Think I've just had my first encounter with LLM-fabricated language data. Some Indonesian paper mill journal just published a paper containing completely fabricated Siwi data, citing me as the source. (It could have been made up by a human, but it looks like what you get when you ask ChatGPT.)

Looking forward to years of Discourse from people who don’t understand the first thing about naturalisation, dual citizenship and other such things.

One of the surest signals of complete disconnection from reality in this ~fascinating~ piece is the idea of a ‘university focused on modern languages’ in a marketised system. I’m pro modern languages but has the writer met British schooling, British parents, or British 18 year olds?

Yes!

Whatever you think about AI this is just horribly inefficient, no? If you need to read the paper, write the summary, read the AI feedback, edit the AI feedback. All this presumably via endless wrangling of a clunky CMS. Where is the time saving?

This, to me, is actually the more central point. I’m not going to pretend my research into Slavic historical phonology or whatever directly contributes to applied breakthroughs or economic growth. But it gives me a reason to stay in my job where I can teach people things.

The best chapter of "Abundance" is the one on research funding. Nobody really knows what works, but the approach of "more detailed pre-approval by funding bodies" has had a fair go and really failed to deliver the goods. And that's research that is.

Oh sod off. But really, another one into the pile of evidence marked ‘these people won’t know what they had until it’s gone’

Memory unlocked: When I was in grad school and one of our colleagues was leaving, we got them a t-shirt that said Prolixity is the Mother of Obfuscation

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 :)

Basically: unless you can get into a high-tariff university, modern languages and classics are gone, especially if you‘re not in the south-east. Linguistics is going. Drama is going. English is next. Does anyone care? (No.) Hello? (Silence.)

Should undergraduate students pick their specialisation from Y1 (like the UK) or Y3 (like the US)? South Korea just moved to an earlier specialisation (like the UK), which reduced student wages because they were less able to adjust to a changing job market www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This entire post mentions ‘staff’ and ‘students’ once, as recipients of an ‘open’ and ‘creative’ narrative of the ‘governance story’. This is fine and normal.

I feel like this is a proper British @mtsw.bsky.social ‘because they like them and want them to win’ moment.

A false friend for the ages: In some Latgalian dialects, the word for ‘cow’ (Standard Latvian _govs_, same root as _cow_, Old Irish _bó_, Latin _bos_, _bovine_ etc.) is [gusʲ], which is phonetically identical to the Russian word for _goose_ (Latvian _zuoss_, English _goose_, Latin _ānser_ etc.)

Fun fact: the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus the Great (539 BCE) pretty much marks the halfway point of recorded history so far. Everything since—the Persian Empire, Alexander, Romans, Middle Ages of course—is closer to us than to the first invention of writing.

Of course we should reject pessimism, and I don’t mean it as a criticism of @sundersays.bsky.social specifically, but it’s the inevitable consequence of treating ‘immigrants’ (ie foreigners) as OK to be subject to Legitimate Concerns™️, it’s just now being extended to British ethnic minority folks.

*waking up* oh we’re at this stage of the US authoritarianism speedrun. just fyi the next step after ‘he’s dead’ is ‘it’s a body double’.

I genuinely think a lot of people in British academia just kind assumed it was appreciated by the government that obviously we're a sector the UK has a comparative advantage in and so worth protecting just from a national interest pov. I still don't really get why that turned out to be false.

AI has been talked about in terms of making skills (or rather their products; this distinction gets conveniently erased) freely accessible. But what it really does is take the product from the control of the skilled practitioner to the owner of the tech, making the skills worthless in market terms.

It’s… not? Imperial history is also ‘actual English history’? This whole submersion of England by empire has been raked over for… decades?

Some photos as August draws to a close. Scotland is all right, really.

we used to build household shrines to Going On The Computer and it's no coincidence that as we abandoned these we started straying further from god's light

‘Financial exigency’ you say?

this is widely thought to be because on the current trajectory no one believes there will be any people, culture, or environments to measure in 2029

I have just come back from teaching a summer school and witnessing a group of students having, like, a screaming match about — of all things — phonological theory, in a language I don’t understand, at midnight, in a McDonald’s halfway round the world from where I live, was just the best feeling.

Delighted to see this article of mine in the new issue of Éigse! "Manx lexicology and etymology: four case studies".

Pleased to see this published (open access, of course). I have a paper on Celtic historical phonology in this volume, which you can get here doi.org/10.5281/zeno.... 1/🧵

Pleased to see this published (open access, of course). I have a paper on Celtic historical phonology in this volume, which you can get here doi.org/10.5281/zeno.... 1/🧵

The special issue of Pedagogical Linguistics from the ICHL 2021 workshop on historical linguistics at school is now out, and you can read our paper on the almost total absence thereof in the UK, and some possible improvement opportunities: www.jbe-platform.com/content/jour... (open access)

Great ISRF article here on the unspeakable disgrace of UKHE executive management in the neoliberal era. Which stage are *you* at? isrf.org/blog/a-new-r...

OK so we've just published a whole bunch of papers on how the UK should be thinking about economic strategy. The main argument is that we should think about our deep assets and invest in those comparative advantages. Here's a synthesis paper www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publications...

Post a banger that's not in English you say? Don't mind if I do youtu.be/bGNT5Uh-WKw?...

First paper in Glossa Contact exemplifies LVP with a case study from Abui (Timor-Alor-Pantar language family), spoken in east Indonesia. Consider submitting your own research! #linguistics www.glossacontact.org/index.php/gc...

Kyiv is now under a massive combined attack of russian ballistic missiles and drones.

Indeed, a big part of the hostile environment policy was that this was explicitly a threat hanging over every employer and HEI sponsoring visas. When I was a sponsored worker people would tell me quite openly that I was being treated the way I was because of the terror of a UKVI audit.

Got lapped at parkrun lads

Cliff posting will continue until morale improves.

Please, explain to us benighted migrants how we should have responded to a hostile speech.

Never mind the policies, the language Starmer uses - about human beings who want to do nothing worse than work, study, live with their families or seek refuge here - is simply appalling

Guys, we already have a 10 year route to ILR! It’s a bin fire! Why would you want more of it?! We’re at the stage where the simplest hypothesis is that the people running the country do simply hate foreigners, even when said people wear a red rosette.

If you are interested in building a better education but aren’t following John’s work, you really should. Some of the best thinking on these issues I’ve seen.

Truly shameful stuff. Labour simply pandering to the most bigoted voters and deliberately making it harder and more expensive for immigrants to become part of British society.

Force people into a rat race for security instead, and they'll do everything they can to get and stay ahead. They'll cut corners. They'll take shortcuts. And, yes, they'll readily have a computer do all of their thinking for them.

Begging for 1 (one) journalist to ask these people a follow-up question about how many of these actually existing jobs are going unfilled because the university teaching is so poor there aren’t any good candidates.

A lesson repeatedly applied to immigrants (and therefore repeatedly ignored).

Very cool and normal management

PUBLICATION DAY - finally! Why does nearly half of humanity speak languages descended from a single common ancestor? That question fascinated me enough to write a book about it, hopefully it will fascinate you enough to read it.

Given that Crimea is back in the news, I wrote last year about how Russia’s annexation of Crimea is less about nationalism/ethnonationalism and more about material concerns of corruption and organised crime. Please reach out if you’d like a copy: www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cuny...

LRT, when I was in Warsaw last month I went to the Polin museum and it was absolutely extraordinary. If you have any chance at all, just go. polin.pl/en