February 2018: Archive of A Linguist Explains from The Toast

While The Toast is sorting out their website situation, I’ve archived my Toast articles here as a folder of pdfs. I’ve gotten a couple requests for A Linguist Explains The Rules for Summoning Benedict Cumberbatch and A Linguist Explains The Grammar of Doge especially, so now they’re all available! (Also, apparently The Toast is going to be archived in the Library of Congress now, so that’s cool.)

I was referenced in this post on Boing Boing by Clive Thompson.

Our Lingthusiasm main episode was about vowel gymnastics and the bonus episode was about constructed languages (conlangs). Here’s a thread about people ordering custom coloured scarves, and we also made a teaching page with the episodes sorted by topic. We’ve been hearing from several people using Lingthusiasm in their classes, which is exciting!

Selected tweets:

• We regret to inform you that we cannot produce colourless green scarves (but the furiousness level with which you do or do not sleep in your scarf is up to you)
• Snow frens!
• John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme got the word “phatic” in a radio comedy sketch
• Roses are red / Violets are blue / Ideas are green / And colourless too
• when I try to type squidgey my phone suggests that I want to type “squid geysers” I just thought the world needed to know this (art!)
• Charming animal examples of ambiguity: bears and rabbits

Selected blog posts:

• Is your child texting about linguistics?
• Robot mind meld, a word net game
• An extensive playlist of songs about linguistics
• Babies notice the difference between signed languages and gestures
• Linguistics jobs: Rachael Tatman on data science skills
• Pointing with the index finger isn’t as universal as you might think
• How to visualize consonants by painting charcoal on various parts of your mouth
• Linguistics jobs: interview with a think tank researcher
• The story of “sic”

This month’s image is a photo of a restaurant sign that I took in Halifax when I was there in December. Someone involved in this restaurant knows their IPA!