March 2019: Gesture video for Lingthusiasm, #BAHfest, and BECAUSE INTERNET in the mail

I gave a humorous speech at the Bad Ad-hoc Hypothesis fest (BAHfest MIT) about the very logical (!) reasons to make English spelling less logical. I’m told that there will be video eventually — for now, my slides are here.

This month’s Lingthusiasm episode was about why we gesture when we talk, and we also made it available as our very first video episode so you can see the gestures! Many thanks to our Patreon supporters who enabled us to experiment with video! The bonus episode was Do you adjust the way you talk to match other people? Linguistic Accommodation with special guest our producer Claire Gawne.

I was quoted in articles about the xx email signoff in the New York Times, about the origin of the word “emoji” in Science Friday (NPR), and about business speak and corporate jargon for the BBC.

I was a guest on Spirits Podcast, a boozy podcast about myths and legends, talking about names and folklore! I also judged A Word A Day’s 25th anniversary pangram contest (the winner? “Emoji having been popularized, texts acquire wacky faces.”)

I livetweeted my thoughts on The Raven Tower, a new novel by Ann Leckie that has many cool linguistic worldbuilding elements!

Selected tweets:

• The “verbs in X” construction
• How learning the International Phonetic Alphabet helps you make friends
• Why people make memes
• so i heard you like wugs
• descriptivist scrabble
• Why we might use shhhh to hush people
• Spells based on other languages, the blank space of the not-said, and imaginary constructed dialogue
• Thread about Yoruba representation online
• Thread about the sounds babies like
• My definitive word about the pronunciation of “gif” – both are fine and here’s why (thread)

Selected blog posts:

• Linguistics jobs: journalist and school linguist
• National Grammar Day reminder: internet language is cool
• Maps: history of British and Irish languages
• Language differences between North and South Korea
• Linguistics takes on the nobody/JK Rowling meme
• Mayan languages like K’iche’ and Mam in the US immigration court system
• Verbing is a feature, not a bug
• Both pronunciations of “gif” are fine

This month’s photo is of an advance copy of BECAUSE INTERNET arriving at reviewers, along with a printed-out tweet on the package!