sometimes I’ll make a joke to my wife and she’ll roll her eyes and ask if I’m “gonna post that one on bluesky.” I mean, yes, but her tone is very hurtful

no one's ever been in the same room as Wales. Think about it.

Today is the last day that you can repost this image

Really neat study here claiming that the bouba-kiki effect can be overridden by arbitrary phono-semantic similarity matching. (I've only read the abstract so this may not be 100% accurate.)

Same here, I'm not quite sure why.

Happy Solstice my friends! The days are getting longer from here! (At least for those in the northern hemisphere--sorry for the folks whose days are just beginning to get shorter down south...)

out now! the Crip Linguistics Reader has some really important stuff in it, and I hope every linguist will engage and find something to take away from this volume

Anyone have opinions on Firefox alternatives? Floorp, WaterFox, LibreFox, IceCat?

Learned today that “Galápagos” comes from a Spanish word for tortoise, meaning that “Galápagos Tortoise” is, in fact, a tortology

When I first saw this I thought it was a @ucu.org.uk attack ad to protest against increasing casualisation and enshittification of higher education, but no, it's an earnest and serious ad from an allegedly serious university. Unbelievable.

My paper with Eunjong Kong on Korean "short tongue" pronunciation is finally out 🎉 Recently there has been more discussion of "short tongue" in the context of aegyo, a Korean cute speech register, and "short tongue" is one of its linguistic hallmarks. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

these mathematicians, always writing papers like they've got something to prove

second dialect acquisition in The Atlantic! I'm quoted in this piece (along w/@abbyjwalker.bsky.social & other linguists) #linguistics

Me: I'm hip and in touch with youth trends Spotify wrapped: your most played artist was Bach and you have the musical tastes of a 73 year old 💀

This is so fascinating, I'd love to read this.

wtf I am so old lmao

📈 Listen up! 💡 There is a considerable gap in the field of historical linguistics re the diachronic study of tone. 💡 The latest SI of 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢 brings together contributions from linguists specializing in different regions & language families who work on 𝗗𝗶𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗿𝗼𝗻𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗧𝗼𝗻𝗲: doi.org/10.1075/dia....

Looks like the lads who design men's razors have branched out to scissors

Cabbage is red,* Violets are blue.* (*Actually purple, But what can you do?)

Petition to replace the phrase "taking coals to Newcastle" with "taking sausage rolls to Newcastle"

We're excited to re-launch the journal "Innovations in Linguistics Education", a forum for evidence-based research in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) in linguistics! We open for submissions in January 2026. journals.ed.ac.uk/innovations/

There is so much fun & interesting language-related research coming out recently. A fascinating new study from the University of Exeter shows that herring gulls don’t just react to what we say — they react to how we say it. 🔗 tinyurl.com/mta7ba9f 🧵👇 #langsky #linguistics #language

Uhh, that's actually my emotional support chocolate

My students always oooh and aaah when I teach them the phonetics of vowels

Incidentally also _cappuccino_ comes from this same source!

Actually, you’re being pedantic

Tweeting "happy Eid" and "there is no God but God" is apparently "undermining Islam" and deserves a five year prison sentence in Qatar, if you are a Baha'i. www.hrw.org/news/2025/08...

On the left is a rabbit. On the right is an elephant. But guess what: They’re the *same image*, rotated 90°! In @currentbiology.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I show how these images—known as “visual anagrams”—can help solve a longstanding problem in cognitive science. bit.ly/45BVnCZ

Does anyone have a sense of the origins of the term "Standard Southern British English" (SSBE)? It seems to have developed as an alternative to "RP" but I'm not sure who popularised it (if anyone).

Keep your cats indoors and switch to Linux.

New paper out, just accepted to Interspeech! We find that acoustic measures of similarity between English and French only weakly correlate with human judgements. roryturnbull.github.io/papers/Turnb...

While English is undeniably vital for accessing opportunities & fostering community cohesion, it's essential to recognize the UK's rich linguistic tapestry. Languages like #Welsh, #Scots #Gaelic, & others are integral to our national identity & cultural heritage. 🔗 tinyurl.com/4mte5vae #langsky

Do caregivers exaggerate vowels when talking to infants? Prior findings are inconsistent () & the mechanisms unclear. We meta-analyzed 35 studies across 10 languages to disentangle systematic cross-linguistic and methodological variation. Paper: osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧵

Come to Glasgow on May 28 for Phon-UP 3 (Phonetics/Phonology Unconference on Pedagogy)! Attendance is free. Please repost for reach! blogs.ncl.ac.uk/phon-up/

This is a terrible misunderstanding. Your Pope-name is the last thing you ate IN LATIN, + the number of letters in your last name (in roman numerals of course) signed Pope Pirum XIII

can we get human rights for the humans first please?

A new CV section for UNINVITED talks. List of instances I’ve accidentally lectured in unwanted contexts

TODAY is the LAST day to submit an abstract to SLRF! If you research L2s in ANY capacity: submit a 250-word abstract and join us in Flagstaff, AZ, this September for an unparalleled experience discussing the latest work with leading researchers in the field. sites.google.com/nau.edu/slrf...

They're only formants if they come from the supralaryngeal region of the vocal tract. Otherwise they're just sparkling harmonics.

this was published yesterday

mathematicians are wizards

what's wrong babe? you've barely touched your rarohire rochi terochichimomo

Two Weeks In The Death Spiral Of Cardiff University, by an anonymous academic. This is truly shocking read. The Cardiff executive board should hang their heads in shame. voice.cymru/two-weeks-in...

Me, working on my little articles and book projects in February 2025:

I love having a wander around the shops on 13th February. So many anxious-looking men scurrying around. So many men rushing into Card Factory with a debit card and terror in their eyes. So many men trying, with an air of panic, to figure out what their partner actually likes. Just delightful.

Finally finished reading Douglas Stuart's (2020 Booker prize-winning) _Shuggie Bain_. It's been described as "Dickensian" - it's unashamed to show poverty and suffering but has a compassionate emotional core that differentiates it from "poverty porn" that typifies a lot of literature about Scotland.

These days if you say l*g*c*l p*s*t*v*st you'll be arrested and you'll be thrown in jail

in Prey the prey predate the predator, while in Predator, which predates Prey, the predator preys upon the prey.

Never ask a linguist "Is that a word?" because you will always get the same response, "IT IS NOW!" 😃 delivered with some variation of jazz hands like you just won a very low stakes game show and I'm so sorry it's just part of the training it's not something we can control.