Tag: tweets

July, August, & September 2025: ASL Camp and Arroba Lengua

Gretchen McCulloch

This summer, I went to ASL camp! I spent a week at Bob Rumball Camp of the Deaf, in Parry Sound, Ontario, at their ASL Adult Immersion Summer Camp, voices off for 6 nights and 7 days! This was my first time doing any sort of language immersion camp in my various experiences learning languages, and I definitely see why people like them, I really felt liked I levelled up significantly in my signing with that much concentrated practice (and I slept very soundly in the dorm beds since my brain felt so full from learning). And I made friends and got to learn from a left-handed ASL teacher for the first time, which was helpful for me as a lefty!

Also, the Spanish-language translation of Because Internet was released. You can get Arroba Lengua — not a literal translation of the title, but Spanish Internet slangification with a similar vibe — from Piodepagina, Casadellibro, and other places Spanish-language books are sold (note that the ebook edition may be more readily available if you’re outside Europe). And 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. 

More media milestones

Let’s start with the big news: The first Crash Course Linguistics video has hit a million views! If you want some fun 10 min linguistics videos to watch, here’s a great place to start.

In way smaller news, Because Internet is on one of Penguin Random House’s “credibility bookshelf” zoom backgrounds. 

And somewhere in between: Because Internet made an appearance in an episode of Words Unraveled. @efrex.bsky.social made a nice callout to my interview on Let’s Learn Everything. And Linguistic Discovery would like to remind you that the internet is encouraging, not ruining, writing. 

Lingthusiasm

We launched two new Lingthusiasm merch designs:

{Merry, marry, Mary} Holidays Whether you say them the same or differently, hope you have a joyful festive season!
The Lingthusiasm podcast logo

Lingthusiam put out six episodes, including three interviews. 

Speaking of interviews, we have more than twenty interview episodes now, and you can find them all together on our topics page, where they have their own category. We also have over 100 bonus episodes for patrons, with a few interviews there as well.

Lingcomm

It was a big few months for communicating about lingcomm. Maybe we can call that lingcommcomm? Or maybe not… 

I presented at Lingstitute 2025, the LSA summer institute, about 101 ways to communicate linguistics with a broader audience — some of which we brainstormed together in this bluesky thread.

I started a new series of interviews on the lingcomm.org blog about community collaboration linguistics projects that don’t have much of a web presence. First interview: Lingcomm IRL with Girl Scouts, an interview with Nikole Patson.

The lingcomm mailing list now has over 100 members! If you’re a lingcomm practitioner who wants to hear about lingcomm conferences, events, journal special issues, and so on, please feel free to subscribe!

Lingthusiasm cohost creator Lauren Gawne put out her yearly list of linguistics and language podcasts. Know of a good one she missed? Please let her know!  

New favorite linguistic data

Linguistics

— Gretchen McCulloch (@gretchenmcc.bsky.social) 2025-09-11T21:54:45.712Z

Miscellaneous posts

The lingthusiasm podcast logo, zoomed in to reveal many smaller pictures

This quarter’s image is a schwa and a kiki and a nondetatched rabbit part and a vowel space and a microphone and…

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

gretchenassistant

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!

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

gretchenassistant

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

gretchenassistant

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

gretchenassistant

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

gretchenassistant

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

gretchenassistant

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.

January 2023: Denver and deleted scenes

gretchenassistant

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! It was so great to see people in person after several years of virtual events. I was also on a linguistics jobs panel organized by the student committee.

The main episode of Lingthusiasm was Where language names come from and why they change. The bonus episode was Parrots, art, and what even is a word – Deleted scenes from Kat Gupta, Lucy Maddox, and Randall Munroe interviews.

We announced another Lingthusiasm liveshow! February 18th (Canada) slash 19th (Australia)! (What time is that for me?) We return to one of our fan-favourite topics and answer your questions about language and gender with returning special guest Dr. Kirby Conrod! (See Kirby’s previous interview with us about the grammar of singular they.)

Selected tweets:

This month’s image is from while I was in Colorado: I dropped by Boulder Books with Janelle Shane and we found both of our books there and left them with signed copies!

Two closed copies of Because Internet (just signed!)