Posted July 29 to the American Dialect Society discussion list

The US State Department has an opening for a "Deputy Eradication Advisor." I guess they have an infestation of deputies

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From the Christian Science Monitor

Saving vanishing words: Why Queens is the ‘Noah’s Ark of languages’

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2019/0705/Saving-vanishing-words-Why-Queens-is-the-Noah-s-Ark-of-languages

Why We Wrote This

The loss of a single language, legendary linguist Kenneth Hale used to say, “is like dropping a bomb on the Louvre.” ( Read more... )

I've been a language nerd all my life. On the first day of an undergraduate Old English (Anglo-Saxon) class, as part of introducing her students to the (to most of them novel) concept of language change, the instructor asked if anyone knew the origin of the name Boston. I tentatively raised my hand, and when called on I said "I think it comes from ( Read more... )

From the Chicago Sun-Times
01/30/2019, 11:14am

University of Chicago’s Miguel Civil, top expert on ancient Sumerian, dead at 92
University of Chicago professor Miguel Civil was a leading expert on the ancient Sumerian language.
By Maureen O'Donnell

Miguel Civil was a linguistic time traveler. The University of Chicago professor was considered the world’ ( Read more... )

Seen on a car with a Texas license plate:

And also with y'all

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Three YouTube videos on Trump's use of language. All are good analyses, but I still think Otto Santa Ana (The Rhetoric of Our Celebrity Demagogue) has it pinned down the best. Thanks to 

( Read more... )

I just found this on the International Phonetic Association's page of extended IPA symbols for disordered speech: the buccal interdental trill.

• buccal: pertaining to the cheeks; here, cheeks puffed out
• interdental: tongue is extended between the teeth
• trill: articulator is vibrating, as in the Italian "r" or Spanish "rr" (perro "dog" vs. pero "but")

( Read more... )

Language vs. script
by Victor Mair on Language Log

Many of the debates over Chinese language issues that keep coming up on Language Log and elsewhere may be attributed to a small number of basic misunderstandings and disagreements concerning the relationship between speech and writing.

All too often, people think that the Chinese characters (hànzì 汉字 ( Read more... )

From Nat'l Geographic website:

Sperm Whales Bring New Lingo to New Neighborhoods

Distinctive sperm whale dialects reveal that the animals now swimming around the Galápagos Islands belong to clans that are totally separate from those that were around 20 years ago.
The whales had disappeared, and now they were back. Or were they?

Since 1985, Hal ( Read more... )

From Quartz
Hat-tip to John Davis

Finally, a Hollywood sci-fi alien movie with a linguist as the hero

Review by Adam Epstein
August 18, 2016 Congratulations, linguists: You’re finally getting your big moment.

On Tuesday (Aug. 16), Paramount Pictures released the first full trailer for Arrival, a science-fiction film about a linguist (played by Amy ( Read more... )