Ngigoro traveled from Halmahera Island, Indonesia, to Paris to warn us: “Stop the mining or my people will die.” @survivalfr.bsky.social mobilized outside Eramet’s HQ, as the company keeps ignoring our warnings about them destroying Ngigoro's people's rainforest. Act now: svlint.org/SurvivalB

Dutch "gebeuren" 'happen' is cognate to German "gebühren" 'sb/sth deserves/is due sth'. The unprefixed verb "beuren" 'to lift' is still used in Dutch. #LessObviousDutchGermanCognates

Who wants to be the new professor for general #linguistics in Cologne? 👀 ifl.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/sites/lingui...

Dutch "aarzelen" 'to hesitste, waver' is derived from "aars" 'arse', German "Arsch". It was formed based on French "reculer" 'move backwards' from "cul" 'arse'. English "arsle" is cognate. Sadly, the German cognate *arschelen (or *ärschelen?) is not used. #LessObviousDutchGermanCognates

Ich denke als historische Linguist*innen ist es unsere Pflicht, die Etymologie von "Talahon" auf Tontafeln zu verewigen. Ansonsten seh ich etwas schwarz für unsere Nachfolger*innen 🙏🏻

Ich suche den Locus classicus zum Konzept von Dialekten als "geronnene Sprachgeschichte" (neben Neuerungen erhalten Dialekte auch Archaismen der Sprache). Wichtig die Metapher "geronnen". Hat das z. B. Theodor Frings irgendwo entwickelt? Über eine einschlägige Literaturangabe würde ich mich freuen!

T-online beglückt uns mit dem neuesten schwerste-Sprache-Ranking 🙃 Ich schlage ein Spiel vor: ich poste Screenshots im Thread und ihr ratet, um welche Sprache es jeweils geht 1/5 www.t-online.de/leben/alltag...

expanding brain meme but make it a journal mentaljournal-jspu.uz/index.php/me...

I’d probably still enjoy talking about linguistics with non linguists if not every single one of those conversations led to them throwing questions at me that can only be answered with “No, that’s a misconception” (plus I always run out of polite replies way too quickly)

Turns out there is a North Halmaheran (Pagu) version of Bawang Merah Bawang Putih (aka Indonesian Cinderella) 😱 Of course it features a crocodile 🐊 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bawang_...

I just overheard someone speaking French but all exclamations and interjections were English and all question words Levantine Arabic

This 👇🏻 sometimes I talk to PhDs whose whole project needed as much data processing as I did for just one subsection

Die "Reckless"-Reihe von Cornelia Funke erfährt übrigens Aufwertung, wenn man beim Lesen dauerhaft im Hinterkopf behält, dass quasi alle Charaktere österreichisches Deutsch sprechen 🇦🇹 #gehtsichschonaus

Dutch "betogen" 'demonstrate, produce proof' is NOT cognate to German "bezeugen" 'testify'. "Betogen" is probably derived from the same root as "oog" 'eye'. German "beäugen" 'to eye' is a similar formation but not a direct cognate. 1/2 #LessObviousDutchGermanCognates

Dutch, German and English all use a derivation of a form meaning 'bite' to mean 'a little bit'. And they are all etymologically related: Dutch "beetje" < "beet", German "bisschen" < "Biss", and English "bit" (compare "bite") 1/2 #LessObviousDutchGermanCognates

First and last sightseeing advice on this account: If you come to Amsterdam and like the style of Central Station and Rijksmuseum, the same architect rebuilt a castle near Utrecht: Kasteel de Haar (~1.5h from Amsterdam) It's a perfect combination of Neo-Gothic and fake medieval elements

PhD life (wood)

One thing Dutch thing I'll definitely won't miss is that loud sniffing and snuffling for hours is more accepted than blowing your nose once 🤧

ich backte du bukst sie backtierte

So apparently, the US Gov, in their most recent series of dog whistles, are pulling LOTR references and are outright saying that their fascist reign of terror is akin to protecting the Shire. Absolutely fucking not. The comparison is a straightforward dogwhistle, don't let them confuse you.

Dutch "trots" 'pride' is borrowed from German "Trotz" 'defiance'. "trots" in Dutch is both a noun and an adjective. The adjective is likely derived from now outdated "trotsig" 'proud', itself a borrowing of German "trotzig" 'defiant, stubborn'. #LessObviousDutchGermanCognates

Short reminder that "uncontacted peoples" means peoples who have come into contact with the outside world and decided they are better off without it example in next post www.uncontactedpeoples.org

I encountered the Dutch version of the Spiderman pointing meme today "oversteken" = 'to cross'

Is anyone here aware of *diachronic* studies of contrastive focus reduplication in West Germanic (English, Dutch, German...), e.g. "salad-salad", "Freund-Freund", etc.? Has someone claimed it's parallel development or calquing?

Is anyone here aware of *diachronic* studies of contrastive focus reduplication in West Germanic (English, Dutch, German...), e.g. "salad-salad", "Freund-Freund", etc.? Has someone claimed it's parallel development or calquing?

Dutch "blij" 'happy, glad' is cognate to English "blithe". No German cognates are in use today but Pfeifer proposes a connection to German "Blei" 'lead (element)'. Both Old High German "blīo" 'lead' and "blīdi" 'happy, shiny' may be derived from a root meaning 'shine' #LessObviousDutchGermanCognates

A high fantasy novel but whenever someone says "it has been told that...", "according to an old prophecy..." or "people say that..." the following piece of information is entirely fabricated or just wrong

Questions for the Romanicists here: If a Portuguese writer of the 16th century says that two languages are "as different as Portuguese and Castilian", what does it imply?

Dutch "loeren" 'to lurk' is cognate to German "lauern" 'to lurk' and English "lour". In Cologne you will still hear "luur ens" 'have a look' #LessObviousDutchGermanCognates

One of the unexpected positive side effects of being a linguist is that after glossing this Galela text I'm now capable of building a compost (In case you are interested: www.sil.org/resources/ar...)

Dutch "zonder" 'without' is cognate to German "sondern" 'rather, but'. Both come from a Proto-Germanic root meaning 'separate, apart'. English are "sunder", "asunder" etc. are cognate as well. #LessObviousDutchGermanCognates

Dutch "raar", German "rar" and English "rare" are all borrowed from French "rare". German and English kept the French semantics 'rare' while in Dutch, the meaming changed to 'weird, odd'. The same thing happened in German ⬇️ 1/2 #LessObviousDutchGermanCognates

#TIL: Beriberi (Thiamine deficiency) may be borrowed from Sinhalese බැරි බැරි "bæri bæri", 'I cannot, I cannot' en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiamin...

📢 21st Seminar of the @germantolksoc.bsky.social 📜Tolkien’s Works on the Book Market 📅31 October-02 November 2025, @unimainz.bsky.social 🌐Attendance in-person or online is free #Tolkien #bookstudies 💙📚 #lit #litwiss #fantasy #bookhistory #booksky

I recently came across a nice example for why historical records are crucial for linguistic reconstruction, even when the contemporary languages are well attested. 🧵 The related Papuan languages Ternate, Tidore and Sahu (North Halmahera) have very similar Phasal Polarity markers (see Table). 1/5

Dutch "rots" 'rock' is a Middle Dutch loan from French "roche" 'rock'. It is NOT cognate to German "Rotz" 'snot'! English borrowed 'rock' twice: Once in Old English times prob. from Latin "rocca" and later from Old North French "roque" 'rock'. Both fused to "rock" 1/ #LessObviousDutchGermanCognates

Dutch "leur" in "teleurstellen" 'disappoint' is derived from the same root as "verliezen" 'lose', cognate to German "verlieren". English "forlese" 'abandon' is obsolete but the past participle "forlorn" is cognate to Dutch and German "verloren" 'lost' #LessObviousDutchGermanCognates

Linguists, what's your preferred umbrella term for forms that express person or are marked/inflected for person? (Pronoun or pro-form is not what I'm looking for because demonstratives are also pro-forms but often not marked for person)

Updated alignment chart: What counts as a #conlang?

I first encountered the hypothesis that teenagers drive language change in a paper by Kerswill "Children, adolescents, and language change" from 1996. Which means it is at least older than me! /1

Also I'm so happy I'm writing a thesis instead of papers. I've now seen some people doing a traditional historical linguistics PhD in papers and naturally they propose a slightly different phonological reconstruction in each paper. I changed my opinion on whether to reconstruct *w twice - today!

I'm now at the point of my PhD project where I can confidently say I'm solving more problems than I'm creating 💪🏻 (which is good because I only have three more months of paid work left 🥵)

In finally finished reading The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall by @andrewgarrett.bsky.social cover to cover and wooow, it's so good! Big recommendation for all linguists, anthropologists, ethnologists, Ursula K. LeGuin fans and everyone else! So many things 100% relevant to my work to reflect on

Tolkien language nerds, scans of the first five issues of Parma Eldalamberon, long only available as photocopies, are now available open access: dc.swosu.edu/parma/

I may have found the best picture posted on google maps

Happy birthday to our new open access paper 🥳 We argue for an early and strong influence of Javanese on Eastern Indonesian languages (including North Halmahera), which mostly has been overlooked so far in the literature. evols.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/items/df11f5...

Happy birthday to our new open access paper 🥳 We argue for an early and strong influence of Javanese on Eastern Indonesian languages (including North Halmahera), which mostly has been overlooked so far in the literature. evols.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/items/df11f5...

I have question for the North Americans here: What is the current status/popularity of The Swiss Family Robinson. I know it's popular among conservative Christian families but what about the rest of society? AFAIK basically nobody in Germany has ever heard of this book or the movie...

Great new paper: Patterns of genetic admixture reveal similar rates of borrowing across diverse scenarios of language contact #linguistics #language www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

And here's a picture of me searching for regular sound correspondences