3 years of All Things Linguistic
It’s my third blogiversary! Let’s celebrate by looking back at some of my favourite posts:
Why the schwa is so great
Why do we say “big red barn” but “red big barn” sounds wrong?
How do you rhyme in a sign language?
Ikea’s bookbook, soy milk vs milk milk, and like-liking. What’s going on?
The language of poetry (me on Schwa Fire)
How does overtone singing work phonetically?
Why swearing is just like saying “please” (sort of)
A Linguist Explains the Syntax of “Fuck” (me on The Toast)
Your mother tongue has a lasting effect on your brain – even if you don’t remember it
To what extent is music language?
Highlights from a game of linguistsagainsthumanity
One wug. Two ___. Red wug. Blue wug.
A linguist walks into a bar. (More advanced version: A maximal projection walks into a v bar…)
Nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trill
All about that richness of the base
Highly implausible vowel inventories, from least to most ridiculous
What we think of as “good” English is the English historically spoken by people with the most power.
What makes a word “real”? (gif version)
Did a key witness in Trayvon Martin’s case talk funny, or could we all use some education?
Texting as amateur peer writing practice (xkcd)
Why grammar snobbery has no place in the movement
Young women shouldn’t have to talk like men to be taken seriously
Habitual “be” in African American English
Codeswitching is a sign of fluency, not a deficit
“Children as young as five are punished for speaking African languages, indigenous languages and mother tongues at school.”
Language revitalization and technology
Britain’s first baby to be registered with a sign name
Should people learn Indigenous languages that aren’t part of their heritage?
Indigenous language dormant for more than 100 years revived
Skwomesh language revitalized by First Nations youth through DIY immersion
Linguistics and pop culture
Look at all these ducks there are at least ten (Gricean Maxims and duck gifs)
Singing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song and trochaic tetrameter
Free “tudoring” and a moist owlet: the 5 “t” sounds in English
What tense should you use to talk about time travel in Back to the Future?
I analyzed the linguistic aspects of every single episode of Cabin Pressure, a very linguistically clever BBC radio comedy.
NPIs explained using Mean Girls references (follow-up on FCIs)
What’s up with exclamation!compounds?
Final hanging “but”, final “but”, “so” and “or”, final comma
(Problems with) Internet slang meets American Sign Language
e.e. cumblr (tumblr-speak as postmodern poetry)
That way we’re all writing now
no punctuation is funnier
When you can and cannot even
NOPE, tildes, and twitter dialects
Will we all be speaking emoji “language” in a few years? Nope.
Internet language, pictures, and emoji
Some data on “u” vs “you” as a formality distinction
A linguist on the story of gender pronouns (me at The Toast)
Over half of languages do not have gendered pronouns
Conjugating singular they
If pronouns are a closed class, how is it that people are inventing new ones?
Why Hangul (the Korean alphabet) is awesome
Linguistic tips for fake-pronouncing any foreign language
Multilingual sign language dictionary
Faire smashy-smash or fucking shit up? The complications of bilingual profanity
Why are written French and spoken French so different? (follow-up on French fanfic)
Ingressive “yes” in Swedish and some English dialects
Why the English progressive is interesting
Will linguistics help with language learning? / Will learning a second language help with linguistics?
LingVids, a joint project between me and several other linguists
The first video in my collaboration with Tom Scott
This syntax series from University of Edinburgh and of course the ongoing videos from thelingspace.
Explanations of ergative/accusative, Optimality Theory, and perfect vs perfective
How to participate in lingwiki editathons from afar, report from the first #lingwiki, report from the second #lingwiki (upcoming editathon on May 31st!)
How to explain linguistics to your friends and family
Linguistics jobs resource roundup
How to find a topic for your linguistics paper
List of linguistics conferences, especially those focussed on undergraduates/students
How to type IPA on your phone (Android/iOS)
Linguistics resources for high school teachers
Teaching linguistics to 9-14 year olds: ling camp week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4.
An eight-part series on teaching yourself to draw syntax trees: start here for an overview or here to dive right in
Advice for writing pop linguistics articles and how pop linguistics differs from teaching and pop science
I made an FAQ and did an interview with Unravelled
Haven’t been with me this whole time? It’s okay – you can see the highlights of year one and year two right here.
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