Author: gretchenassistant

July, Aug, Sept 2024: Lo! An un-detached Eurotrip!

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This summer I spent time with Finnish, Spanish, Estonian, Dutch, Italian, Latin (unexpectedly!), and… well, okay, kind of all of them, at least in museum exhibit form.

So I did what any linguist would do and made myself into a guinea pig, comparing four different language learning strategies on four languages to see what happened. I’ve written up an Introduction/overview and some highlights and troubleshooting. 

On the same trip, I made appearances at some events:

The Spanish translation isn’t the first one for Because Internet — it’s already available in Japanese (Filmart, Amazon.co.jp), Chinese (Taobao), and Korean (Aladin.co.kr, Kyobo) — but it was the first one into a language I understand and where I happened to be in the right location to meet the translator, so that was really cool! The publisher also localized the title (arroba is the Spanish word for the @ sign, so it literally means @language) and the social-media-post-inspired cover art is a fun new direction compared with the classic blue and yellow of several other editions! 

Cover art for a book titled "Arroba Lengua, Cómo Internet Ha Cambiado Nuestro Idioma." The art depicts a futuristic-looking social media post by author gretchen.mcculloch.

In non-travel news, the podcast Dashboard Diaries interviewed me about the linguistics of Tumblr, and I collected some extra links of interest on the subject.

Lingthusiasm

This season’s episodes included some great grammatical phenomena, a look behind the scenes at one of my collaborations, and the classic philosophy of language thought experiment with merch to match.

The experiment? Suppose you’re in a field with someone you don’t share any languages with. A rabbit scurries by and the person says “Gavagai!” You probably interpret that as referring to the rabbit, rather than just to the rabbit’s ears, or the act of scurrying, or, as memorably put by WVO Quine, “un-detached rabbit parts” — but why? Listen to this episode to find out…

…or enjoy the merch, available in magenta, indigo, teal, cream, and black. 

New favorite data

People continued to produce wonderfully unique utterances:

They also continued not producing “abso-jesus-lutely!” — but why?

A road sign saying "ELEPHANTS PLEASE STAY IN YOUR CAR"

Bluesky and blogs

I visited the linguistics museum Mundolingua in Paris and took this photo of a literal Indo-European family tree: 

A large potted plant, with metal rods coming out that are labeled with the names of Indo-European languages.

April, May, & June 2024: LingComm Grants, a paper about Crash Course Linguistics, and boopguistics 

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In official research news, during the second quarter of 2024, the Crash Course Linguistics team published a case study on how the series came together, called Creating Inclusive Linguistics Communication: Crash Course Linguistics. It was a big collaboration, including co-writers me and Lauren Gawne, fact-checker Jessi Grieser, and several members of the production team at Complexly. You can read it for free along with the rest of the open-access handbook it’s in if you’re into meta on doing lingcomm. (Or you could just watch the Crash Course Linguistics videos again.) 

In less-official research news, we declared it Vowel Month on Lingthusiasm and learned that people’s favorite secondary cardinal vowel is /y/ as in über.  

I was interviewed on the Language on the Move podcast by Brynn Quick about social ties, weird old postcards, and more tidbits from Because Internet.

I also enrolled in my second American Sign Language class, ASL 102 with Deaf instructor Krishna Madaparthi, again through the Lethbridge Layton Mackay Rehabilitation Centre but this time on Zoom instead of in person. I have to say, I much preferred the in person classes (the Zoom images were so tiny!) but it was worth trying Zoom in order to continue learning. And at least there were still local Deaf events to attend irl! 

The 2024 LingComm grants were awarded, funding: 

And I greatly enjoyed the following books and other activities: 

Lingthusiasm

This quarter’s Lingthusiasm episodes included a fanciful foray into a shop that sells everything, no really, everything. Plus, some of our favourite and most cursed portmanteau words, and an interview with a linguist who I met back in 2022 on my trip to New Zealand:

New favorite data

People produced these utterances!

Tweets and blog posts

This quarter’s image is the classic Boops boops fish species, which was not technically part of the tumblr boops game but let’s face it, it’s still very charming. 

Jan, Feb, & Mar 2024: Crossword puzzles and vowel charts

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In the first three months of 2024, I attended the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in New York City — home, as always, of the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year vote. (The winner? Enshittification!) 

I also started taking classes in American Sign Language through a local community ASL 101 class offered at the Lethbridge Layton Mackay Rehabilitation Centre, with Deaf instructor Marc Gervais. It’s my first time back in a language class since my university days and it’s great to be flexing that muscle again and learning more about Deaf culture. 

I appeared on an episode of quiz podcast Go Fact Yourself alongside David Wilcox.

I learned whether people visualize words in a specific font (I do!). 

And in a personal first, I appeared in a crossword puzzle — Puzzmo’s daily crossword referenced my book Because Internet.

A crossword puzzle partially completed, with a highlighted clue reading "_____ Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language (Gretchen McCulloch book)" and answer reading BE____E

Podcast news

Lingthusiasm created a new and Highly Scientific™ ‘Which Lingthusiasm episode are you?’ quiz based on a game I played last year on bluesky recommending episodes to people by ~vibe, and also three regular episodes and three bonus ones:

For the vowels episode in March, my cohost and I fulfilled a long-time personal dream and commissioned a linguist to map out our respective vowel spaces (based on data from previous Lingthusiasm episodes) so we can see a visual representation of how my Canadian and Lauren’s Australian vowels differ from each other! 

You can see further vowel plots and more about how they were made on this github page that Bethany Gardiner set up for us!

Favorite words and sentences

Yet again I must repeat that linguists are extremely not kidding when we say that your capacity for language enables you to understand sentences you've never seen before

— Gretchen McCulloch (@gretchenmcc.bsky.social) 2024-01-04T03:12:50.030Z

Tweets and blog posts

This month’s image is another of the super cool vowel charts that Bethany Gardiner made for Lingthusiasm! Look how different Lauren and I are!

2023 Year in Review

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In 2023, I switched to bluesky from twitter, which is still going strong. I also spent a month at the LSA summer institute, went to assorted other conferences, and kept doing the podcast. In other words, just like, a pretty normal year, which wasn’t nearly as shaped by the pandemic as the previous few years have been.

Conferences

  • I started the year in Denver, Colorado at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, where I co-hosted the Five Minute Linguist competition with Jessi Grieser and saw many excellent linguist friends! 
  • I attended the second International Conference on Linguistics Communication, #LingComm2023, which I was so pleased to see in the hands of a fantastic new organizing committee. They did ask me to give the opening keynote, which I’ve posted the text of as a blog post: What we can accomplish in 30 years of lingcomm.
  • I was on panels at Scintillation, a local literary SFF convention, one about magic words and one about reading Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan books.
  • I went to UMass Amherst for Lingstitute 2023, where I did a talk on linguistics communication, emceed the Three Minute Thesis competition, recorded two interviews for Lingthusiasm, and did a talk at a workshop called Bridging fieldwork, corpus, and experimental methods to study sociolectal variation.
  • I also got a cool tour of the Merriam-Webster headquarters while I was in the area!
  • October: I attended NWAV51 in Queens, New York.
  • November: I attended Patreon CreatorFest in Los Angeles.

Other projects

Lingthusiasm

Lingthusiasm, my podcast with Lauren Gawne, celebrated our seventh anniversary with a second listener survey and some new merch: the slogan Etymology isn’t Destiny and posters and other items with a colourful yet minimal layout of the International Phonetic Alphabet on them.

People often ask Lingthusiasm to recommend interesting books about linguistics that don’t assume prior knowledge of linguistics, so we’ve come up with a list of 12 books that we personally recommend, including both nonfiction and fiction books with linguistically interesting elements! Get this list of our top 12 linguistics books by signing up for Lingthusiasm’s free email list (which will otherwise send you an email once a month when there’s a new episode — this is something we’re doing to help continue to reach people amid the rising fragmentation of the social media ecosystem).

I did an experimental bluesky thread matching people with the Lingthusiasm episode that matches their personality best based on the vibes of their profile, which people were surprisingly keen on! Since I was eventually getting more replies than I could keep up with, this ended up turning into making a Which Lingthusiasm episode are you? personality quiz.

Lauren and I published a new open-access academic paper: Communicating about linguistics using lingcomm-driven evidence: Lingthusiasm podcast as a case study. It’s in Language and Linguistic Compass, an open access linguistics journal, and you can read it in full here.

Lingthusiasm episodes 

  1. Where language names come from and why they change
  2. How kids learn language in Singapore – Interview with Woon Fei Ting
  3. Bringing stories to life in Auslan – Interview with Gabrielle Hodge (our second bilingual video episode, in Auslan and English with an interpreter and captions)
  4. Tone and Intonation? Tone and Intonation!
  5. Word Magic
  6. The verbs had been being helped by auxiliaries
  7. Frogs, pears, and more staples from linguistics example sentences
  8. How kids learn Q’anjob’al and other Mayan languages – Interview with Pedro Mateo
  9. Look, it’s deixis, an episode about pointing!
  10. Ergativity delights us
  11. Revival, reggaeton, and rejecting unicorns – Basque interview with Itxaso Rodríguez-Ordóñez
  12. If I were an irrealis episode

Bonus episodes

  1. Parrots, art, and what even is a word – Deleted scenes from Kat Gupta, Lucy Maddox, and Randall Munroe interviews
  2. Singapore, New Zealand, and a favourite linguistics paper – 2023 Year Ahead Chat
  3. When books speculate on the future of English
  4. Neopronouns, gender-neutral vocab, and why linguistic gender even exists – Liveshow Q&A with Kirby Conrod
  5. 2022 Survey Results – kiki/bouba, synesthesia fomo, and pluralizing emoji
  6. Linguistic jobs beyond academia
  7. LingthusiASMR – The Harvard Sentences
  8. How we make Lingthusiasm transcripts – Interview with Sarah Dopierala
  9. Field Notes on linguistic fieldwork – Interview with Martha Tsutsui Billins
  10. Postcards from linguistics summer camp
  11. Linguistic Advice – Challenging grammar snobs, finding linguistics community, accents in singing, and more
  12. Frak, smeg, and more swearing in fiction – Ex Urbe Ad Astra interview with Jo Walton and Ada Palmer

Books

Selected posts from tumblr, twitter, and bluesky

General linguistics

General interest

Cool existing and hypothetical studies 

New favourite linguistics example sentences

Helpful threads and posts

Missed out on previous years? Here are the summary posts from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. If you’d like to get a much shorter quarterly highlights newsletter via email, with all sorts of interesting internet linguistics news, you can sign up for that at gretchenmcc.substack.com.

Oct, Nov & Dec 2023: there’dn’t’ve and ceiling wax

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In the final quarter of 2023, I went to NWAV51 in Queen’s, New York in October and to Patreon’s CreatorFest in Los Angeles in November. No talks from me at either, just attending interesting sessions!

I recorded a dramatic reading of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness (i.e. made into couplets) for the audiobook of Zach Weinersmith’s very hilarious book of the same name. This will be released publically…eventually. Stay tuned.

Btw people should totally commission me to read their weird nerd humour audiobooks, today the tech said "you know, sometimes I end up sorta zoning out during a recording but with this one I was laughing too hard to even get close"I would enjoy doing this a couple times a year, I'm just saying

— Gretchen McCulloch (@gretchenmcc.bsky.social) 2023-12-02T00:23:53.567Z

Two Tom Scott Language Files videos that I was involved in came out: there’dn’t’ve and Does the language you speak change how you think? (No. Mostly.)

I posted assorted linguistic tidbits about a few novels I read: The Unraveling by Benjamin Rosenbaum (bouba and kiki genders), phatic communication in the latest Murderbot book, and a thread about obscure vocabulary and intonation in Middlemarch by George Eliot.

Update: I read The Unraveling by Benjamin Rosenbaum because several people in these replies (including @annleckie.com) told me to and I am pleased to report that it is indeed doing delightfully weird things with gender (even if not precisely bouba/kiki)

— Gretchen McCulloch (@gretchenmcc.bsky.social) 2023-12-19T00:16:58.114Z

We celebrated Lingthusiasm’s 7th anniversary in November with another listener survey! The three Lingthusiasm episodes and bonus episodes were:

New favourite linguistics example sentences:

Selected tweets from Bluesky:

Just remembering that line from Puff the Magic Dragon and how for years I thought that one day I would be grown up enough to understand what ceiling wax was for (waterproofing the roof? hanging down in aesthetic wax stalactites?)Well today I'm grown up and it's sealing waxSEALING WAX

— Gretchen McCulloch (@gretchenmcc.bsky.social) 2023-11-26T15:11:41.250Z

Selected blog posts:

I added some updates to my advice post: So you wanna go to linguistics grad school? Part II: Picking a school and how to apply

This quarter’s image (also yes, these newsletters are quarterly now since monthly evidently wasn’t working) is from Patreon CreatorFest where I brought Lingthusiasm cards and bouba/kiki stickers to give out to people I met!

A big multicoloured gradient Patreon logo on a textured wall along with small Lingthusiasm logo stickers and bouba/kiki stickers on the ledge in front

August-September 2023: Etymology isn’t Destiny merch and an academic article about lingcomm

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I joined onto a fun project this month, Zach Weinersmith of the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is running a Kickstarter for his book, The Universe: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness, and one of the bonus rewards is an audiobook of his other book, Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulenss. I’ll be the one reading the highly abridged sonnets, which I’m looking forward to!

I wrote down assorted thoughts about I think about framing a plenary talk, which began as a bluesky thread and I’ve now archived as a blog post.

The main episodes of Lingthusiasm were How kids learn Q’anjob’al and other Mayan languages – Interview with Pedro Mateo Pedro, in which we talk about expanding research on how children learn languages to a broader range of sociocultural settings, and Look, it’s deixis, an episode about pointing!, in which we talk about how pointing varies across societies and species (domestic dogs can understand a point, but wolves cannot), and how linguistic pointing relates to the eternal confusion about which Tuesday is next Tuesday.

The bonus episodes feature two names you might recognize from the end credits of Lingthusiasm episodes: How we make Lingthusiasm transcripts – Interview with Sarah Dopierala, in which we talk about how Sarah’s background in linguistics helps her with the technical words and phonetic transcriptions in Lingthusiasm episodes, her own research into converbs, and the linguistic tendencies that she’s noticed from years of transcribing Lauren and Gretchen (guess which of us uses more quotative speech!) and Field Notes on linguistic fieldwork – Interview with Martha Tsutsui Billins, in which we talk about the process of doing linguistic fieldwork and interviewing dozens of linguists about it for her own podcast, Field Notes.

We also announced new Lingthusiasm merch! We love reading up on an interesting etymology, but the history of a word doesn’t have to define how it’s used now – and to celebrate that we have new merch with the motto ‘Etymology isn’t Destiny’. Our artist, Lucy Maddox has brought these words to life in a beautiful design in black, white, navy blue, Lingthusiasm green, and rainbow gradient. The etymology isn’t destiny design is available on lots of different colours and styles of shirts, hoodies, tank tops, t-shirts: classic fit, relaxed fit, curved fit. Plus mugs, notebooks, stickers, water bottles, zippered pouches, and more!

Finally, Lauren Gawne and I published an academic article about Communicating about linguistics using lingcomm-driven evidence: Lingthusiasm podcast as a case study. It’s in Language and Linguistic Compass, an open access linguistics journal, and you can read it in full here. Here’s the abstract:

Communicating linguistics to broader audiences (lingcomm) can be achieved most effectively by drawing on insights from across the fields of linguistics, science communication (scicomm), pedagogy and psychology. In this article we provide an overview of work that examines lingcomm as a specific practice. We also give an overview of the Lingthusiasm podcast, and discuss four major ways that we incorporate effective communications methodologies from a range of literature in the production of episodes. First, we discuss how we frame topics and take a particular stance towards linguistic attitudes, second, we discuss how we introduce linguistic terminology and manage audience cognitive load, third, we discuss the role of metaphor in effective communication of abstract concepts, and fourth, we discuss the affective tools of humour and awe in connecting audiences with linguistic concepts. We also discuss a 2022 survey of Lingthusiasm listeners, which highlights how the audience responds to our design choices. In providing this summary, we also advocate for lingcomm as a theoretically-driven area of linguistic expertise, and a particularly effective forum for the application of linguistics.

Selected tweets on Twitter:

Selected bluesky tweets:

This month’s image is from the new Etymology isn’t Destiny merch, which I think looks so good in the rainbow gradient on a dark background! I’ve enjoyed seeing some people with it already in real life and here it is on a tote bag:

"Etymology isn't destiny" in swoopy rainbow gradient text on a black tote bag hanging from a wooden hook.

https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/725034554312753152

June-July 2023: Lingstitute and Merriam-Webster

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In June and July, I headed to Lingstitute 2023, the LSA summer institute, at UMass Amherst. It was great to get to hang out with old friends and meet lots of new people

While I was in Massachusetts, I dropped by the headquarters of Merriam Webster to say hi to the dictionaries and lexicographers! (In that order.) Thanks especially to Peter Sokolowski for the guided tour and to Stacy Dickerman for the ride. Here are some photos I took on the tour, including many different eras of dictionary and the “linguistics” entry in the card catalogue:

The main episodes of Lingthusiasm were The verbs had been being helped by auxiliaries and Frogs, pears, and more staples from linguistics example sentences. The bonus episodes were Linguistic jobs beyond academia and a very silly special episode we called LingthusiASMR, in which we read a classic set of linguistics examples known as the Harvard Sentences in our most soothing, meditative voices (people have reported that it may not exactly induce the ASMR effect but it does indeed work to fall asleep to, and we’re still fans of the pun).

Selected tweets:

Blog posts:

This month’s photo is of the Lingthusiasm postcards featuring the circle IPA design that we printed out to give out at Lingstitute. People seemed to like the challenge of figuring out what features all of the circles stood for, and I gave away lots but still have some left, so if you see me at a future conference do feel free to ask for one so you can have a fun thing to stick up by your desk or on your fridge!

Left hand with rings holding blue cards with Lingthusiasm logo and green and white International Phonetic Alphabet.

May 2023: Spanish Because Internet, True Biz, and Word Magic

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This month, I announced that there’s going to be a Spanish-language edition of Because Internet coming at some point in 2024! Spanish has been the translation that people have requested from me the most and I’m delighted that Álex Herrero and the other folks at Pie de Página are making it happen.

The main episode of Lingthusiasm was Word Magic, in which we discuss the linguistics of the magical systems in several recent fantasy novels we like, including Babel by R.F. Kuang, Carry On by Rainbow Rowell, and the Scholomance series by Naomi Novik, as well as the ways that you can change the state of the real world with words using the linguistic concept of performatives, such as agreeing to contracts, placing bets, and naming. The bonus episode was about reviewing the results of our 2022 listener survey, including answers to questions on whether knowing about the kiki/bouba effect as a meme influences your results on the kiki/bouba test, synesthesia, and whether people pluralize “emoji” as “emoji” or “emojis”.

People often ask Lingthusiasm to recommend interesting books about linguistics that don’t assume prior knowledge of linguistics, so we’ve come up with a list of 12 books that we personally recommend, including both nonfiction and fiction books with linguistically interesting elements! Get this list of our top 12 linguistics books by signing up for Lingthusiasm’s free email list (which will otherwise send you an email once a month when there’s a new episode — this is something we’re doing to help continue to reach people amid the rising fragmentation of the social media ecosystem).

The most recent of those books, which I read this month, was True Biz by Sara Novic and made a thread with some linguistically interesting snippets from it. Definitely recommend!

Finally reading @NovicSara's True Biz and greatly enjoying how it innovates with form to show ASL within the constraints of a print page mostly in English. You. Name, one set of pointer and middle fingers tapped twice on top of the other set. What, almost like the gesture, hands up and out like a shrug. Eyebrows again, down this time. You + name + what—eyebrows. (line drawing of person doing said signs on the page of a book) Here the alphabet did come in handy, and Charlie was grateful that she could at least spell her own name. Me name C-h-a-x-l-i-e, she said. The teacher shook his head, pointed to his own hand. C. He pointed to Charlie. C. H. A. R. Dammit. R, she copied. He gave her a thumbs up. Again, he said. Everyone waited, watching her. Me name C-h-a-r-l-i-e The teacher nodded and continued around the circle. Once everyone had a turn, he returned to the board and wrote, Deaf, Hearing, Son, Daughter, Brother, Sister, then pointed to each and signed its equivalent. (line drawings of signs) Her fellow students introduced themselves. Most of them were parents or relatives of younger River Valley kids. Me hearing. My son deaf.

Selected Tweets:

March-April 2023: Bluesky, Barbie bouba/kiki, and Bea Wolf

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In April, I made an account on bluesky and enjoyed some wordplay there, which is still (so far) going strong as a twitter replacement.

The main episodes of Lingthusiasm these two months were Bringing stories to life in Auslan – Interview with Gabrielle Hodge, which was our second bimodal bilingual episode, this time in Auslan and English, as well as Tone and Intonation? Tone and Intonation!

The bonus episodes were When books speculate on the future of English and Neopronouns, gender-neutral vocab, and why linguistic gender even exists – Liveshow Q&A with Kirby Conrod.

I did a fun thread on Bea Wolf, Zach Weinersmith’s retelling of Beowulf as a kid’s graphic novel, analyzing how the alliterative metre works:

Selected tweets, while we’re still doing this thing, I guess:

Blog posts:

This month’s image is from the Barbie movie meme generator, but make it bouba/kiki.

Barbie meme generator with pink spikes shape and pink blobby shape and caption: this Barbie is bouba...or kiki.

February 2023: LingComm23 and liveshow

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This month was the second International Conference on Linguistics Communication, #LingComm2023. I was extremely delighted to not be on the organizing committee this time and to get to participate in the excellent panels and posters and meetups organized by Laura Wagner and the rest of this year’s organizing committee. They did ask me to give the opening keynote, which I’ve posted the text of as a blog post. Here’s a little bit from it:

People who are readers read more than one book a year — and they read way more than one article. People who like podcasts listen to more than one podcast. People who like video subscribe to more than one account. People who like museums go to more than one museum. When I look at topics like pop history and pop science, god, they have SO MANY books and podcasts and scicomm accounts and museums and documentaries. This is my 30 year goal, that linguistics has a thriving ecosystem of so many ways that people can engage with it. 

Our competition isn’t each other, it’s all the other things people could be doing with their time and not even necessarily enjoying them. It’s doomscrolling, it’s aimlessly opening Netflix, it’s playing silly little games on your phone. 

The goal of doing lingcomm isn’t about ego, in trying to make one person into a celebrity. Frankly, I just think there are far more efficient ways of trying to become rich and famous. You know, have you considered making some weird food videos? Maybe having a weird looking pet and posting photos of it? I think those do pretty well. And like, I know we could all be getting more attention right now if we were willing to spout hot takes about how Insert Group Here are ruining language. We’re here because we’ve chosen not to do that. We’re here because we’ve chosen service to the harder path, the ethical path, the more rewarding path, of feeding people with language information that liberates them, that challenges them, rather than the easy path of stoking their insecurities and validating their prejudices. 

I hope that one of the things that the lingcomm conference becomes known for over the next 30 years is as a place to find collaborators to join you in this ethos of serving the public with lingcomm, whether that’s students excitedly hatching ideas with each other like I did in my friend’s car, or journalists and linguists connecting with each other to publish really great news stories, or more established projects finally meeting other people in their niche and thinking about how they could collaborate. 

What we can accomplish in 30 years of lingcomm: Opening keynote of #LingComm23

The main episode of Lingthusiasm was about How kids learn language in Singapore – Interview with Woon Fei Ting. The bonus episode was Singapore, New Zealand, and a favourite linguistics paper – 2023 Year Ahead Chat. We also did a liveshow through the Lingthusiasm patron Discord server about language and gender with special guest Dr. Kirby Conrod.

Selected tweets:

Blog posts:

Here’s my little Gather avatar standing at a booth containing a miniature Because Internet at #LingComm23!

Image of virtual Lingcomm booth for Gretchen McCulloch. Blue background that mimics carpet and a blue square with pixel chairs and table. Displays QR codes and Because Internet and an avatar of Gretchen.