Time position, I'd be prepared to do what was needed of me...

“An […] study of 18 genomes from the South Moravian region linked to one of the first Slavic-speaking polities […]” neobvyklý kontext pro výskyt jižní Moravy:) vypadá to na super výzkum

His name is on the second line of the reverse side. He appears to have been interrogated alongside other men for being deserters

I love how we have an Assyrian document from the 7th century BC that mentions a man called "ad-di-ik-ri-tú-šú" – an Assyrian rendition of a Greek male name, most likely 'Antikritos'.

Melvyn Bragg has been one of the last standard-bearers for a really important, and unfashionable, idea: that good conversation, between people who really know their stuff, on complex or difficult subjects, can be fantastic radio - and that the national broadcaster should do this. I hope it endures.

“How can a glottal stop be considered a consonant? You’re not using your tongue or lips to make one.” 🧵 A consonant is defined as a speech sound that involves complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. It doesn’t matter whether that closure happens using the teeth, lips, tongue, or glottis.

I don't get it

Glagolitic! On a tram!

Actually, Frankenstein is a doctor success at the Venice film festival

Well, that was a fun way to spend a year.

forbidden fidget spinner

It is weirdly embarrassing how often I, a linguist, misspell the words "languages"

Old Norse gedda 'pike', which appears in this verse, was borrowed into Scots (and Middle English). It turns up in a few Kirkcudbrightshire place-names: Ged Point, Ged Burn & Ged Strand.

In one Norse saga, there's a reference to an event happening "und Harvaðafjöllum" – 'under the Harvaða mountains'. This unique mention of "Harvaða" is thought to refer to the Carpathian Mountains, from a borrowing of Latin Carpatēs so old that it shows the effects of Grimm's law on the C, P and T.

I'm doing my annual update to my list of linguistics and language podcasts: www.superlinguo.com/post/1584480... If you listen to anything that's not already on the list, please let me know about it! (I wait until something has 5 episode before adding it to the list)

The Latin noun speciēs had a great many meanings for the Romans: 'sight', 'look', 'appearance' and also 'type'. It's from the final sense that the biological term 'species' developed. In Late Latin, speciēs also came to mean 'good, wares'. It's from this use that we get the culinary word 'spice'.

St Adauctus ("Added") was so called because he randomly came forward for martyrdom alongside a priest and no-one knew who he was or what his name was.

holy moly this taught me so much about my own language - especially fascinating are the remnants of proto-germanic that have disappeared from english, german etc but are preserved in finnish words :O