This fall was a good season for literature. I took a trip to the Stratford Festival in Ontario to see live productions of Goblins Oedipus, Dangerous Liaisons, and Sense and Sensibility.
I enjoyed reading Margalit Fox’s Talking Hands, Margaret Killjoy’s The Sapling Cage, Janet Kagan’s Hellspark, and Kory Stamper’s new book True Color that I’ll soon be able to talk to the rest of you about.
And I… okay, this one takes some explanation, but Bonne Maman puts out a yearly advent calendar of tiny specialty jams (aka jamvent), and I liveblogged my way through it with favourite linguistically-relevant books from my shelves that made for thematically appropriate pairings. Apparently it was big news in the jam calendar chat.
At any rate, if you missed it at the time or would just like to browse a list of linguistics books that I like (admittedly biased towards books that I happen to own in hardcopy), you can read the thread on bluesky, the highlight on my instagram, or the blog post version on my blog.
And then, because why waste a good idea and because it was Lingthusiasm producer Claire’s fault that I got into the jamvent calendar thing in the first place, we also paired each flavour of tiny jam with a relevant Lingthusiasm episode from the archive. You can browse that on bluesky or instagram.
By the way, the last time I did a linguistics advent shenanigan was in 2014, when I liveblogged my way through all 26 episodes of the linguistically witty BBC radio comedy Cabin Pressure in time for the final episode coming out, which you can still read on my blog should you so desire. It’s a great show! I still relisten to an episode or two every time I’m on an airplane.
I also spent a lot of my time working on a project I’m not allowed to talk about publicly yet (dunh dunh dunn). Many thanks to the patrons of Lingthusiasm: their support of the podcast also keeps the lights on while I do a lot of research that will eventually be fun linguistics for all to enjoy! If you want to help me in the research phase and be the first to find out when I have updates that I can share, you can become a member on Patreon.
Events and media
Arroba lengua, the Spanish translation of Because Internet, is now out as an ebook.
The LingComm IRL blog series interviewed Marisa Cook and Daniel Currie Hall on teaching linguistics at a high school STE(A)M summer program in Halifax, with thoughts on getting involved with this same program at universities elsewhere in Canada.
I wrote a double dactyl about Timothée Chalamet and someone, for possibly the second time ever, wrote me my own double dactyl in reply.
Lingthusiasm
Lingthusiasm turned 9 this season! That’s nine years of podcasting enthusiastically about linguistics! Our episodes were:
- On the nose: How the nose shapes language
- What’s in a nym? Synonyms, antonyms, and so many more (bonus)
- The history of the history of Indo-European: Interview with Danny Bate
- World Linguistics Day (bonus)
- Whoa!! A surprise episode??? For me??!!
- The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript: Interview with Claire Bowern (bonus)
Over 120 people wished each other a Happy World Linguistics Day from 70 cities in 34 countries! See more stats from World Linguistics Day. Plus: some high-quality Voynich Manuscript page scans for fans of the incredibly popular Voynich Manuscript bonus episode.
We also released some linguistics-themed holiday greeting cards, mostly because I personally wanted to send out cards that say {Merry, marry, Mary} Holidays: whether you say them the same or differently, hope you have a joyful festive season! And then I figured that perhaps I should let other people do so too. Shout out to the person who immediately purchased 50 of them: Redbubble doesn’t show us what your name is, but we hope that all 50 of your nearest and dearest appreciate you as much as we do.
New favorite linguistic data
Linguists are NOT KIDDING…
…when we say that this section is full of sentences you can understand that have never before been uttered.
- This week’s news update includes a disastrous font Stroop task.
- Cook 5 hours at 300° or until popcorn blows the ass off the turkey.
- Jennifer L. Armentrout’s just-published THE PRIMAL OF BLOOD AND BONE is available in a special, limited-edition “garlic-scented copy, infused with Hellmann’s Garlic Aioli to create a one-of-a-kind Craven-proof book.”
The end of the year means Word Of The Year season! The Canadian one took place in 2025 (I was betting on “elbows up,” but “maplewashing” won). The US one isn’t until 2026, but I had my eye on “lobster’s too buttery.”
And nobody I know of has studied these, but maybe someone should:
- How our use of language has changed when we talk to customer service now because we know we are talking to a machine
- How we creatively misuse the surname field in phone contacts
- Which snowball is more Bouba and which is more Kiki
Miscellaneous posts
- brb asking my publisher for an edition of Because Internet that makes the dialup screech as you open it, like a novelty birthday card
- me 20 years ago: dangit people keep misspelling my name, if only there was some sort of handy reference item that I could convince people to place in easy view
- Don’t fear the repetition, embrace it!
- A really interesting article about a horrifying distortion of sign language happening in the UK, and which its creators are now trying to export to other countries and their sign languages.
- Absolutely riveted by this video of women filmed in the 1970s reminiscing about their young adult life in the 1890s
- Sometimes I need to explain to non-Canadians what a square is in the dessert sense (a thread with lots of fun replies about people’s names for squares/bars/traybakes/slices in various places)
- This is one of the reasons we always ask guests on @lingthusiasm.bsky.social how they got interested in their research topic
- Writers now: what a rich period of borrowing from Norman French into English! 1440, Bokenham hating on the youth: “They barbarize them both and speak neither good French nor good English”
- “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” in Anglo-Saxon meter, by Philip Craig Chapman-Bell.
And if you’re still looking for a new year’s resolution, have you considered trying to bring back overmorrrow, a highly useful word that English used to have and which many languages still do?
The featured image is the first of my many books paired with jams!
Gretchen McCulloch 
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