"He don't know whether he's comin' or goin'." (East Texas)

If anyone ever says “I’m not X but” then the “but” is the postpositional adversartive of dubativity, a unique usage that means “I’m saying I’m not X but you should not believe me”

English question: Wasn't the word "motor" 🚘 for a car an old British English thing? It looks like it's used that way in Gulf Arabic, Persian, (maybe Urdu?), Afrikaans, Hausa, and Tibetan, but no longer in English. 🤔

Really interesting article (from ~30 years ago) on the idea, widespread in modern literature scholarly and otherwise, that the "Curse of Ham" as a justification for African slavery derives from Jewish rabbinical sources. www.jstor.org/stable/14654...

Ruus Al Jibal Arabic word of the day كذلك kadōlɨk 'likewise, also' n.b. 1. ā > ō, often even in high registers.

The baby (13mo) used his first grammatical object today: It was during his sixth or seventh bath of the day. Me: "Do you want another medicine french fry?" Isaac: "Eat that!"

In 19th century dramas, stodgy ladies refer to "Dr. Johnson" as the standard for eloquence. But in person, people described Samuel Johnson this way: - Lots of tics - Unkempt clothes, hair - Impulsive speech, oversharing - Struggled to finish reading books (!)

I read enough 18th century books that reading the phrase "singular demonstratives" always makes me think, "yeah, those are some pretty unique demonstratives, now that you mention it."

If the etymology is correct and the words are related, then Harsusi əmṭūṭ ~ Gulf/Omani Ar. mtūt ~ Ir. motu/matu (?) is a conspicuous example of MSAL/Iranian contact, which I think was something they really wanted to highlight in the new MSAL fish lexicon.

Has anyone had this experience with Google? If you add "-ai" to certain search terms, it just returns no results. Currently trying out search alternatives (again).

Emirati Arabic word of the day متوت mtūt ~ mɨtūt '(dried) anchovies' TIL this word might come from Harsusi (or another Modern South Arabian language) where it means 'stretched'. Quite a few Harsusi words are found in Arabic along the coasts of Oman and UAE.

Words my 4y/o used yesterday "dokan-shop" (Bengali/Eng.) "milkboard" (milk + cupboard) "downer" (more down) "poopy-toot" (repeated 1000x; etym. unknown) Words my 1y/o used "go" "dada" "doh-woo" (door) "no" "do" ("yes", I think?)

Today I was thinking how moderate the weather was for May—in fact the weather app says the high was 107°F / 41°C. 🤷‍♂️

Starting a huge argument with my siblings about banana bread recipes

I just took a faceblindness test—this might be the hardest test I've taken in my whole life.

We could really use some more detailed study on the "analytic genitive" and the "synthetic genitive" in Arabian dialects. Fischer and Jastrow (1980, p.93) say that all Arabic dialects use the analytic genitive; Versteegh (1984, p.18) writes that "virtually all urban dialects" ...

bad news: someone said a friend “didn’t have two nickels to rub together” and I heard “he didn’t have two nipples to rub together” so, that’s the saying now

Sometimes I wonder if there are still people, out there doing analog things like cooking and playing records, or walking on their feet, without YouTubing or TikToking about it I remember seeing a YouTube channel about antivax people with no Social Security numbers, living off the grid

If this was Hans Reichelt's idea of a joke, well played.

Glottal infixation in 1990s English expressive morphophonology Glottal infixation, e.g. LAHOO ZAHER ‘loser’, is an understudied morphological phenomenon in 1990s American English with far-reaching implications for linguistic theory. In this paper I

I am on this cycle where every night something wakes me up earlier and earlier— 5am 5am 3am 2am 1am Mathematically, this means that by Monday, something will wake me up before I even go to sleep

Spending a month in Bangladesh has given me a deep desire for an analog existence.

With that, I believe we bid "ashi" to a memorable thread, and many memorable flavors.

the wife very quickly found it maps.app.goo.gl/zeYxiF3bwgd4...

On this day 13 years ago, I posted this stunning photo from Ecuador. (I distinctly remember taking the photo, but not the name of the town. I think this is a side street in Cuenca? Riobamba? Maybe Rainbolt can find out for me.)

re: FILL/FEEL We went to the trampoline park last week. It was my first time! An hour in, I fell pretty hard and walked out for a break. An employee asked me very clearly, "Are you living?" I laughed it off and said, "Yeah, I'm living." Then she took my wristband off. (She meant LEAVING!)

Microsoft Word glitches that I have been coping with for literally years: (1) Every single time I do find/replace, it deletes the first character I type. I use find/replace thousands and thousands of times. It's pretty annoying if I'm searching for something that is titlecase and case-sensitive.

I spotted a codemixing, script-mixing advert for a drink: "Chill, হবে নতূন feelএ" = Chill, hobe notun feel-e Chill, be-FUT.3 new feel-it (?) "Chill, it will be a new feeling" I'm not sure I understand the suffix on the last word!

This was quite a rabbit trail. These tribal migrations and lineages are not very important for linguistics, but it just shows one of many attempts to draw sharp boundaries between "Najdi" and "not Najdi", in service of Johnstone's tree model.

Clive Holes lists six Bahraini groups and says they all come from the ʕAnazah of Najd—considered the ultimate origin of Bahrain's ruling house of Āl Khalīfah. Do *all* Bahraini ʕArab share their lineage with the royal tribe?! Let's see ... 🧵

The new book records Kumzari & Ruus Al Jibal Arabic mṣaww ‘limpet’. My notes have msaww meaning 'the lead weight on a seine net'. Could the weights have been made from limpets in the past?

The baby has stopped crying at daycare dropoff, the weather is great, and the office-coffeeshop remembers my order (iced americano). It must be time to get on a plane and start over again.

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🚨 Prepare your download folders! 🚨 New open-access comparative lexicon of fish and marine species in Modern South Arabian + Kumzari 😍 www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.116...

If I start an alt to post about running I'll either go by Rick Shaw, or ..: Otto "Rick" Shaw

Hello, here is a table about verb forms reproduced from Ingham's North East Arabian Dialects (1982), p.52.

I just bought 300 pills for about $8 at a corner store, manufactured in Bangladesh. On Health Warehouse (US), they would cost $66. On US Amazon, the same pills would cost $147.

Kid English phrase of the day question mark (said out loud to mark questions) ex "Who invented ACs question mark?" "Carrier. Why do you say question mark?" "Because it's a question."

Occam would have loved the new internet

I checked Qafisheh (1997) and his entry has the headword "ghawa (common var. gahwa)". But if you tally his examples, "gahwa" appears 19 times, more than twice as often as "ghawa" (only 8 times)!

My clipboard has stopped working and is only pasting something from 3-4 days ago. Perhaps I should start restarting my computer semiannually instead of annually?

The Malaysian sun bear • the world's smallest bear • its tongue can reach 30 cm long • it was first described by Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles • it is now vulnerable because it is hunted for its bile

In honor of the first thunderstorm I've seen since coming here, I hereby present: Bengali word of the day কালবৈশাখী kalboishakhi 'an April thunderstorm' (usually in the afternoon) কাল kal 'season, time' বৈশাখ Boishakh 'first Bengali month' ী -i suffix? :) news: www.dhakatribune.com/opinion/op-e...

reminds me of this garden path headline i saw a couple days ago

I have seen a couple of small car accidents in Dhaka traffic but it seems like people pretty much just glare at you and then you both keep driving

Kaaps language gains formal recognition with the launch of its first dictionary capetowner.co.za/news/2026-04...

"To use two languages familiarly, without contaminating one by the other, is very difficult: to use more than two is hardly to be hoped. The praises which some have received for their multiplicity of languages, may be sufficient to excite industry, but can hardly generate confidence." Dr. Johnson

তালুকদের talukdar taluk 'property' < Pers. تَعَلُّق 'property' < Ar. تَعَلُّق 'attachment' (?) -dar 'possessive/agentive suffix' < Pers. ـدار সুইটস shuytsh(?) < Eng. sweets

Formerly Buttsville

my watch: "You worked out for 126 minutes and burned 1,749 calories yesterday! Why not keep it going?" me: "nah I'm good"