Books: Indigenous Languages of the Americas and Their Structures: The Saguaro Group (ed.) (2026)

claidheamh "sword" is from Old Irish (bzw. Old Gaelic) claiḋeḃ /ˈklaðʲəβ/, from Proto-Celtic *kladiwos (which was loaned, via Gaulish, into Latin as _gladius_)

i am now the proud owner of a Scots grammar WRITTEN IN SCOTS

I revamped my Wiktionary Audio chrome extension. If you do any phonetic/phonological work and use Wiktionary audio this let's you bulk download it and converts it to a .wav so you can pop it right into Praat.

Gondi has a verb form called the "Future", but it's clearly a modal form perhaps better termed the "Subjunctive". It uniquely has different markers in different persons: -k- in 1p & 2p, -n- in 3p. It's also most likely an old non-past that has been gradually replaced by the new(er) Non-Past.

Just published "Indigenous languages of the Americas and their structures: Sounds" edited by The Saguaro Group #tbls #openaccess langsci-press.org/catalog/book...

New book on language-contact between Niya Prakrit and Bactrian (link to PDF). I wonder how Tarim Prakrit would end up today had it survived. Separation from the IA continuum resulted in massive typological restructuring in Sinhalese and Maldivian, so, ... www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/ddo/artikel/...

let's see Paul Allen's latex preamble

A lovely ancient etymology is that Akkadian had the word unnedukku for 'letter' (the kind you send), borrowed from Sumerian – not a Sumerian word, but rather a phrase meaning 'may you say to them'. It was a common initial request to a fellow scribe, for them to read out the letter to its recipient.

Voice and Argument Structure in Basque by Ane Berro and Beatriz Fernández Including a wide range of examples, this book provides a meticulous examination of Basque's argument structure and voice. #LangSky 🐦🐦 📚 https://cup.org/4rJ2TVF

“Stress placement variability and acoustic stress correlates: The case of Northern Kashubian” by Andrzej Żak (May ’26) www.isca-archive.org/speechprosod...

Akkadian idiom (in Old Babylonian legal tablets): 𒅖𒌅 𒁉𒂊 𒀀𒁲 𒆬𒄀 ištu pê adi ḫurāṣim ‘from chaff to gold’, i.e. everything būšûša u warkassa ša Ḫunnubtum mala ibaššû ištu pê adi ḫurāṣim ša Lamassīma Ḫunnubtum, her property and estate, all that there is from chaff to gold, is Lamassi’s [her daughter]

TFW when you're reading a formal syntax paper with an egregiously false claim about etymology in a footnote. Why even discuss etymology if you don't know anything about it...

Always gotta love a good haplogy!

Can anyone think of a language besides #Coptic with adverbial phrases composed of: 1) adposition; 2) indefinite article; and 3) substantival adjective. The purported Coptic phenomenon is Ϩ︦ⲚⲞⲨⲘⲈ "truly" (lit. "in a true [thing]"): 1) Ϩ︦Ⲛ "in" 2) ⲞⲨ "a" 3) ⲘⲈ "true (thing)" #LangSky #Linguistics

Join us Friday for the next "Stories from the Heart," and hear real-life stories of #languagerevitalization worldwide! Dr. Netra Mani Rai will share about his work to grow writing and speaking in Dumi, a critically endangered language in #Nepal. ⁠📚️ May 15, 5:45 pm Pacific bit.ly/stories-from...

Very important interview with Dr. Hythem Sidky - Mathematics and Manuscripts - reconstructing the Quran of Mohammed's time www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtMQ...

New paper published today. Although the Okhotsk culture in Hokkaido has been associated with the Nivkh since at least Kikuchi (1978), we provide the most detailed linguistic and archaeological evaluation attempted so far. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

South-Central Dravidian languages underwent process where, in a word with an unstressed 1st syllable and a stressed 2nd syllable, the 1st lost it's nucleus due to metathesis, thus bringing stress to the new 1st syllable. Hence for Telugu ‹narambu› ‘vein’, you have Kui ‹ḍrāmbu› ‘sinew’.

Kathmandu Newar has a native word for ‘book’: /sʌpʰuː/ (/sʌpʰuli-/). It’s classically attested as well. Not attested by Genetti in Dolakha Newar. Pahari Newar uses /bʱoː/. The oblique stem for this isn’t attested by Shrestha, but I think cognate to Kath. /bʱwʌ̃ː/ (/bʱwʌ̃tʌ-/) ‘paper’, Dol. /bõɾ/.

youtu.be/LWJzirlCv8I?... I was watching this video on how Fibonacci's original book was really just a practical treatise meant to introduce the decimal numeral system to Europe. There was a similar Tamil treatise published in 1825, meant to do the same, i.e., introduce the decimal system.

This reminds me of a cute little thing Hunza Burushaski does. The #Burushaski consecutive converb (functional equivalent to Gondi -si) is a prefix n-, but this shows up as a suffix -n if the verb is d-prefixed (a lexically fossilized morpheme that probably had diathetic uses in the past), and ...

#TIL Images from Wiktionary article on Proto-Japonic *kamui. en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconst...

I came across a very cool case of three morphemes -ŋ-n-n reducing to [-n] on the surface in (Southern) Gondi: koːnd̪an sakre poːɖd̪erek mehant̪er ‘They graze the bulls morning and evening’. Gloss: koːnd̪a-(ŋ)-(n)n sakre poːɖd̪erek meh-ant̪-er bull-PL-OBL-ACC morning evening graze.CAUS-NPST-3.PL.MASC

i love this random ass footnote (from Huber 2018 "On the Old Babylonian Understanding of Sumerian Grammar")

Another banger interview on Jackson Crawford’s channel with Anthony Yates, this time on the Indo-European verb. I also like Tony using “formal” in a literal sense (“relating to forms”), which isn’t typically usage I see in linguistics, it’s what’s meant by “formal” in math. youtu.be/vQpmDwB3QdE?...

If I got a rupee every time a word for a water body (‘river’ or the like) in Dravidian developed into a generic word for ‘water’, I would have two rupees. Which isn't a lot, but it's cool that it happened twice. *veɭɭam ‘flood’ > Malayalam veɭɭam ‘water’ *yāt̺u ‘river’ > Konda ēr̠ ‘water’

A teacher of mine couldn't explain what the "ne" suffix on subjects in Hindi was, so I looked up online and eventually found the Wikipedia article on split-ergativity.

Fun fact: Malto, a Dravidian language spoken in eastern India (Jharkhand, West Bengal, Bihar), has /q/ and /ɢ/ as phonemes. For example: aɽɢe an̪t̪e qaɲd͡ʑpe-ki naːmi vegetable and fruit-PL name 'name(s) of fruit(s) and vegetable(s)' From youtu.be/pJRgNMH4py0?...

I have been watching her videos for a couple of days now, and it sounds like the Chʼol Maya consonant she writes as ⟨l⟩ is coärticulated as a nasal and a lateral, something like [ŋ͡ʟ]. The Wikipedia page doesn’t talk about this at all, may be dialectal.

An open access history of the #Persian language in pre-Islamic times #Farsi

TIL Latin dēbeō "owe" (whence debt, debit, due, Sp. deber, Fr. devoir) is a contraction of dēhibeō i.e. dē + habeō "to have away from". if you owe somebody something, you literally hold something of theirs away from them.

Hi friends in the #GTA, I'm looking for participants for another round of research on #Cantonese! Please help me share this widely! (Different experiment from before, so sign up again even if you have done the previous one!) Link to the registration form: forms.cloud.microsoft/r/R5t4LfwbnN

First time hearing a Mayan accent in English. Also, cool language. youtu.be/zyA2ohxjKvI?...

In South-Central Dravidian, reflex of *pēyaṇ mean ‘god’. At the same time, there is a widespread word across Dravidian, *pēn, meaning ‘louse’. Gondi lacks a reflex of *pēn ‘louse’, but Kui and Kuwi have it. So in Kui and Kuwi, ‹pēnu› is homophonous between ‘god’ and ‘louse’.

I love how—because of the nature of the corpus material—the translation exercises from Skjærvø's Old Persian textbook are more stereotypically Wheelock's Latin than even Wheelock's Latin itself.

New pre-publication with Sigrid Kjær, #OpenAccess as usual 👇 🐦🐦

Any helpful paleontologist out there who would like to name a newly discovered species Suppiluliumasaurus?

May I introduce to you some really impressive Libyco-Berber monuments? In Bordj Hajar, close to Chemtou in Tunisia, three fragments of massive obelisks have been found. They have been reconstructed in the Chemtou museum (thanks, wikipedia!). Their original height was probably around 3.5 meters 🤯

#TIL the International Phonetic Alphabet can be flavourless

Fun fact: Toda ‹nes̠of› ‘moonlight, moon’ and Kui ‹ɽānju› ‘moon, month’ are cognates. The connecting dots are Gondi (dialectal) ‹nelenj›/‹nellenj›/‹lellenj›, Kuwi ‹lēnju›, Koḍava ‹nelaci›, among others.

I'm 10 pages into a 100-page colonial journal about Bangladesh. I have now read about 30 Wikipedia pages related to the book, skimmed the author's extensive bibliography, and downloaded 3 of his other books. Maybe I will finish the first book. 🤷‍♂️

Fun fact: the Gondi word పేన్/पेन् ‹pēn›, meaning ‘god’, is cognate to words that, in many South Dravidian languages, mean ‘evil spirit’, ‘mad spirit’, or ‘(evil) spirit of the dead’. See image. It's not unlike the difference in meaning between Sanskrit ‹dēváḥ› ‘god’ and Avestan ‹daēuuō› ‘demon’.

If anyone has a copy of Thomas Lehmann's Grammatik Des Alttamil, I'd greatly appreciate if you could share it. 🙏🏽 Z-L**rary is down, unfortunately. :/

If people want to call Egypt by its native name I wish they would use the proper received form Chemia (Χημία) rather than the Egyptological “Kemet”

My paper in the FASAL-15 proceedings is now out. It's on the Tamil discourse particle =ē, one of the two "emphatic" particles along with =dān. It's mostly a descriptive account, plus an attempt to get at a unifying analysis of the particle. ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/jsal/index.php

𒉌𒄿𒈠𒄠𒈪𒆷𒋛𒀀𒈪𒍝𒆬𒄀 𒀭 ni-i ma-am-mi la-si a-mi-za GUŠKIN-an nī mammi lasi amints kurānan NEG.PROHIB speak:2sIMP take:2sIMP my:ACC:neut gold:ACC

Let's try this... Gondi sentences of the day: 𑵬𑶐𑶂𑶗𑵱𑶋 𑵭𑶊𑵳𑶐𑵱𑶐 𑶉𑶐𑶅 𑶅𑶕𑶂𑶋𑶄𑶗 𑵳𑶋𑶕𑵸𑵺 యెడ్కి వాతెకె సేప్ పండిఙ్ తిందన yeḍki vāteke sēp panḍiŋ tindana ‘If one gets a fever, one should eat apples.’ 𑶅𑶕𑶂𑶋𑶄 𑵳𑶋𑵳𑶗𑵳𑶐𑵱𑶐 𑶀𑶌𑵭𑵳𑶍𑵺 𑵻𑶓𑵱𑶓𑵽 𑵰𑵺𑶗𑵸𑵺𑶗𑵳 పండిఙ్ తిత్తెకె జీవతున్ చొకొట్ మందంత panḍiŋ titteke jīvatun cokoṭ mandanta ‘If one eats fruits, it's good for one's life.’

New paper out today! I review so-called "auxiliary" inflectional complexes in NW Bantu - what are they, and how clear is it that they are separate from the verb ("analytic")? Published as part of a NJAS special issue on auxiliary verb constructions in Bantu languages www.njas.fi/njas/article...