The #ICL2024 has an endangered languages prize which for 2024 is named after the late Suwilai Premsrirat who documented 15(!) indigenous languages of Thailand and was instrumental in minority languages being recognised in education settings in Thailand

Another influence of Cantonese on Mandarin afaik is the word laogong 老公 for ‘husband’. Laogong 老公 for husband can be found in Yuan/Ming texts, but then changed its meaning in the North to ‘eunuch’ … until the husband meaning resurfaced 😅

I know the popular school of thought in online autistic circles is that only evil neurotypicals read things into what you're saying, but I've had some fellow autistics interpret what I'm saying in ways that I couldn't even have imagined, let alone intended.

Not to start discourse but I get suspicious when someone accepts <dude> as gender-neutral in their dialect but not <girl>

We're doing it folks! We've dismantled the Koko myth enough for the joke tweets to pick up on it. There is hope.

My favorite of the new gender-neutral terms is <chat> as in "chat what is this?" I initially thought it had to be plural like "y'all" or "you guys" but it has already evolved past such concerns. As such it may very well be the most *truly* gender-neutral one. 8/10, very good.

So one of the racism disclaimers on Disney+ is for Jungle Book's King Louie, the King of Swing, bc his "Dixieland jazz style" singing is a caricature of Black people EXCEPT KING LOUIE, THE KING OF SWING, WAS A REAL JAZZ SINGER FROM NEW ORLEANS WHO VOICED THE APE. HE WAS ITALIAN.

The Layman's Linguist Ko ǝqɐƆɔW ǝʌǝʇS toku ingoa 🇬🇧🇮🇪(🇺🇸)🇳🇿 internet linguistics is amazing 🥳

Not only did early Italian immigrants *not* speak English, they didn’t even speak the same dialects! The Neapolitans and the Sicilians couldn’t speak to each other. They famously lived on different streets!

After 6 years in Canada, I just learned a new Canadianism from my kid’s school newsletter. Apparently they call folders “duotangs”.

pronouncing malware as an italian verb

Ruined my wife’s day by informing her Dennis is the English rendering of Dionysus

he’s right and he should say it! who cares about his accent, the Romans didn’t speak British English either

I'm happy to confirm that the Irish for ratatouille is ratatúí. Another member of the two-fadas-in-a-row club 🐨

Brainrot this, chronically online that... Meanwhile some teenage girl in the 1930s was sending these to her favourite horror magazine:

kinda insane that 7 of the first 9 presidents were fully bilingual (6 of them spoke french and van buren spoke dutch as his first language) and no subsequent president has been bilingual except FDR

It's fascinating how many scientists have privately acknowledged to me that Chomsky's theory of universal grammar is thoroughly discredited, but that they don't want to anger his fans by saying so. Tomorrow I'll be sharing the thoughts of a neuroscientist who is unafraid!

A joke for language people 😁

It’s important for people of any background to realise that loanwords are valid words in any given language and it is impossible to ‘purify’ a language because no language is ‘pure’.

something about books getting smaller to save the planet while endless AI swallows glaciers whole to "summarize" emails