Based on daily observations in the past 4 year, I have established this 100% accurate ranking of news in the NOS wekdienst (Dutch public broadcasting morning news) 1. Verstappen still exists 2. Some legal trial 3. National and international news that I would put first but who am I to judge

The thing I'll miss most after leaving Amsterdam? Paying 18€ to sit on a 129€ seat in the Concertgebouw 😌

I was today years old when I learned that Malay {surat} 'letter' is NOT a loan of Arabic سورة (sūra) 'chapter in the Qur'an' (etymology unclear but appears to be native) acd.clld.org/formsets/30029

Today's featured article on the English-speaking @wikipedia.org is @ursulakleguin.com's "Paradises Lost", one of my favorite sci-fi novellas ❤️ go read both! 👐 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradis...

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without looking it up, from what year do you think is the earliest attestation of "vibe" (as in "good vibes') as per the OED?

Der CfP für die Vielfaltslinguistik in Kiel (5.-6. Juni) wurde bis zum 28. verlängert. Ich kann leider dieses Jahr nicht dabei sein 😞 Die Vielfaltslinguistik ist eine der cutesten Linguistikkonferenzen, wenn ihr gutes Feedback und Socializing wollt www.isfas.uni-kiel.de/de/linguisti...

I pity the future historical linguits who will try to reconstruct German and Italian based on this bilingual text on a q-tips box 🫠 German: Do not insert into the ear canal Italian: Do not throw in the toilet.

another favourite scientific headline, following confirmation of Einstein's general theory of relativity by observations of the 1919 solar eclipse. "Stars not where they seemed or were calculated to be, but nobody need worry" is a beautiful sentiment. i would have that on a t-shirt

A book I wished I had found in the first month of my PhD and not in the last: Toulmin (2009), From linguistic to sociolinguistic reconstruction Chap 3 is a superb discussion of reconstruction and subgrouping in dialect continua (aka everywhere) 1/3 openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/items/c30644...

The medieval theory that Berber comes from South Arabia (popular in more recent decades with Arab nationalists) is in the Epstein Files, courtesy of a rather messed-up Yemeni billionaire who liked to call Epstein his "cousin brother"

Für das Tolkien Seminar 2026 hat der Call for Papers nun begonnen. Alle Infos findet ihr hier: 🌍️DE: https://www.tolkiengesellschaft.de/55220/tolkien-seminar-2026-call-for-papers-de-stipendium/ 🌍️EN: https://www.tolkiengesellschaft.de/55214/tolkien-seminar-2026-call-for-papers-en-scholarship/

I’ve got a new Minimalist Program: don’t hang out with human traffickers

One common misconception about the Neogrammarians is that they were defenders of the Tree Model.* In fact, they took up Schuchardt's ideas and expressed the still common view that Tree and Wave describe different aspects of language history. 1/2 *This misconception is NOT found in the quoted post.

Virtually every paragraph in my PhD thesis chapter on diversification is followed by a footnote such as "cf. Hermann Paul (1880) for a similar line of reasoning" - the guy already knew it all 😎 21st cent. linguist: this was first proposed by linguist x in 2002 Hermann Paul: excuuuse me???

Where are my metatypy witches?

Historical linguists, do you have a preferred notation for phonologically conditioned allophones of proto-phonemes? 🤗 For example, whenever I refer to a palatalized allophone of *t and its reflexes I have to write "palatalized allophone of *t". I would like to introduce a short form #linguistics 🐦🐦

crazy etymology

Historical linguists, do you have a preferred notation for phonologically conditioned allophones of proto-phonemes? 🤗 For example, whenever I refer to a palatalized allophone of *t and its reflexes I have to write "palatalized allophone of *t". I would like to introduce a short form #linguistics 🐦🐦

German "Abriss Ski Party" ('demolition ski party') from French "après-ski" ('after ski') may be my favorite folk etymology in the whole universe

Thanks to the absence of cash in everyday life in the Netherlands, I only learned the Dutch word for "bill" (as in 10€ bill) this week. It's "biljet" < French "billet" (<t> is pronounced) not to be confused with "billen" 'buttocks'

Ich freue mich, dass mein Vortrag zu Sprachwandel in den vergangenen 60 Jahren es in den Deutschlandfunk Nova Hörsaal geschafft hat. Viel Spaß! www.deutschlandfunknova.de/beitrag/deut...

In the past decade or two, predatory publishers have built a parallel universe of publication opportunities preying on the least privileged & most vulnerable of our colleagues I got my hands on what passes for peer review at one such journal ideophone.org/on-plagiaris...

Look at my baby! ☺️ I reedited Modole folk stories published 110 years ago Old journals and archives are full of story collections in underdocumented languages, often difficult or impossible to access for both linguists and the speaker community. Using legacy material is valuable and sustainable 🙌🏻

Since the beginning of my PhD I've typed the word "sultanate" at least once a day and I'm happy to inform you that I still manage to misspell it every single time 😊 #sultnate #sultante #sultenete

Do I have an expert on Hakka in my timeline who could check potential loans?

how to degrade your fellow historical linguist in the most polite way possible

#HappyBirthdayTolkien On this occation: My paper about time-space metaphor in Tolkien's writings is now open access. #Tolkien regarded English time-space reference as 'confused' since it uses the same words to refer to future and past 1/3 journals.tolkiensociety.org/mallorn/arti...

Today, my etymological doublet series is coming to an end with an episode on German, on request of several people. The orange German words on the right have the same origin as the blue ones on the right, but they took a very different path. Many of the examples are courtesy of Matthieu Pierens.

#TIL Balantak (Austronesian, spoken in Sulawesi, Indonesia) has a circumfix "poo-...-(i)kon" meaning 'less than ideal' E.g. "tatapi" 'wash' : "mom-poo-tatapi-kon" 'to wash as best as one can (given less than ideal circumstances such as little water and no soap)' Find me poo-thesis.writing-kon

bitte hört auf welche/welcher/welches als relatibpronomen zu nutzen ich flehe euch an

Paint-by-number Philippine languages edition when commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KW...

This post is sponsored by the HR lady who told me to simply put "what I did" in my CV

Academic CV: reconstructed a proto-language Industry CV: reverse engineered training data for natural language acquisition

Sollen...ankommen...werden Ist das für euch grammatisch? 🤔🤔

Das ruft bei mir die Erinnerung wach, als ein Dude zu mir meinte, Linguisten sollten sich mal echte Sprachen angucken

Die Trennung Ge-schnet-zeltes ist anders wild 🫨 Historical linguists of the future: take notes!

Call center cat at work in Amsterdam @catworkers.bsky.social

Does anyone know of any good overviews of how the world's languages use coordination (parataxis) and subordination (hypotaxis)? I'm curious about common patterns, including with impersonal verbs and the different sorts of things that get grammaticalized. #LangSky

I discovered the most liquid Lautwandel* ever!!** *Lautwandel = German for 'sound change' ** laut = Indonesian for 'sea'

Falls ihr ein bisschen Geld über habt: ein lieber Freund von mir steht nach langer Krankheit vor einem riesen Schuldenberg gofund.me/9d45f3cac

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)