Mongolians are celebrating the end of #IWDP2025 (and the last of the warm weather) with a cornhole and tug-of-war tournament!

Currently setting up for the meeting of the National Deaf Association of Mongolia. Enkhbaatar, Association president, does a little crowd warm up asking people about the meaning of the flag.

🔊 PSA for nondisabled people 🔊 It's time to step the FUCK up if you wanna be an ally. ASL interpretation is being targeted by right wing cry baby douchebags. Shut this shit down when you see it. SPEAK UP. This barrage of ASL hate is heavier than usual.

As a disabled web accessibility practitioner. This pisses me off. Extremely. GENERATIVE AI DOES NOT AND CANNOT EVER REPRESENT DISABLED PEOPLE. Just fucking hire disabled people like me who know what they're doing. Believing AI over disabled people is ABLEISM and DEHUMANIZING. For fucks sake.

Oh my goodness! I am in love with this holiday ASL song from Gallaudet. 😍😍😍 youtu.be/Cy6kxqe0XQw?...

the progression of AIDS treatment in my lifetime, from how terrifying it was as a child in the 80s to stories like this 40-odd years later, is genuinely one of the human race’s most awe-inspiring scientific achievements. it was a nonnegotiable death sentence for SO LONG

I’m always looking for things that explain a lot but that people have a hard time remembering. Examples: Air is stuff. Pee comes from blood. All land vertebrates have a single common ancestor. Venus is bright enough to cast visible shadows. Clouds are heavy. Bones are alive. Any others you know?

A great quote for the linguistic anthropologists among us: "We anthropologists [...] must re-examine basic premises and realize that English language patterns of thought are not a necessary model for the whole of human society." — Leach, E. R. (1961). Rethinking Anthropology. p. 27. 🐦🐦

My linguistics professor from undergrad, Marc Zender, used to call the Great Vowel Shift as the Great Vowel Movement. It's the fact that the manufacturer is "UG" that really gets me.

"Whatever direction linguistics may take, I hope that more and more linguists will engage with the social issues that spring from linguistic diversity." -- William Labov (2016: 596) #linguistics #Labov #social #justice #sociolinguistics

Happy Solstice everyone The Ursid Meteor Shower peaks tonight and tomorrow night. These meteors come from debris left by Commet8P/Tuttle. Not as active as the Perseids at just five to ten per hour but, still makes for a nice evening, lights out, in a warm dark hot tub. tech.news.am/eng/news/512...

The minute is called that because it's the first minute (small) part of the hour The second-order minute part of the hour is called...the second And before we had milliseconds, there was a period when a second was divided into 60 "thirds" (!!) From the "time" episode of @lingthusiasm.bsky.social:

I appreciate that this has been the example in "anankastic conditional" for 18 years

Happy Solstice, everyone! ❄️🌍

at 100 degrees there’s a phase transition to ふわふわ~ fuwa-fuwa 😅

Bill Labov was obviously a brilliant and field-defining linguist, but what I find even more inspiring at the moment is how many of the tributes I'm seeing come from women and POC he taught, mentored, inspired, and helped make space for.

Vale William Labov. Inspired by a colleague on X, I think my favourite Bill Labov quote is: “I have resisted the term *sociolinguistics* for many years, since it implies that there can be a successful linguistic theory or practice which is not social.” Thank you for everything, Bill.

This is your monthly reminder that the Yiddish verb for "to whisper" is *shushken* (שושקען). A cat can *myavken* (מיאַװקען) and a baby bird will *pipken* (פּיפּקען) and leaves blowing in the wind can *shurshen* (שורשען) 🐦🍂

I taught your work to my intro students this semester! We were talking about methods in socioling that get at hidden beliefs, e.g. matched guise experiments.

Every one of my baby sociolinguists cited Social Stratification and/or Consequences of Being a Lame in their final papers. And it was my joy to teach those papers again for the 10th time. In 20 years, those students will certainly be teaching Labov’s work too ❤️

I noticed across various writing assignments that multiple students characterized people who embrace language change as "indifferent" or "not caring" about language, even when the person in question is excited + curious about changes or actively fighting to preserve variation. Hmmm.

I asked my linguistics students before a class whether they thought some languages are older than other languages. Almost every one of them said yes, because Old English obviously has to be older than Modern English. Guess I learned a lesson about defining the terms of a question!

linguistics

I love an iconic neologism. I feel like these pair nicely.

"Computer generated machine #translations cannot render culturally appropriate translations as would be provided by live #interpretations from a human sign language #interpreter." #SignLanguage #SignedLanguages

“So it’s a useless, unnecessary word,” the grumbler might continue. To which I say, “Listen, buddy, by that measure all synonyms are useless and unnecessary, but if you wanna come for my synonyms you’re gonna have to pry them from my… ✨frigid deceased paws✨.”

What do you get when you blend two words that mean the same thing? ✨A third word that means the same thing.✨ gigantic + enormous = ginormous chill + relax = chillax And irrespective + regardless = irregardless

Not to be over serious about it on a Saturday morning, but in this sense, language purism is a bit like a belief in moral responsibility. 🤔 (1/…)

When I talk with scientists about their communication projects I ask them to start with 1) How do you want them to feel? 2) What do you want them to know? 3) What do you want them to do?

She stressed the need to support translanguaging in the classroom by changing the landscape of WHO - who teaches, who interprets, who educates the teachers. Learn more by visiting her at the Center for Latine Deaf Studies at Gallaudet. gallaudet.edu/academic-aff...

Fun pragmatics example: My stepmom was thanking an L2 English speaker and the person reaponded "stop talking" instead of "don't mention it."

I know the pro in pro-drop stands for pronoun, but I still want anti-drop to be a thing. Linguists can have a little reanalysis. As a treat.

Erik Arellano's presentation dives into the lived experiences of Deaf hawkers on Mexico City's metro—vagoneros sordos—highlighting their resilience, culture, and unique way of navigating the city. #Sign10

Stop assuming Deaf people can’t do anything because of “communication barriers” because like… ??? Deaf people have always been able to find multiple ways to communicate. You just don’t wanna do anything other than speak.. the barrier is YOU in those situations.

I am thrilled to share our new paper which investigates the role of continuous measures in linguistic diversity research. We found that children who are exposed to more linguistic diversity (e.g., language, dialect, accent) are perceptually more flexible. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy Friday everyone. This will probably forever be my favorit moment I captured. Not only was Mom nursing her baby back to health after a failed first attempt at flight training. But my little one was laying next to me witnessing this wonderful moment 🪶🦉 #nature #photography

This is the face of a shark! I've stained the mineralised tissues to show that their teeth and scales are both made of the same enamel-like material 🦈 🦷 🧪

@gretchenmcc.bsky.social and @superlinguo.bsky.social this pairs well with your recent bonus episode on "do"!

Lovely sunset making the red line and NOMA looking pretty tonight @capitalweather.bsky.social

#SIGN10 was so muh fun! Met so many new people and added so many WhatsApp contacts

I have a feeling something isn't correct here

I encourage others who might think “I don’t know IS” to give it a try. We can move toward use of IS in all international events to improve direct communication

My favorite word origins are seldom ones that are “exotic.” More often, they concern the everyday. Take “take," a verb that just likes to keep its head down and do work. It’s not English: it’s Scandinavian. It was borrowed early in English—and gradually supplanted the native verb, "nim." Nim!

People who want to make the web accessible need to understand the many different ways that people with disabilities use the web. This W3C resource offers a good introduction to how disabled people navigate the web, and barriers they commonly encounter. www.w3.org/WAI/people-u...

excited to share the first version of my new app for learning sign language annotation and writing systems here at #SIGN10 in Trinidad today web: signlanguagetranscription.github.io iOS: apps.apple.com/us/app/sign-... Android: play.google.com/store/apps/d...

A student stayed after class to give me the most amazing gift basket of homemade goodies, including these magnets. I LOVE them. We could totally sell these as merch at NWAV, Sociolinguistics Symposium, etc.

classic favourite example of structural ambiguity, rescued from the old site

If you're at #SIGN10, come say hi! I'll be presenting a poster on how different sign languages represent numbers tomorrow afternoon in poster room 3.

If you're at #SIGN10, come say hi! I'll be presenting a poster on how different sign languages represent numbers tomorrow afternoon in poster room 3.

On my way to Sign10 and there's a loose grackle in the airport very aggressively claiming the table behind me as his table.