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:
- When language become-s(3SG) linguistic example-s(PL)
- Swifties, amorch, Melbin, and bloopers: Deleted Scenes from Adam Aleksic, Miguel Sánchez Ibáñez, and the advice episode (bonus)
- Why “it’s a diglossia!” explains so many social dynamics.
- Collaborations, your latest pop ling reading list, and assigning ourselves IPA symbols: 2026 updates! (bonus)
- Begonia, average coral, and sea pink: Defining colour terms with Kory Stamper
- Skipping rhymes, counting chants, and fortune-telling games: Children’s oral culture (bonus)
Upcoming events
I’m attending three local conferences in Montreal in June:
- Scintillation, a small literary speculative fiction convention, where I’ll be on some panels to be determined, likely about some aspect of language in science fiction and fantasy (previous years have included linguistic worldbuilding and swearing in SFF)
- Science Writers and Communicators of Canada Conference, where I’m doing a talk about mythbusting and emoji
- LabPhon, the conference of the Association for Laboratory Phonology, where I’m doing a workshop for linguists on communicating with broader audiences through zines (you may need to register for it separately on the Thursday workshop day)
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
- This thread I wrote on the economics of being a LingComm podcast host as well as a writer.
- This post by Elise Cutts on the limited audience of pop sci: mostly educated, left-leaning, and wealthy.
- This thread of thoughts on writers’ relationships with social media; here’s mine.
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.
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.
- The truth is, I have a genetic disorder where my body doesn’t produce enough books of its own, so I have to supplement. (Novel sentence)
- There’s a German insult that translates to hobbyless behavior. (Novel phrase)
- Who the hell called them “podcast hosts with whom I’ve developed an unhealthy parasocial relationship” and not … earbuds. (Novel word)
- More than 3 years ago, the famous Roman emperor Julius Caesar passed away. (Misleading scalar implicature)
- All the Belgian whistles (Eggcorn)
- Langauge (Persistent typo)
- I HAVE SOMETHING TO COMMUNICATE (Non-linguistic code)
- Linguists stumped by decline in Winnipeg residents calling themselves ‘Peggers. (Euphemism)
- The plural of book could have been beek. (Regularization is unpredictable)
- …and in fact, the singular of week could have been wook. Our library sends out an annual book wook groot, but it used to send monthly beek week greet. (More regularization)
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!
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.
- David M. Perry’s The Public Scholar might be useful for linguists doing lingcomm.
- The upcoming Mother Tongue by Sara Nović is a memoir about both being and parenting a Deaf child
- Ada Palmer’s essay “Writing/Realizing Disability + Power”
- Here’s what I like to call the “ontogeny recaputulates phylogeny” fallacy of book recommending. (hint: people don’t need to start with the entire history of a genre to appreciate it, especially when reccing books to young people!)
- Why should you request books you love from public libraries?
- There’s a new Canadian indie bookseller site and it looks cool.
- In this thread we discuss how we found out linguistics existed. So many great books on the list!
- I often try to read more books I already own, but now I’m contemplating owning more books I’ve already read.
- I wanted to send a sick friend a Legible Arrangement of books instead of an Edible one, and then cool artist Erica Moen got inspired to draw it!
*writing on my phone case* if you have time to doom scroll, you have time to read books.
Department of Meme Studies
- An especially good “Seniors talk like Gen Z” video.
- Apparently kids in school are being given the assignment “go home and ask your parents what their favourite meme is and write a report about it.” (I love this)
- For the deep lore on Proto-Blueskexian, also known as Twitteric, may I suggest Because Internet?
Miscellaneous posts
Here I am on the map of Bluesky, hanging out in linguistics near the Canadians and sociologists:
- I want to print YOU DON’T GET GOOD AT A THING BY NOT DOING IT onto little cards and just hand them out in conversation sometimes
- This is a fun reading exercise! I managed to get pretty far with knowing some German and some obsolete letters and saying things out loud!
- Eastern time next please?
- if anyone manages to score a jinx with a friend by sending them this tweet you BOTH owe me a pepsi
- Also sometimes people come up to me at conferences and tell me that I got them interested in linguistics…when they were in high school…and they’re now a grad student
- Not gonna lie, sometimes the world is on fire and I wonder why we’re doing this…
- one of my favourite small pleasures is renaming a groupchat after a random funny ephemeral thing that someone in the chat has said
- Just over here hanging out in linguistics near the Canadians and sociologists, I’m pleased with that!
In the featured image today I’m writing from a particularly aesthetic cafe situation.
Gretchen McCulloch 
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