The @cla-acl.bsky.social has issued a press release "calling on the Government of Québec to reconsider its decree banning forms of gender-inclusive writing, specifically the inclusive pronoun 'iel', the word 'toustes' and the interpoint." cla-acl.ca/pdfs/Ecritur...

ideally yes

¡We should Adopt Language Practices as we see Fit!

What if we didn’t and content in African languages remained useful and written by humans?

this guy using the word "Mono" like it's a slur????

Instant messaging was better when no one had a smart phone. Conversations had well defined beginnings and endings because people were either online or not.

@djinnandtonic.bsky.social sticker spotted on H Street in Washington, D.C.

YouTube video by Casgo The Amish (The Frisco Kid 1979)

btw this scene from The Frisco Kid with the German speaking Amish with black clothes, big hats and beards mistaking a Yiddish speaking Jew with black clothes, big hat and beard for an Amish and vice versa never stops being hilarious

(even if they dropped the ball by using standard German)

Hahaha this would be more than 2x the current number of healthcare workers worldwide. About 1/10 of the number of people currently working in *agriculture*

One added professional translator for each combination is not a huge volume of work for each combination, just one person's work, but it would be cool as hell and we should do it

That's similar to one Italy GDP or ten Aotearoa/New Zealand GDP's.

Roughly 1/10 of USA or China GDP's.

I reckon we can do it haha

Just playing around with those numbers, looking at worldwide GDP per capita figures... A hundred million people at like a pretty moderate worldwide rate of like USD 25,000 per year, that's what, $2.5 trillion per year?

Suppose we can get like 10,000 language communities who want to have their shit translated. 10,000 x 10,000 grid, basically a hundred million combinations (like the Scots → isiXhosa translator is a different person from the isiXhosa → Scots translator, etc, so you use the whole grid).

What if we did WAY more translation? Way way way more. Between and among every combination of language systems!

This kills the Clippy.

...

Should be obvious. Lots of people saying otherwise, and for each one, I shudder to imagine them interacting with, like, a child or an animal. "Unbend" like, my intestines or my brain folds, yuck I don't think so

what if we analyzed (linguistic or other) misgendering misgendering not as an error, not as a misidentification or reflection of a different understanding of reality, but rather as a speech act intended to discipline, enforce, and re-inscribe gender onto a referent

People say Boston is a white city because they don’t know Boston is a city in a majority minority metro where the Taiwanese American mayor succeeds in part because she campaigns in Haitian Kreyòl

I hate it when people misuse the word “decimate” and one tenth of me will die on this hill

first of all, amazing example of how to cite TV episodes 📺🫨📃

Journal of Linguistic Anthropology | AAA Journal | Wiley Online Library This paper uses Star Trek's “Universal Translator” (UT) as a point of departure for considering the imagined future of mediated linguistic interactions and of contact across difference. Although such...

I have been slightly AWOL on here, but I am popping in to share a new article that I wrote which has just been published in the Journal of Linguistic Anthroplogy (open access!).

It is about Star Trek, the Universal Translator, and utopias.

anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

"but we can't support trans rights, it's unpopular!"

just a reminder that US approval for marriage between black and white people at the start of the civil rights movement was 4%, reaching a whopping 20% by the end of the movement

it's 95% now

you don't wait for popularity for a rights movement

or you need to go down the chain until you arrive at the vowel contrast, maybe?

i wonder if [he/they] and [she/they] etc experience comparatively more conversational repair, because in that intro dyad you just get one token of each

meanwhile the fact that e.g. "she/her/hers" has shortened to "she/her" in speech, but typically NOT "she" (in my experience), is such a nice example of like. "she" alone is not enough redundant sound info, you need "she/her" & you need another syllable in case of noisy environment etc

do we know of ppl who signal different gender depending on case? e.g. they/him/her/hers/themself

unlikely and perhaps awkward but maybe ppl are doing it

he/her, even, in this text :)

stardew valley screenshot with info about a 1 month old baby pig: "Kese is still a little clumsy from being born. He's curious about her new world."

i love this little genderfluid pig in stardew valley who uses he/she pronouns

every act of communication, of meaning-making, means participating in a big web of meanings. a web that you are weaving but so is everyone else , all the layered contributions of many generations. to "understand something" or "make yourself understood" is fundamentally communal

we see lots of horrible antisocial & inhumane action. but, even the nastiest ppl kinda already know how to stop doing that. we all have a little friendly bug in us and everybody is an expert at cooperation already :) because that is the only way that communication can ever work :)

Flyer made of a collage of images. The background image in the top half is a multi-colored image of mushrooms under ultraviolet light. Over this image on the left side is a slightly tilted white rectangle containing the following text in black and gray: "PITTSBURGH ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR. October 24-26, 2025. pghanarchistbookfair@proton.me e-mail, http://bit.ly/4mvuB6v announcement only listserv." On the right edge of the flyer is a small photo of a silhouetted flag being raised over a greenish background, superimposed with small white text reading "RAISE THE BLACK FLAG." Below this on the bottom right is an image, tilted 90 degrees counterclockwise, of a human figure facing away from the camera and holding a spraying roman candle, with a faint circle-A in the background. Superimposed over this image, also tilted 90 degrees counterclockwise, is the text "FIRE WORKS." The bottom left of the flyer is a black and white photo of a police car on fire, taken from the rear of the car. Superimposed over this image is the white text, "we are not afraid of ruins."

Hoping to do a talk about langywangy at this book fair ~~~ in Pittsburgh, Oct 24-26. Submissions are open until this coming Monday

Austrians will complain "foreigners don't learn German" but by this they never mean the white Brits, Americans etc who have lived here for 10+ years and can barely order a beer but they definitely do mean Turks, Bosnians etc who actually do speak German, just with an accent and grammatical errors