Tag: conferences

January, February, & March 2026: Abridged sonnets and legible arrangements

Gretchen McCulloch

In the first quarter of the year, I attended the Linguistic Society of America 2026 annual meeting online and admired how linguists are really great at pronouncing people’s names (phonetic transcription is a practical skill!).

I narrated the audiobook for Shakespeare’s Sonnets Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness by Zach Weinersmith, featuring sonnets turned into couplets like “When in disgrace and feeling crappy / I think ‘you love me.’ Then I’m happy.” Zach has very kindly given me some free copies of the audiobook to share with people who follow Lingthusiasm on Patreon (at any level, free or paid), so if you want to hear me try to restrain my giggles at a few points, there are still some left! It was neat to read all 154 sonnets and see how my high school sonnet-reading excised some of the spicier ones and how reading them in order created a narrative arc of Shakespeare’s disaster bisexual love life. 

I also posted about life as a writer and celebrated some extremely silly holidays. Read on for more!

Lingthusiasm

In case you needed another reason to listen to Lingthusiasm, my friend’s kid complains when someone puts on a podcaster that isn’t me. In that spirit, here are the episodes that my cohost Lauren Gawne and I put out: 

Upcoming events

I’m attending three local conferences in Montreal in June: 

The logo of the conference Labphon 20

If you know of other events happening in Montreal or nearby that I might be interested in, especially linguistics conferences that might be interested in a lingcomm workshop, you can tell me about them via bluesky or via my contact form! 

LingComm and popular science

Applications are closed on the LingComm grants, and the winners will be announced shortly. This is our fourth year running them: we started in 2020 in what accidentally became supporting some projects in lockdown, and since then have been runing them bi-yearly (or is that biennially? vingifortmonthly?). Thanks to several generous donations, we have more to give this year than usual, and we’re excited to start choosing recipients!

Looking for science-y details to use as an SFF writer? You don’t need to use the same old 1940s theories: look to modern LingComm and other pop sci writing!

What linguistics fact is still a hot take with the general public? All varieties are valid, systematic, worthy of study and respect. Go forth, LingCommers, and spread the word.

Aspiring LingCommers might also be interested in

I'd be less stressed about the promotional side, but also I'm on social media because I like nerding out about linguistics with people and helping people learn more about language, and I don't really see that stopping? I mean, I'm like this at parties too

— Gretchen McCulloch (@gretchenmcculloch.com) 2026-02-14T19:04:04.106Z

Minor celebrations

We celebrated pi day, which could also be pie day — and perhaps PIE day. Fun fact: it turns out the guy who started using π the letter to mean π the number was the father of the guy who first hypothesized PIE the language. 

On the subject of silly holidays, we also celebrated Rectangular February. And of course, Valentine’s Day, observed (as is traditional) with linguistics-themed poetry. 

And in the smallest and cutest of honours, someone may or may not have named a lamb after me. You know, I’ve always aspired to be, erm, outstanding in my field. 

I saw some people calling it Rectangular February

— Gretchen McCulloch (@gretchenmcculloch.com) 2026-02-01T18:41:13.855Z

New favorite linguistic data

Psst, wanna see a weird sentence? Step right up, folks. We got yer weird sentences, clauses, words, and phrases right here. 

Or maybe you want a non-weird word with a secret weird past. We’ve got you too — try this history of minute. For those who prefer animals to people, here’s Kiki and Bouba, but chickens. If you like data bigger than a sentence, here’s a linguistic analysis of Heated Rivalry and a detailed explanation of NPIs and downward entailment using Mean Girls references. Truly something for everyone!

A page of signal flags used on old ships, listing their meanings.

Beek week greet

Hello, books! Howdy! Bonjour-hi! Okay, these greetings to books don’t belong to any particular weeks, but here’s what I’ve been excited about as a reader in early 2026.

A bouquet of flowers, but with open books instead of blossoms. Text surrounding it says "Legible Arrangement"

*writing on my phone case* if you have time to doom scroll, you have time to read books.

Department of Meme Studies

She's paying more attention to intonation and rhythm than typical "seniors do Gen Z" videos I've encountered, which is interesting to me as a linguist

— Gretchen McCulloch (@gretchenmcculloch.com) 2026-01-30T05:30:50.551Z

Miscellaneous posts

Here I am on the map of Bluesky, hanging out in linguistics near the Canadians and sociologists:

A diagram from the website bluesky-map.theo.io. It shows gretchenmcculloch.com next to many other websites.

In the featured image today I’m writing from a particularly aesthetic cafe situation.

A cappuccino in a floral teacup

2025 year in review

Gretchen McCulloch

In 2025, Lauren Gawne and I reached our 100th episode of Lingthusiasm, our podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! It’s a special format featuring 100 fun things about linguistics, which makes it a great entry point to the show if you haven’t tried it yet or are looking for something to forward to people. We also celebrated our 100th bonus episode (does that make this year actually our 200th episode all told? shhh) by re-releasing our very first bonus episode (on swearing) with added sweary commentary for free to everyone who follows us on Patreon. 

I kept studying ASL, including two more semesters of ASL 104 and 105 at the Lethbridge Layton Mackay Rehabilitation Centre in Montreal and a week at the ASL Adult Immersion Summer Camp at Bob Rumball Camp of the Deaf in Ontario. I really feel like I can actually just have a conversation now with someone who’s willing to accommodate me, especially after camp; I’m not constantly running into gaps in basic vocab like I was last year. Sadly, I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to take more classes in 2026, since classes at my level aren’t currently being offered, but hopefully I’ll at least make it out to social things since I know some people now! 

Behind the scenes, 2025 was also a year of dealing with some medical stuff, and I’m looking forward to having more energy and hopefully also fewer appointments this coming year. Modern meds are so great. 

Conferences and presentations

PS: if you know of upcoming linguistics conferences coming to Montreal, you should let me know! I try to keep an eye out but I’m not on every listserv, and it’s easier than travelling for me to drop by or even do a lingcomm workshop or lingcomm office hours when it’s local. 

Collaborations

The Spanish-language translation of Because Internet was released internationally (available from Piodepagina or Casadellibro, or as an ebook). For lots of juicy details about the translation process, see our Lingthusiasm bonus episode where Lauren Gawne and I interview Miguel Sánchez Ibáñez, the translator. You can also get Because Internet in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean translations, and just for the record, if anyone wanted to bring me to those places to talk about translation or any other subject, I would not say no.

I appeared on a few podcasts:

I also started editing a new series of interviews on the lingcomm.org blog with Leah Velleman about community collaboration linguistics projects that don’t have much of a web presence. Here are our four episodes so far:

Bonne Maman puts out a yearly advent calendar of tiny specialty jams, 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.

Milestones

Lingthusiasm

My linguistics podcast with Lauren Gawne celebrated our 100th episode! To celebrate the nice round number, we made the 100th episode a special feature of 100 fun facts about linguistics, featuring some from earlier episodes and previous guests on the show, as well as some we haven’t mentioned yet (but which we might expand upon in the next 100 episodes). 

For the 101th episode, looking forward to the future, we compiled a list of 101 places to get enthusiastic about linguistics, whittled down from hundreds of listener suggestions of podcasts, books, videos, blogs, and other places online and offline. 

We also celebrated our 100th bonus episode a few months later! In celebration of this feat we re-released our very first bonus episode (about swearing), now with some bonus sweary facts that we’ve learned in the interim and unlocked for anyone who follows us at any level on Patreon, including free! 

Plus, we made a special jazzed-up version of the Lingthusiasm logo to put on stickers, tshirts, and more, featuring fun little drawings from the past 9 years of enthusiasm about linguistics by our artist Lucy Maddox — originally sent out as a sticker to Ling-thusiast patrons and above and now also available on assorted merch — and 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! 

Lingthusiasm episodes

  1. Episode 100: A hundred reasons to be enthusiastic about linguistics
  2. Micro to macro: The levels of language
  3. The science and fiction of Sapir-Whorf
  4. A hand-y guide to gesture
  5. Reading and language play in Sámi: Interview with Hanna-Máret Outakoski
  6. Linguistics of TikTok: Interview with Adam Aleksic aka EtymologyNerd
  7. Is a hotdog a sandwich? The problem with definitions 
  8. Urban Multilingualism
  9. Highs and lows of tone in Babanki: Interview with Pius Akumbu
  10. On the nose: How the nose shapes language
  11. The history of the history of Indo-European: Interview with Danny Bate
  12. Whoa!! A surprise episode??? For me??!!

Bonus episodes

  1. Crochet vocal tract, grammar is a team sport, gifs, and soy sauce: Deleted scenes from Jacq Jones, Emily M. Bender, and Tom Scott team interviews
  2. What makes for beautiful writing, scientifically speaking
  3. Rock, paper, scissors, Gesture book, and a secret project: Survey results and general updates
  4. Linguist Celebrities
  5. The linguistics of kissing 😘
  6. Fun linguistic experiments, linguistic etiquette, and language learning scenarios
  7. Why sci-fi gestures live long and prosper: Crossover with Imaginary Worlds
  8. Reading linguistic landscapes on street signs
  9. ¡Pos ya está! Translating Because Internet into Spanish with Miguel Sánchez Ibáñez
  10. What’s in a nym? Synonyms, antonyms, and so many more
  11. World Linguistics Day
  12. The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript: Interview with Claire Bowern

We’ve also released some bonus episodes as collections if you’d like to check a few out without signing up for a monthly subscription. You can get updated and deleted scenes, interviews, word nerdery, linguistic advice, linguistic gossip, Lingthusiasm after dark, or Lingthusiasm book club.

Reading and other media

Selected posts from tumblr, instagram, and bluesky

New favorite linguistic examples

Never-before-heard sentences

Newly coined words

Words that have already caught on

Multilingualism

Linguistics-themed everything

Has anyone studied?

Inspiring life advice from linguists

Missed out on previous years? Here are the summary posts from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. 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. If you’d like to get a monthly email when there’s a new Lingthusiasm episode out, plus bonus links for further reading, you can follow Lingthusiasm for free or paid on Patreon.

October, November, & December 2025: Plays, poems, and preserves

Gretchen McCulloch

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.

A copy of Arroba Lengua, with the text "ya en formato e-book"
"Arroba lengua es el libro perfecto para entender el modo en que internet está cambiando nuestra lengua, por qué es bueno que eso suceda y hasta qué punto nuestras interacciones digitales hablan de nosotros."

Lingthusiasm

Lingthusiasm turned 9 this season! That’s nine years of podcasting enthusiastically about linguistics! Our episodes were:

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. 

A greeting card says "{Merry, marry, Mary} Holidays. Whether you say them the same or differently, hope you have a joyful festive season!"

New favorite linguistic data

Linguists are NOT KIDDING…

Today in linguists are NOT KIDDING when we say that your knowledge of language enables you to understand sentences that have never been said before.

— Gretchen McCulloch (@gretchenmcculloch.com) 2025-11-26T21:18:23.439Z

…when we say that this section is full of sentences you can understand that have never before been uttered.

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:

Miscellaneous posts

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! 

A copy of Julie Sedivy's book Linguaphile in front of an advent calendar.

April, May, & June 2025: Lauren writes a gesture book!

Gretchen McCulloch

Back in 2017, when I was deep in the writing process for Because Internet, I was feeling stuck on the emoji chapter and Lauren Gawne, my cohost on the then-baby Lingthusiasm podcast (we were less than a year old!) offered to read the current draft. I’ll never forget her comment that led to me rewriting the whole chapter: “You realize this is all related to gesture, right?” 

Immediately, I wanted to dive into the gesture literature, which hadn’t been a part of either of my linguistics degrees. I asked Lauren where I should start. Was there some sort of short book or long survey article that put the rest of the literature into context so I could figure out which papers I needed to read more deeply and how they fit into relationship with each other? Lauren was like, “Read these parts of McNeill 1992, and then McNeill 2005, and then these three chapters of Kendon 2004…” — which was when I realised maybe I was going to have to solve this problem for myself. She ended up sending me her classroom slides and answering my questions herself, which led to a much-revised chapter in Because Internet and an academic paper together on emoji as gesture. 

Since then, we’ve done several Lingthusiasm episodes about various aspects of gesture, but that gap we noticed in 2017 has still been there: if someone wants a more in-depth entry point into the gesture literature, one that doesn’t assume they have any background in gesture specifically but does assume they want more details than we can fit into a podcast episode, where do they go? Especially since many people’s degrees, like mine, still don’t contain much about gesture, so a prof in linguistics, cognitive science, anthropology, and related fields might not know where to advise a student with a gesture-related project to start reading. 

That’s why Lauren has written a book! It’s called Gesture: A Slim Guide and it’s available now from Oxford University Press. The Slim Guides are part of an Oxford series in the genre known as academic crossover books: they’re much less technical than a typical academic monograph, but more in-depth than a trade book from a commercial publisher like Penguin. Here are some ways you can learn more about it: 

Events and media

I also did other things this quarter than just take credit for Lauren’s hard work! Quite a few things, in fact: three conferences…

…two guest appearances…

…and a few anniversaries:

Lingthusiasm

We had a few special lingnouncements this quarter. (Is that a word? It is now.)

You can now gift a Lingthusiasm membership to someone else. Depending on the tier you buy, this could get them access to bonus episodes and our Discord server, or even a spot with their favorite IPA character on the Lingthusiasm Supporter Wall of Fame.

We also celebrated our 100th bonus episode on Patreon. In celebration, we went back into the vault and revisited our very first bonus episode — with updated sweary commentary on Important Swearing Developments that have happened since 2017. We’ve made this extra bonus bonus version available to all patrons, free and paid, so feel free to send it to your friends!

Plus, we had a full quarter of three regular and three bonus episodes:

Posts

New favorite linguistic data

This quarter’s image is me, holding onto Lauren’s Gesture book with my own two hands (well, one hand had to hold the camera), since it exists in the real world! I hope it brings joy to students, researchers, and autodidacts! 

"Gesture: A slim guide" by Lauren Gawne, published by Oxford University Press

January, February, and March 2025: 100th Lingthusiasm episode

Gretchen McCulloch
A bag of popcorn labeled in French and English. Where the English says "No cheese cheesiness," the French says "Au fauxmage"

 In the first few months of 2025, we celebrated a podcast milestone: 100 episodes of Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! 

To celebrate, my cohost Lauren Gawne and I did a special double-feature: our 100th episode had 100 “fun fact” reasons to be enthusiastic about linguistics (including a few from former guests) and our 101st episode finally tackles that classic “Linguistics 101” format of the micro-to-macro perspective on language. 

Plus, we made a special roundup post of 101 places to get enthusiastic about linguistics. This is your one-stop-shop if you want suggestions for other podcasts, books, videos, blogs, and other places online and offline to feed your interest in linguistics, based on whittling down over 1000 listener suggestions from the Lingthusiasm listener survey with editing assistance from Leah Velleman. Even with a hundred and one options, we’re sure there’s still a few that we’ve missed, so also feel free to tag us @lingthusiasm on social media about your favourites! 

Also, and we feel extremely enthusiastic about this, after a bonus episode mentioned crocheting a model of the vocal tract, very talented listener Melody sent us a genuine crocheted model of the vocal tract! 

And as always we put out three regular and three bonus episodes.

Publishing news from all over 

Because Internet is now translated into four languages — three that I don’t speak (which is very surreal) and one that I sorta do. My author copies of all four have now finally arrived, so here’s a photo of them all hanging out together! 

Book covers in four languages: Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

And the famous Bunny Paper — a.k.a. Labov 1971, on evaluating kids’ language skills (using empathy and bunnies) — is back in print in open access form! When Labov passed away, someone mentioned the existence of this once-obscure paper, and Linguistics Twitter went on a hunt for a copy. We eventually did an episode about it on Lingthusiasm. Now it’s back in print so anyone who wants can read it.

Events

I went to the Linguistic Society of America’s annual meeting, this year in Philadelphia, where I played Spot the Canadian, felt a little bit old when I met a longtime fan, and saw “rawdog” elected Word of the Year.

To rawdog: taking on life without the usual protection, preparation, or comfort. Whether it’s diving into a challenge unprepared or skipping the safety net, rawdogging is about embracing risk, stone-cold sobriety, and rolling with it.

I also appeared on a few other podcasts:

New favorite data…

…and a few excellently coined new words

Social media

This quarter’s image is a bag of popcorn proving that people in Montreal really are using “fauxmage.”

2024 Year in Review

leahvelleman

In 2024, I traveled to Europe to speak at several events, including the launch of the Spanish translation of Because Internet. I started studying American Sign Language through the Lethbridge Layton Mackay Rehabilitation Centre in Montreal — my first time in a language classroom since university and it’s been really fun! The 2024 lingcomm grants were awarded. And I collaborated with the Crash Course Linguistics team on a research article about the series.

This year the podcast and I got some fun tidbits of pop culture recognition. Lingthusiasm was featured in the New York Times’ list of 5 Podcasts for Word Nerds, and Puzzmo’s daily crossword referenced my book Because Internet.

And speaking of which, Lauren Gawne and I kept making the podcast, along with some new merch featuring rabbits and fun personality quiz. I also started working with Leah Velleman on these update posts and assorted other Lingthusiasm and behind-the-scenes projects. 

Conferences

Most of my conference attendance this year was in a big trip through Europe, where I attended: 

I also went to the centennial Linguistic Society of America annual meeting in New York City.

Writing

A Spanish translation of Because Internet was released, bringing the translations list to four, with Chinese (simplified), Japanese, and Korean. If anyone reads it in several versions and wants to tell me about the linguistic choices the translators made (especially as I don’t speak the latter three languages), feel free to nerd out with me about it on bluesky. 

In 2020-21, I was a co-writer and script consultant for a project to make 16 videos for Crash Course Linguistics, the first video of which now has over a million views! The team behind these videos has also written an academic article about our process in making them, which appeared this year (yup, that’s how academic publishing goes). It’s called Creating Inclusive Linguistics Communication: Crash Course Linguistics and appears as a chapter in Inclusion in Linguistics (full text), an open-access academic book edited by Anne H. Charity Hudley, Christine Mallinson, and Mary Bucholtz. The other articles in this book and its companion Decolonizing Linguistics are also well worth checking out if you’re on the more academic side of things. 

Interviews 

Lingthusiasm

Lingthusiasm, my podcast with Lauren Gawne, celebrated our seventh anniversary! There were some fun podcast events this year above and beyond the usual episodes. Bethany Gardiner made vowel space plots for me and my cohost Lauren, and you can see more about them and how they were made on github. We created a Highly Scientific™ ‘Which Lingthusiasm episode are you?’ quiz. We put out some new merch, including gavagai shirts, scarves, and stickers to go with our episode on a famous thought experiment about a rabbit. And while we can’t take credit for this one, you can get people gift memberships now, in case there’s a linguistics fan in your life who would like to listen to the bonus episodes.

Lingthusiasm episodes

  1. No such thing as the oldest language
  2. Connecting with oral culture
  3. What visualizing our vowels tells us about who we are
  4. Scoping out the scope of scope
  5. Brunch, gonna, and fozzle — The smooshing episode
  6. How nonbinary and binary people talk — Interview with Jacq Jones
  7. The perfectly imperfect aspect episode
  8. Lo! An undetached collection of meaning-parts!
  9. Welcome back aboard the metaphor train!
  10. OooOooh~~ our possession episode oOooOOoohh 👻
  11. Helping computers decode sentences — Interview with Emily M. Bender
  12. A politeness episode, if you please

Bonus episodes

  1. Themself, Basque ergativity cartoons, and bad swearing ideas — Deleted scenes from Kirby Conrod, Itxaso Rodriguez-Ordoñez, and Jo Walton and Ada Palmer
  2. Are thumbs fingers and which episode of Lingthusiasm are you? — Survey results and a new personality quiz
  3. How we made vowel plots with Bethany Gardner
  4. Inner voice, mental pictures, and other shapes for thoughts
  5. Secret codes and the joy of cryptic word puzzles
  6. Linguistic mixups — spoonerisms, mondegreens, and eggcorns
  7. The best and worst comparatives episode
  8. Don’t you love to do a “do” episode?
  9. Behind the Scenes on the Tom Scott Language Files
  10. Xenolinguistics 👽
  11. Linguistic Travel – Estonia, Mundolingua, and Martha’s Vineyard
  12. Metaphors be with you! Lingthusiasm x Let’s Learn Everything crossover episode

Reading, listening, and other media

Selected social media posts

General linguistics

Fun moments

New favorite linguistic examples

Helpful threads and posts

Missed out on previous years? Here are the summary posts from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021,2022, and 2023. If you’d like to get a much shorter quarterly highlights newsletter via email, with all sorts of interesting internet linguistics news and links, you can sign up for that at gretchenmcc.substack.com.

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

gretchenassistant

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 

gretchenassistant

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.