Yes to this dream of “a web that remembers why we came online in the first place — not to be harvested but to be heard, not to go viral but to find our people, not to scroll but to connect.”

For anyone’s information who is looking for my publications: I just deleted my Academia(dot)edu account. No explanations needed. You still find my publications on Researchgate and I plan to start updating on Knowledge commons. My last one I uploaded yesterday: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

False friends are often wrongly called false cognates. These are very different things. For example, 'to molest' is a false friend of Spanish 'molestar' (to annoy) but they are true cognates, both coming from Latin 'molestāre' (to bother). Four graphics, all about false friends and false cognates:

One of the consequences of the IPA lacking a compact symbol for the cross-linguistically common open-central vowel is that many authors are resorting to the slightly higher [ɐ(ː)] as a substitute. Technically, there is [ä], but people seem to hate it for some reason, probably that in several ...

🎺 #CallForPaper 11th Fonologi i Norden meeting, Lund (Sweden), Feb 12-13, 2026 ❄️ #FiNo invites submissions in #phonology, incl. #WorkInProgress. Focus on Ls spoken in #Nordic countries encouraged but not mandatory. ⏰ 1-page abstracts due Nov 9, 2025 🔗 fonologiinorden.wordpress.com/2025/09/10/f...

Viskligär bisi.

Om noen runeinteresserte der ute har ønskemål til hva de ville vært interesserte til å lære litt om, så er det fortsatt mulig å komme med forslag.

We are proud to announce that 1,000 manuscripts are now published on manuscripta.se, advancing our mission to make #medieval and #earlymodern manuscripts in Sweden accessible worldwide. #iiif #MedievalManuscripts #MedievalSky

The disconnect between public presentations of research and the actual research is ever-widening. Someone sent me this meme about an "MIT study" ... The study is available here: dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721....

Concerning basics in phonology Icelandic has restructured the syllable quantity system and done away with contrastive vowel length. This has not happened in Elfdalian, or many Swedish dialects in Finland, or parts of Norrland (e.g. Jämtland, Norrbotten), nor in the exiled ones from Estonia/Ukraine.

The phonological innovations are in fact thorough in comparison to some Scandinavian varieties. Even standard Swedish or Norwegian are more conservative on many accounts. Secondary diphthongisation, delabialisation & things (devoicing/epenthesis) happening to consonant clusters, for a starter.

Can Modern Icelandic speakers read old Icelandic sagas from the 1200s? 🧵 #Icelandic #sagas

North American English has largely done away with length distinctions—but not entirely: weeping willow [ˈwipʰːɪŋ ˈwɪləw] We ping Willow. [wi ˈpʰɪŋ ˈwɪləw] *We* ping Willow. [ˈwiː ˈpʰɪŋ ˈwɪləw] ː lengthens the preceding sound ˈ indicates stress on the following syllable 1/

What's your *alīnabugô? It's the reconstruction of what people speaking Proto-Germanic, the distant ancestor of English, called an elbow 2000 years ago. Here's my second set of 4 graphics showing 16 body parts in Proto-Germanic and its major medieval and modern daughter languages. 1/

Onko tietoa tai vinkkiä tällaisesta romaanista vuosien takaa (ainakin toistakymmentä)?

This is so awesome! I always thought that through the simplifications of Mishnaic Hebrew, the Classical Hebrew tense/aspect-problem was done with. But alas! The complexities are back in a new permutation in Modern Hebrew! @olawikander.bsky.social @bnuyaminim.bsky.social tlv1.fm?s=%D7%96%D7%...

This is so awesome! I always thought that through the simplifications of Mishnaic Hebrew, the Classical Hebrew tense/aspect-problem was done with. But alas! The complexities are back in a new permutation in Modern Hebrew! @olawikander.bsky.social @bnuyaminim.bsky.social tlv1.fm?s=%D7%96%D7%...

Today I’m here with a different kind of post: not an infographic about etymology but a dialect map of the word for ‘child’ in Brabantine, my grand-parents’ native language. I wrote a post (reading time: 5 minutes) about the map and the dialects in the Netherlands: www.tumblr.com/yvanspijk/78...

When we see the sentence like ”Language shapes the way we think”, the likelihood that the author is a linguist is minimal. Daniel Stähr is no exception; the text tells us he’s an economist. I tend to see a pattern: Linguistics is a field of research frequently messed with in other disciplines.

Often fed crap blowing our minds off as linguists. I go first: (1) Language X is ”older” than other languages (nonsensical to compare age) (2) X & Y are dialects if the are ”mutually intelligible”, languages if not (intelligibility isn’t among top 3 criteria to settle this relationship) #langsky

Often fed crap blowing our minds off as linguists. I go first: (1) Language X is ”older” than other languages (nonsensical to compare age) (2) X & Y are dialects if the are ”mutually intelligible”, languages if not (intelligibility isn’t among top 3 criteria to settle this relationship) #langsky

Sweden's Swedish-language success at #Eurovision www.aussievision.net/post/sweden-... via @aussievisionnet.bsky.social #Swedish #language #music #langsky

Visste du att finskan bevarar hundratals urnordiska ord? T.ex. ”lattia” (golv) och ”autuas” (salig). Är du intresserad av det uråldriga samspelet mellan germanska språk och fenniska språk, och de många olika perioder då lånord kom in och blev en del av urfenniskan? sites.utu.fi/nordiska-for...

Yeah, Finnish basically treats titles like this as nouns. There's also a meaning difference: "Lapset laulaa Let it go" = The kids sing 'Let it go' "Lapset laulaa Let it go'ta" = The kids sing the song 'Let it go'.

It always surprises me to see a case ending in one language attached to a codeswitch into another. Ran into these lately: Finnish: [Let It Go]'ta "Let It Go" (partitive case) Uzbek: Abu Hurayra [roziyallohu anhu]dan Abu Hurayra [God have mercy on him]-from "from Abu Hurayra RA"

Visste du att finskan bevarar hundratals urnordiska ord? T.ex. ”lattia” (golv) och ”autuas” (salig). Är du intresserad av det uråldriga samspelet mellan germanska språk och fenniska språk, och de många olika perioder då lånord kom in och blev en del av urfenniskan? sites.utu.fi/nordiska-for...

I have no sauna at home. But I do have a piano. So here is my piano version of Sweden’s 2025 Eurovision entry Bara bada bastu (‘“Just take a sauna”). Congratulations to KAJ for placing 4th.

This linguistic sketch of KAJ’s song in Swedish dialect is now out, five pages with lyrics, English lyrics running in parallel and a commentary to the dialectal traits in its own column with hyperlinks. #Eurovision2025 #ESC2025 #Eurovision #Langsky www.researchgate.net/publication/...

This linguistic sketch of KAJ’s song in Swedish dialect is now out, five pages with lyrics, English lyrics running in parallel and a commentary to the dialectal traits in its own column with hyperlinks. #Eurovision2025 #ESC2025 #Eurovision #Langsky www.researchgate.net/publication/...

BTW: when KAJ asks for water to be thrown on the bath-stove, they first use an occasional Finnish loan ”heittää”. Here they use ”häll” ’pour’. The obvious ”kasta (’cast’) vatten” can’t be used since it means ’to pee’. When in sauna I’d say ”kast bad (’bath’)”. #ESC2025 #Eurovision2025 #Eurovision

What does "ång(g)on åpp" 'steams up!' mean here? It's not technical sauna speech, but a three-layered pun: In Swedish the metaphor is from a locomotive: pressurise the boiler = ready to go & with the metaphor concretised: heat the sauna> go in & side meaning: the stove emits the hot steam. #langsky

By the way and fun fact: "heittää" is probably of Proto-Germanic origin and the original *sēja-/*sēje- (later Proto-Germanic *sēaną) is cognate with Scandinavian "så" 'to sow'. The suffix -ttä- in earlier *šej-ttä- is perfectly legit and productive in Proto-Finnic.

Ha-ha LOL 🤣. Exactly the same assumption was reported by Martin Persson when he announced his article on the dialect of KAJ. In the article itself (which you can read in Swedish) he does not embarrass himself by mentioning that reported initial "misunderstanding" though. sprakbruk.fi/artiklar/naj...

Even if this Vörå /u/ by KAJ (pro /ɵ/) co-incidentally resembles the Ancient Nordic */u/ from which it originates, its distribution on the map and in the vocabulary suggests that contact with Finnish made it merge with /u/ in ”bonde”. #langsky #eurovision2025

The most commonly quoted lyrics transcription (easy to find by search engine) misinterprets the sequence ”e je”, writing *”Bastubröder är je vi som glöder”. The correlate in Swedish is ”Bastubröder (d)et är vi som glöder”. The first ”e” is the pronoun ”he” corresponding to ”det”. #langsky

For experts in Norwegian phonology: We gain nothing by assuming "short" diphthongs to avoid assuming overlength. AFAIK the diphthong in "heit" 'hot' (m/f) is indistinguishable from that in "heitt" 'hot' (nt). And there is no difference in length between "heitt" and "le:tt" 'light'. #langsky

Finnish influenced intonation is very audible for a Scandinavian ear. KAJ's Vörå has less of that than e.g. Helsinki, but more than South-Ostrobotnia, where you find Närpes. Yet, the only dialect with documented lexical accent is found southwest of Helsinki. #langsky www.academia.edu/48282723/Var...

Over and again KAJ uses the expletive pronoun "e". In a periferal arc of dialectal East Nordic descendants of "he" replaces the Swedish pronoun "det". It has been suggested that like in Faroese an initial "th-" would have been lost, but I believe it comes from Old Nordic deictic "hitt". #langsky

The retroflex lateral flap ”L” is rare, and hard to distinguish from the rhotic [ɽ] (see wikipedia above). In Ostrobotnian dialects it stands in near-complementary yet unpredictable distribution with an alveolar lateral ”l”. Some loanwords have ”l” in positions where native words have ”L”👇🏻 #langsky

The genesis of this ”L” is not fully understood, but at least for nearly a millennium it has been part of a north & central Scandinavian consonant inventory, likely contrastive with alveolar ”l” in the area. Foreign influence on urban speech suppressed it. #langsky www.youtube.com/watch?v=c70I...

This ”L” occurs in Ostrobotnian Swedish (except Karleby-Nedervetil), Estonian Swedish in general, including Gammalsvenskby in Ukraine. It also occurs in the dialects of south-western Finland west of Kimito & most dialects of Norway, except those in the west and some in the high north 👇🏻 #langsky

Languages used in Eurovision songs this year and the most dominant language in those songs.

This🧵continues to open KAJ’s Ostrobotnian Vörå dialect from Finland through the lyrics of Sweden’s viral Eurovision entry Bara Bada Bastu. For earlier bits & chorus, follow quote. For lyrics & sound in Vörå & subtitles in English, follow link. Nåjaa!👇🏻🧵 #eurovision2025 #langsky youtu.be/IPfSmZ8r_MM

New book highly praised by linguists from around the world establishes Shaetlan as a language in its own right

This must be the first time in…forever when *all* Nordic countries qualified for the #esc final? So we have Finland, Finland, Norway, Faroe Islands and Iceland. Nice. #eurovision #esc2025

In Vörå, the determing masculine ending always appear as ”-in”. In some Ostrobotnian dialects the feminine takes ”-en”. In the north the masculin may lose the vowel. This also happens in Nylandic east from Helsinki: ”vidn”. There -i- matches the Old Nordic vowel. #langsky dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG....

”..Vedin vår värmer lika bra, ..som tango me Arja Saijonmaa” Again, an Old Nordic short stressed syllable in ”vedin”, but with late Old Swedish opening of ”við” to ”ved”. The inverted word order is also old; both orders are used but with different endings: ”våran ved” or ”vedin vår”👇🏻 #langsky