This is so true. And so fun. And it's a great way to meet people, make new friends, and I think it's especially important because...well our jobs often lock us in around people who are Just Like Us. It's really nice to get out and meet people who are different. AND it doesn't have to be $$$

Gretchen McCulloch@gretchenmcculloch.com · 2h ago

One of the great joys of my adult life has been realizing that I can just pick up a new skill every so often, take a fun little class in it weekly for a year or two, and simply enjoy meeting people and getting medium proficient and not attempting to become professional in it at all!

One of the great joys of my adult life has been realizing that I can just pick up a new skill every so often, take a fun little class in it weekly for a year or two, and simply enjoy meeting people and getting medium proficient and not attempting to become professional in it at all!

With the popularization of mobile phones and higher internet speeds, language immersion in English has become a bit easier for Brazilians than it was a few decades ago. At a click's distance, one can find hundreds of websites, podcasts and courses for beginners and lower-intermediate students. +

Gretchen McCulloch@gretchenmcculloch.com · 16h ago

It's gotten so much easier to start learning so many more languages, you used to be limited to the 3-5 major languages that a local bookstore or educational institution had decided it was worth making available, and now you can just like, look things up in hundreds of them

I have a master's degree in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies, I've studied the 'Odyssey' in Ancient Greek, and I've been writing about the ancient world for over a decade. This is my exhaustive review of Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey'. #Odyssey #classics talesoftimesforgotten.com/2026/07/23/a...

An Ancient Historian's Breakdown of Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' - Tales of Times Forgotten

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is perhaps the most highly anticipated new film of the 2020s. It has already received near-universal acclaim from film critics and earned more at the box office in its ...

talesoftimesforgotten.com

oh jeez yeah, there are like dozens of websites and apps for learning Japanese when back in the day I was making my own flashcards on actual little paper cards

I was able to take inexpensive online Irish courses taught by a human instructor in Ireland without having to leave my home in Massachusetts, alongside students from Belgium all the way to the western US! My "textbook" was able to include pronunciation tracks without having to skip ahead on a CD!

25 years ago, when I wanted to know the etymology of a French word, I had to order a hard copy of an etymological dictionary in French from France.

Gretchen McCulloch@gretchenmcculloch.com · 16h ago

It's gotten so much easier to start learning so many more languages, you used to be limited to the 3-5 major languages that a local bookstore or educational institution had decided it was worth making available, and now you can just like, look things up in hundreds of them

It's gotten so much easier to start learning so many more languages, you used to be limited to the 3-5 major languages that a local bookstore or educational institution had decided it was worth making available, and now you can just like, look things up in hundreds of them

Constantine@ajaxsinger.bsky.social · 18h ago

Food, man. Food is so much better than it was in 1986. All of it. Poor-people food, restaurant food, fresh food, frozen food. Food is just a hell of a lot better.

If the Odyssey has you getting excited about epic poetry, ancient history, and what happens when an oral story gets written down, we have a Lingthusiasm episode for you!

Lingthusiasm - Lingthusiasm Episode 89: Connecting with oral...

Lingthusiasm Episode 89: Connecting with oral culture For tens of thousands of years, humans have transmitted long and intricate stories to each other, which we learned directly from witnessing othe...

lingthusiasm.com

Here’s the text: www.btboces.org/Downloads/7_...

Today is the day the story There Will Come Soft Rain is set. An amazing and heartbreaking work of fiction for our modern age. Read it here:

a wooly man without a face@jojororo.bsky.social · yesterday

archive.org/details/brad...

Dachshund rhymes with coxswain

This looks so good!!!

Karen C@silver.phoenyx.net · 4d ago

Much better.

Mary Hesse’s work on metaphor and analogy is great; that her work is out of print was frustrating when trying to teach philosophy courses on metaphor.

Gretchen McCulloch@gretchenmcculloch.com · 3d ago

Of interest to linguists interested in metaphors of cognition as well

Of interest to linguists interested in metaphors of cognition as well

Matthew Cobb@matthewcobb.bsky.social · 3d ago

This article by @smellosopher.bsky.social on Mary Hesse, of whom I was/am scandalously ignorant is a brilliant introduction to a brilliant and important thinker about how science works.

Why does "ie" turn "dog" into itty bitty "doggie"? In this Lingthusiasm zine, Leah Velleman gets enthusiastic about diminutives. Yes, this one is extra tiny, it's a diminutive zine about diminutives! A zinelet? Or zineling? For more lingthusiastic zines: lingthusiasm.com/zines

unfair of this book to target me so personally

unfair of this book to target me so personally

Oh found a fun ambiguity example, @gretchenmcculloch.com

steve blueberry@steve.racing · 6d ago

there is never any jazz in boston

The same gesture can mean different things, or have different names in different languages. In this Lingthusiasm zine, @superlinguo.bsky.social gets enthusiastic about these "emblem gestures" For more lingthusiastic zines: lingthusiasm.com/zines

Read the full response at: endangeredlanguages.com/story/respon...

It is instead a question of whether you agree that a few people should get to choose who lives or dies. It is a question of whether you, or anyone, wants to accept a world where a handful of powerful men can choose to “put out of their misery” entire cultures, ways of being, human existences.

“How sad should we [unspecified audience of people not connected to Indigenous or endangered languages] be when a language dies?”, asks this article. From Indigenous perspectives, we know this is not the question that needs to be asked.

If you’ve seen this article, you may be sitting with anger, pain, or just exhaustion at dealing with another helping of colonial nonsense. We feel a responsibility to speak back when these colonizing narratives show up, yet again, in such a prominent venue. endangeredlanguages.com/story/respon...

The New Yorker@newyorker.com · 2w ago

The idea that we have a special duty to prevent the death of languages is instantly compelling to anyone who loves languages. But is it true? www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Everyone who's been suggesting that I read Remnant Population for the last 3-5 years has been totally correct, it's GREAT

Today in "extremely low frequency vocabulary items sometimes acquire wildly different connotations in their different paradigmatic forms" Smite, smote, smitten

This is such a cool project!

Naomi Alderman@naomialderman.bsky.social · 2w ago

Week 4 of the Couch to 5k for reading is here! You can still jump in any time, or jump back on if it got away from you last week! open.substack.com/pub/naomiald...

I've met several linguistics students who've gotten into linguistics because of Arrival (and even more from Lord of the Rings, but give it time!)

Dr Lindsey Fitzharris@drlindseyfitz.bsky.social · 2w ago

Some academics turn up their noses at movie adaptations or popular history books, but I call them "gateway drugs" into deeper scholarship. How many of us fell in love with history because a movie (or book) sparked our curiosity first? For me, it was Amadeus - it sent me down an 18thC rabbit hole.

For anyone who’s ever seen one of my talks and heard me say “we’re currently in the worst time for language loss in all known human history”: I’m legitimately excited that there’s now research concretely indicating that is wrong, and I can take it out of my slides 😌

Claire@chirila.bsky.social · 2w ago

I have a new paper out in Science today with colleagues Damian Blasi, Marcus Hamilton, and Russell Gray. www.science.org/doi/epdf/10....

How many languages have existed over the Holocene—and what does that reveal about the design space of languages and cultures? Now out in @science.org www.science.org/eprint/QDZNY....

The rise and fall of language diversity through the Holocene

Characterizing the factors that have shaped linguistic diversity is fundamental for understanding human history, culture, and cognition. In this study, we combined statistical and social computational...

science.org