The current drama in the Archers is over whether you can say “a jug of cocktail”. Ambridge is divided. I find it anomalous, I think, but it ought to be easy to get this sense (compare “a jug of pork pie”: less likely, but definitely grindable). #linguistics

SynTeach is going to #LSA2026! We're doing focus groups while we're there so if you're interested, fill in the form and tick the LSA box. We're looking for teachers and students, people who loved syntax and people who hated it... anyone with syntax Thoughts! #linguistics forms.gle/PiBYpVPr1yg2...

Any other linguists watching this Doctor Who spin off? Definitely room for a linguist in the United Nations of the Land. #linguistics

App idea for someone to make pls: duolingo but for people who a) only want to learn enough to go on holiday in a month's time and will not continue after, & b) are linguists so want it packed with grammar info in order to extrapolate e.g., 'she would like' from 'I would like'. Thanks. #linguistics

My 3mm needles are MISSING. Where can they be?? I don’t lend my good ones and I’m faiiiiirly sure I haven’t got a stray project somewhere (or if so I can’t find it).

Very much enjoyed using the construction just now “… which I wonder if means…” #linguistics

I’m in this!! #linguistics

If you're in Kent: this is tomorrow! It's free, open to all, and will be really interesting. Lots of stories from the editor of the House of Lords Hansard. You need to book your free ticket at the link. @babelzine.bsky.social #linguistics www.kent.ac.uk/whats-on/bab...

SynTeach is a project looking at how syntax is taught in higher ed. Our next stage is FOCUS GROUPS—whether you loved or hated syntax, we'd love to talk to you! Sign up to be contacted as we're recruiting now: forms.gle/PiBYpVPr1yg2... #linguistics

We tried the new Live Translation feature that Apple has heavily marketed. It turns out to be optimized for Spanish as spoken in Spain (pop. 49 million) as opposed to Latin America or the Caribbean (663 million), which makes it kind of a disaster to use in the U.S. And that's just one problem. Alas.

@gretchenmcc.bsky.social @superlinguo.bsky.social In your Labov and the bunny episode you asked 'is this example going to start showing up in people's lecture slides?'. Can confirm, yes it is.

We're hosting this event at @unikent.bsky.social at the end of the month! So excited to hear all the goss about transcribing the House of Lords bickering! It's free and there is wine, so I'm in #linguistics #language

The 'short proposal' option here would be a great conference poster for someone doing linguistic fieldwork on an under-described language. Focussed conferences like this are really fun too. It's in Bielefeld, which does exist, I know people who've been there wwwhomes.uni-bielefeld.de/jhartmann25/...

My train announcer has such a lot of /ʃ/ in his /str/ that he pronounced Strood almost as Shrood #linguistics

WaPo opinion piece claims that 'delve' occurs more in LLMs because AI companies hire a lot of people in Nigeria and Kenya More on the linguistic frequency of 'delve', by the great @kolatubosun.bsky.social, a favorite post at @flaminghydra.com flaminghydra.com/delving-into...

✍️ Education Education, education… and bums on seats A personal memoir of the Blair-era widening participation policy for higher education, that promised opportunity, but left a complex legacy By Dr Pam Jarvis @drpam.bsky.social

idk if this is a weird offer, but I’m really, really good at reading out linguistic experiment stimuli items, at an even pace, with no errors, with the prosody of your choice, in a very standard southern British English accent. If this would be useful to you let me know. #linguistics

🔔 LAST DAYS TO REGISTER 🔔 Don’t miss our @lagbling.bsky.social summer school for 2025 including a range of academic & developmental talks below @linguistlaura.bsky.social 👇🏽 Reserve your spot today!* *The full conference package does not include the summer school. Please register for this separately

Yessssss come and learn everything I know about doing presentations! I’m funny and I will probably wear a shirt with animals on it.

OK so what are folks doing now Overleaf is enshittifying itself beyond usability? Going back to desktop and dropbox files, like it's 2018?

I am but a total basic beginner with R, so my # notes to myself are just a stream of consciousness, like # oh whoops forgot to add the fillers, fixed that now, let's try again

@mixedlinguist.bsky.social amazing-ass spot on Decoder Ring!

LSA Presidential Research Forum Join us as scholars rethink terms like “native speaker” and “bilingual”— and work toward empirically driven, contextually grounded characterizations of language use. Register to attend - www.lsadc.org/ev_calendar_... #LSA #Linguistics #Sociolinguistics

It was #flants day today. I did have to go inside for a bit but now they’ve all shed their wings and I assume found new homes 🐜

If you had 4 hours per week for 8 weeks to teach second years 'morphology and syntax', what specific bit of this topic would you focus on? They know basic phrase structure and that's about it, but they're a good enthusiastic group. #linguistics

I got an email from the 'committee for academic freedom' asking me to sign a petition to say that I shouldn't have to voice beliefs I disagree with. I *love* a dogwhistle (academically speaking...) so I spent my coffee time reading their website.

My patreon is at 722 paid subs right now. My goal is to hit 800 by the end of Pride month. Can you help me out with a quote tweet/vouch?

This is what happens. The uni rolls back a tiny bit in cuts, says ‘good news, languages will not be cut!’ and everyone is relieved but in fact lots of people still lose their careers & the subject is reduced to the point it’s barely functional any more. Don’t ask me how I’m painfully aware of this.

lol have you guys seen this? Spoiler: I don’t think we will be ‘speaking whaleish’ any time soon. #linguistics www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j... We’re close to translating animal languages – what happens then? | Animals | The Guardian

Scots have 100 words for oatmeal. Apparently. Big fan of this interesting use of 'proof'.

Universities have been put in a situation *by the government* where they need to overcharge overseas students in order to balance the books, and then they're penalising for doing so? Unless unis are suitably funded, it makes no sense. Really, there is a better (state funded) way.

The 'safelinks' my university uses to keep me protected have pretty much destroyed the readability of a lot of my emails. I know there's no solution. I know we have bigger problems. I'm just sharing my sadness.

Activism in Progress event tomorrow (7 May, 2pm UK time) with Dr Alia Amir (SOAS): Language policing in multilingual educational contexts. Register here: events.teams.microsoft.com/event/12dad1... #linguistics #language #multilingualism @lagbling.bsky.social @lagbpsc.bsky.social

What's everyone's favourite textbook for language acquisition (undergrad), and why? (Modern, inclusive outlook please!) #linguistics

SynTeach is a project looking at how syntax is taught in higher ed. Our next stage is FOCUS GROUPS—whether you loved or hated syntax, we'd love to talk to you! Sign up to be contacted once we start recruiting: forms.gle/PiBYpVPr1yg2... #linguistics

Thanks everyone who did this yesterday, it was sufficient numbers for me to see it was worth popping an abstract in based on this data! (Survey remains open.)

Hey friends, I know I keep sharing my students' surveys and I get it, they're all quite samey since they're mostly part of the same project. But if you haven't done one yet, I'd love it if you did this one and shared it: universityofkent.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_... #linguistics

Went through all my open tabs today and organised them neatly, closed many, and in the process discovered I've just missed nearly all of #LingComm25 as well as something at the @britishacademy.bsky.social I wanted to attend :( how many other #linguistics events languished in the term-time-tab chaos?

Someone on the Decoder Ring podcast used the term ‘scalding rain’ and it seemed to mean loads and loads of rain. Is this a phrase anyone knows? I never heard it. #linguistics

If you're in the UK and have ever used any kind of gender-affirming voice training (coaching, youtube, whatever), my student would love to hear from you. It's anonymous! universityofkent.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_... #linguistics

Good luck and solidarity today, Newcastle friends. @ucu.org.uk @newcastleucu.bsky.social

If you missed any Activism in Progress talks organised by the LAGB Linguistics and Racial Justice Committee @linguistlaura.bsky.social, you can catch up on our YouTube channel! Watch the series here: www.youtube.com/@LAGB-com – and don't forget to subscribe

Just noticed that 'per se' is something of a negative polarity item for me (when someone used it in a positive context 'spoken English is non-standard per se' and I found it very slightly not idiomatic). Is this just a known feature, or am I weird in having this association/restriction? #linguistics

If you'd like to take a student's survey on attitudes to accents, one of ours has one right here: universityofkent.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_... You'll need to have spent most of your childhood in the UK to be eligible. #linguistics

Dropbox is finally at its limit. Are we all just paying several different companies for storage at this point, or is there an alternative way that I don't know about? Also going to have to upgrade my icloud soon because it's just convenient to have my photos sync easily and it just feels like a lot.

Odd Things In Books: my current detective novel, set in the UK, written by a UK author, with UK characters, has a clue set around the difference between a men’s vs a women’s shoe size 8 (shoe sizes are the same in the UK).

I agreed to do this in part because I'd get a chance to underline that if we judge people for their accents, we're stereotyping them... #linguistics The Traitors: how trustworthy is a Welsh accent? A sociolinguist explains theconversation.com/the-traitors...

I'm doing the accessibility checker thing on my slides, and most of microsoft's pre-set colour schemes don't meet the text contrast threshold. Puzzling, and also sad that I now have gross colours on my slides because the designers can't do their own job properly.

The LAGB's Activism in Progress series begins again next week with Dr Leigh Harrington on fuel poverty (via discourse analysis) at 2pm GMT on Wed 13 Jan. Register here: essex-university.zoom.us/webinar/regi... #linguistics