Cool post I stumbled upon explaining why 豬腸 became 豬番 in Teochew... but it just irks me a bit when people say things "rhyme" when they are *homophones*... They're technically not wrong but what about the maxim of quantity 🤓

Just learned today that some people write #Cantonese jyun4 dam4 doe4 /jyn˨˩ tɐm˨˩ tœ˨˩/ 'very round' (ideophonic form of 圓 jyun4 'round') as "圓 dum the" 😂

唔知大家做成點呢？ #廣東話 #Cantonese #香港地道粵語達人挑戰 forms.gle/9wKCwoZsyQ4T...

Books: Continuing Syntax: Roberts (2025)

I am utterly shocked and saddened by the news of Andrew West‘s @babelstone.co.uk untimely passing. He was a huge inspiration, an impressive scholar, and a kind and generous person. FAMA PER ORA VOLAT SPIRITUS ASTRA TENET

Is "mouse" 🐁🖱️ losing its polysemous status and turning into a case of homophony? A couple of students have already told me that they're confused why "mouse" is polysemous but "bat" 🦇🏏 is homophonous. Does it have something to do with mouses becoming "tail"less? 🤔

big fan of wiktionary's "hot words"

#Wiktionary #FWOTD for 21 May 2025 (World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development): “buuz • ᠪᠤᠤᠽ” (Mongolian)—“steamed meat dumpling”. Borrowed from Borrowed from Mandarin “包子” (bāozi) en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktion...

He is risen!

A 🧵 on dǎdī 打的. The Mandarin word dǎdī 打的 meaning ‘hail a cab’, ‘ride in a taxi’ is strange, right? It sounds strange. It looks strange. What’s up with this word? 1/

Interesting way of writing taat1 'tart' sighted in LA Chinatown ❤️: <⿰米達> with a 米 'rice' radical instead of the usual <撻>, a phonetic borrowing. This character is already under the radar of the Ideographic Research Group, so hopefully this will be encoded soon 😊 hc.jsecs.org/irg/ws2024/a...

Finally received a copy of Chinese Characters Across Asia by @zevhandel.bsky.social ! Looking forward to reading it!

Happy OK Day! On 23 March 1839, the word OK appeared for the first time in the Boston Morning Globe. It was a humorous abbreviation for "oll korrect". Funny abbreviations were kind of a fad at the time, kind of like the netspeak we see today. We at Because Language hope your day is OK.

🎉 🎉 🎉

Have you ever noticed that there is something strange about the Mandarin word wǎsī '(natural) gas'? Looking at the written form 瓦斯, it just doesn’t seem like a typical Chinese compound word. What's a roof tile got to do with gas? Let’s see if we can figure out what’s going on. 加油! 1/

Happy Year of the Wood Snake! (your slithery second sibling) 蛇出山穴喜報春! #CNY2025 #CNY #LunarNewYear H/t @justinrleung.bsky.social for the map.

I have never heard 蛇 snake called 溜 “liu” (meaning: slither) in Taiwanese, but apparently some people do because of the belief from the old agrarian days that calling the snake by its name 蛇 “tsua” will invite it to come your way 😅 On that note, Happy “Liu” Year！ 🐍

蛇年大吉！Happy Year of the Snake! Here are different ways the Chinese languages have landed on naming the slithery creature 🧵 The most common name is 蛇, attested in the oracle bones as 它. (The etymology of this word is uncertain; see en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%9B%87) /1

Thesis proposal defended yesterday! Now to actually embark on what I proposed… 😅😅😅

A persistent myth is that Japanese 'arigatō' (thank you) comes from Portuguese 'obrigado'. In reality, 'arigatō' was already used a century before the Portuguese first visited Japan. 'Obrigado', in turn, is first attested in the sense of "thank you" a century after the Portuguese arrival. 1/

Let’s talk about Written #Cantonese #廣東話 #粵語 🇭🇰! #sinology #sinography 🀄️📚 #langsky #linguistics

Merry #Christmas! For the final showcase of texts about the birth of Christ in Chinese varieties, we will look at a chapter from Bible History for the Least and the Lowest, translated into Cantonese as 述史淺譯 by Mary Lucy French (花波氏) in 1866. 1/

A Christmas gift from me to my fellow word nerds: Nine Christmas-related words with interesting etymologies, one for each of the nine letters of 'Christmas'! It was written with much linguistic love in an armchair beside a roaring fire. dannybate.com/2024/12/23/a...

Part 2 of works about the birth of Christ in different Chinese varieties: a retelling of the birth of Christ in #Dungan "Ба Эрса сын‑ёнхали" (把爾撒生養下了), from Шын Җинди гўсы (聖經的故事, Biblical Stories), published in 2015! #Christmas

Over these last few days before #Christmas, I'll be showcasing works about the birth of Christ in different Chinese varieties. We'll start with "Sèng-tàn siōng" (聖誕頌), a Taiwanese translation of "A Song of Joy at Dawn", itself a translation of the German hymn "Fröhlich soll mein Herze springen"!

“[Bill Labov] really believed that every single person on the planet is worth talking to and has something to learn from.” - Gillian Sankoff

We were the reason that He gave His life We were the reason that He suffered and died To a world that was lost He gave all He could give To show us the reason to live youtu.be/g3oAbNEi26Q #Advent #AdventLove #Christmas

Interesting new paper by Saina Wuyun trying to account for the irregularities of OC causative *s-suffixation as reflected by Zuozhuan 左傳 examples in a Distributed Morphology framework: tinyurl.com/mth3ctn2

Interviewer: Can you explain this gap in your resume? Syntactician: It's where the wh-phrase originated.

Okay, buckle up bsky, it's time for the Tale of the Bunny Paper. Here's the imported thread from twitter where the search all started: bsky.app/profile/bets... (1/n)

Fascinating new volume in the Cambridge Elements series, free for download until Jan 9, 2025: Janice Fon and Hui-lu Khoo, "The phonetics of Taiwanese" (i.e. Min), including good sections on dialectal variation, sentence prosody, syllable fusion and other treats. tinyurl.com/3zxcyjza

Hope of the Ages, Isaiah’s great light Abraham’s offspring, Blessing of Jacob, Judah’s might Hope of the Ages, David’s true Son Desire of nations, promised salvation, God with us 萬世盼望、先知大光、信父後嗣、雅各之福、猶大之能 萬世盼望、大衛真子、萬國珍寶、應許救恩、上帝偕我 youtu.be/6x_iUU6D8Jg #Advent #AdventJoy #Christmas

So, until x-mas I will each day post one verse of the birth story in Luke 2 in reconstructed 8th century Early Old Nordic (500 years before #OldNorse) for your joy & scrutiny. The ”X-mas calendar” will run from Dec 11th (verse 2:1) to verses 2:15-16 on X-mas day, with linguistic commentary. #langsky

So here’s a seemingly simple question with a surprisingly complicated answer: How do you say "six" in Korean? As native speakers are well aware and as beginning students of Korean quickly learn, there are at least two ways. 1/ 🧵🇰🇷

Pokémon names provide fertile ground for linguistic analysis. Many are extremely clever and subtle, and yield delightful “ah-ha” moments when you figure out how they are formed. I find it especially interesting to compare the original Japanese names with names in English and other languages. 1/

O Come, Thou King of nations bring An end to all our suffering Bid every pain and sorrow cease And reign now as our Prince of Peace Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come again with us to dwell youtu.be/KZggySBrroc #Advent #AdventPeace #Christmas

Introducing the CrossGram collection of typological databases: dlc.hypotheses.org/3690

“Brain rot” has been named 2024 Word of the Year by the Oxford University Press.

Oh, our hearts, as busy as Bethlehem Hear Him knock, don't say there's no room in the inn Through the cradle, cross, and grave See the love of God displayed Now He's risen and He reigns Praise the Name above all names Prepare Him room Let the King of glory enter in youtu.be/KO4a0ky0Kc8

The other Chinese pronoun coming to Unicode v. 17.0 next year, in addition to ⿰㐅也 (3p gender-neutral, ⿰男也 (3p explicitly male), ⿱妳心 ( f. equivalent of 您), ⿱我心 (Taiwanese 1p plural), is ⿱她心 (f. equivalent to 怹)

While it is quite rare, the female 姖 is attested for Chinese varieties that use 佢 as the 3rd-person pronoun, such as Cantonese and Hakka. Here are some examples:

Did you know? All three basic Mandarin pronouns have irregular historical developments. More interesting: All three give the appearance of being frozen in time — preserving ancient pronunciations. Let’s check it out! (Reposting a 🧵 from Twitter here to get some content onto my Bluesky account.)

🎉 Happy birthday, Wikisource! What started as a historical archive is now a multilingual library hosting texts of all kinds – knowledge, literature, and culture for everyone in the world. Read on for some examples 🧵⬇️ (1/7)

Our translations are public, feel free to provide suggestions. Note: We have labeled Cantonese as "zh-HK" in the code, which is incorrect. However, for compatibility reasons, we have decided not to use the correct language code "yue" for Cantonese at the moment. Link: crowdin.com/project/blue...

For better explain, please forgive me for using a screenshot from my phone. We have modified the translations of the following four strings.

In fact, I am translating "follows you" as "跟住你", "following" as "跟緊", "followed you" as "跟咗你", “followed users” as "跟咗嘅用戶", "followed you back" as "跟返你". 1/

Never have I ever thought I’d time-travel and read a thesis in microform… until this morning when I picked up an interlibrary loan with three microfiches tucked in a sleeve 😱

I’d accept being mid if it meant that I was never stressed #linguistics

#Cantonese #translationese part 3: @bsky.app recently updated the translation for "follow" in several places, but what caught my eye here is the interesting "alternation" of aspect markers used to translate "following": 住 zyu6 vs. 緊 gan2 🧵 1/

One of my favourite - because cutest and most 有畫面感 - Chinese characters is: 盥, 'to wash hand/face; washbasin' (pron. Canto gun3, Mand. guàn): Two hands with water over a basin 😍