A classic book on AAVE is Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English by John Russell Rickford and Russell John Rickford (who are, delightfully, father and son), but I'll retweet this in case other people also have recommendations!

So@solene314.bsky.social · yesterday

@lingthusiasm.com I've learned about a nice feature of AAVE here: www.youtube.com/shorts/-ble0... I'd be delighted to learn more about AAVE, mostly the grammar, but also the history and the social bits. Would you know good resources? I'd rather have books or podcasts 🙂 Thanks ❤️

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

Abundant use of diminutives also in Brazilian Portuguese — and in (perhaps) unexpected contexts. Check out: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Morphology in action: Diminutives in Brazilian obstetric and gynecological consultations | Language in Society | Cambridge Core

Morphology in action: Diminutives in Brazilian obstetric and gynecological consultations - Volume 55 Issue 1

cambridge.org

May interest you? @lingthusiasm.com @dannybate.com

Hen Gymro Heb Wlad@hengymrohebwlad.bsky.social · 2d ago

This is a lovely, thoughtful piece about the experience of learning Ukrainian in wartime - full of insights into the process of learning a language and into how it opens new perspectives on the culture and lives of those who speak it. www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

We LOVE seeing all your photos of Lingthusiasm zines out in the world so far, please do keep on sharing them! (And letting us know of any bugs we can fix too!)

Post by @lingthusiasm · 4 images

💬 0  🔁 41  ❤️ 75 · Lingthusiasm gets into zines! · We hear from people a lot who are enthusiastic about linguistics, and many of you have been trying to get other people in your life also into ling…

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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

In Hebrew, for animals, we often repeat the last syllable of the noun. Dog is kelev, puppy klavlav; pig is khazir, piglet is khazarzir. We also have suffixes like -on, -chik, and these can be piled on for extra smallness. Klavlabonchik is an extra small and cute puppie.

Or sometimes -etje Lam (lamb) > lammetje There’s also the archaic -eke, still in use for some fixed expressions or in dialects Kind (child ) > Het kindeke Jezus Man (man) manneke

In Dutch the diminutive suffix is -je (or sometimes -tje) hond (dog) > hondje auto (car) > autootje

Swiss German does - "Schätzli", "Müüsli", etc. (Swiss German loves diminutives in general, which I much appreciate as a poor German speaker, because that automatically makes them neuter in gender, so no need to cudgel my brains!)

An oldie but a goodie #CILW26 #CLW

Lingthusiasm@lingthusiasm.com · 7y ago

How do you get kids excited about learning a language? In this episode, @GretchenAMcC interviews @Te_Reo_KA about making pop culture stories in Cook Islands Māori 💚🎧🧙‍♂️ https://soundcloud.com/lingthusiasm/31-pop-culture-in-cook-islands-maori-interview-with-ake-nicholas

Need a @lingthusiasm.com episode about this

Eugene Vinitsky 🍒@eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 5d ago

Fantastic paper demonstrating how LLM editing is gradually distorting our writing and the way we think to write: arxiv.org/abs/2603.18161

In German, it's rarely used, but possible; I'd say it's mostly for humorous effect or derision, e.g. “Schatzileinchen”.

I guess double, or recursive diminutives are not a thing in English, but they are in e.g. Estonian (but weirdly enough not in very closely related Finnish...) In Russian, different diminutive suffixes can be stacked to each other, e.g. -ik > -ichek.

How common is it to do like in Mexican Spanish (at least informally) to add multiple suffixes to signify extra tiny? E.g. perro > perrito > perritito

This looks so good!!!

Karen C@silver.phoenyx.net · 4d ago

Much better.

It has become time to get a formal zine holder in the LFL. (Also @lingthusiasm.com , one of the zines has stray page indicators left in)

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

It's also dated, at this point, so I'm not sure everyone still picks up on it. (My teacher is a little older than me and I've learned from books/people 20+ years my senior since I was a kid.) BTW, don't worry about misunderstanding in Japan with thumbs up! It's widely used the same as English now.

I've basically only seen the gesture used to refer to sexual partners. "Oh, he's her 'this'? (*makes gesture*) (You also hold the thumb closer to the rest of your fingers for the "man" gesture.)

Ok, so the "thumbs up is 'man' in Japanese" thing is, to my understanding, even funnier in context, because it's a little sexual? Holding out your pinky is the "woman" equivalent, and my teacher actually (lightly) scolded me for using it. (lol)

Lingthusiasm@lingthusiasm.com · last wk.

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

I shared this fact a couple months ago at an HR workshop on workplace communication. Multiple people came up afterwards to ask if it was true. Really blew some minds apparently.

Lingthusiasm@lingthusiasm.com · last wk.

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

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

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

Ooh, you might be interested in this episode on linguistic accommodation, which is the technical term for adapting your language to other people like that!

Bonus 25: Adapting your language to other people - chat with Claire Gawne | Lingthusiasm

When you talk to someone who speaks a different version of English than you do, do you keep talking the way you do otherwise or do you find

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Jan Murphy@packrat74.bsky.social · 2w ago

@lingthusiasm.com Do you have an episode on accent drift? When I used to talk to one of my customer service contacts in Tennesee, my boss would laugh at me afterwards because over the course of the call I would slide toward her accent (I'm from Florida; boss was from Northern California).

In the final round, they pelt you with eggcorns. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/legos PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

Going back and listening to some lingthusiasm, and now I know the term for bilingualism/Spanglish in the RGV!!

Lingthusiasm@lingthusiasm.com · 6mo ago

In some communities, everyone regularly uses two languages or varieties according to the social situation, with one of them being more prestigious (and more likely to be written down) than the other. In this episode we get enthusiastic about diglossia! soundcloud.com/lingthusiasm...

Linguistics zines!! Print 'em!! Share 'em!!!

Lingthusiasm@lingthusiasm.com · 2w ago

People want to get their friends into linguistics more, but a whole podcast is a lot to start with! So we're making some fun little minizines that anyone can print off and share! More about why Lingthusiasm is getting into zines here:

If there's one thing I'm enthusiastic about besides linguistics, it's zines!

Lingthusiasm@lingthusiasm.com · 2w ago

People want to get their friends into linguistics more, but a whole podcast is a lot to start with! So we're making some fun little minizines that anyone can print off and share! More about why Lingthusiasm is getting into zines here:

I enjoyed this episode so much, and can I also say how delightful and refreshing it is to hear discussions about language, communication, and technology where "AI" does not feature

Lingthusiasm@lingthusiasm.com · 3w ago

Can we teach dogs to express their needs better by pressing buttons? How about bonobos? What have we learned from the first-ever recording of a sperm whale birth? In this episode we get enthusiastic about how people use technology to enhance our communication with these three animals!