Ms von Katzen

How far back in time can you understand English? An experiment in language change

If you liked this experiment, I published a full piece today in the same vein: a text that gets 100 years older with every section, from a modern blog post to a medieval chronicle.

It's a single story spanning 1000 years of English. See how far you get.

www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-ba...

researcher colleagues! have you just published a cool paper on language related stuff?
get in touch with me, I'm on a podcast and maybe we'll feature your study!
I do the show with the brilliant Daniel and Ben
@becauselanguage.com
becauselanguage.com

When we started @lingthusiasm.com, we benefitted from grad school funding that let us cover a few startup costs, and we recognize that not everyone has those resources

That's why in 2020, @superlinguo.bsky.social and I started the LingComm Grants, to help up-and-coming linguistics communicators

How I worked as a foreign accent coach Human voice – between sound and identity I have always been fascinated by the human voice. When you speak on the phone with a stranger, it can reveal so much about them. You can often tell whether …

For most second language speakers, their foreign accent is a source of anxiety. Some turn to accent modification training.

In the latest Language-on-the-Move post, Andrea Pešková provides a fascinating glimpse into the world of accent coaching.

languageonthemove.com/how-i-worked...

What the troubling use of the term ‘ghettos’ reveals about Denmark’s attitude towards immigration Denmark’s ‘parallel societies’: how the Nordic welfare state came to label its housing estates ‘ghettos’.

An interesting article from Prof. Garbi Schmidt traces how the term "ghetto" moved from a bureaucratic label for disadvantaged neighbourhoods to a powerful social category shaping debates about migration, integration & belonging.

🔗 tinyurl.com/mupf73r6

🧵👇

#langsky #language #linguistics

Adventures in /Ɂ/ The glottal stop is a speech sound with varying functions. It can occur as a phoneme in its own right, as a marker of prosodic boundaries, as a replacement of oral stops, and as the replacement for le...

What happens when a speech sound is both everywhere and nowhere? @holmit.bsky.social shows that glottal stop /ʔ/ differently affects lexical access in #German and #Maltese, in ways that are counterintuitive to its phonemic status in those languages. doi.org/10.16995/lab... #LabPhon #openaccess

Ein Drittel des deutschen Solarstroms stammt von kleinen Dachanlagen. Deren Förderung will die Bundesregierung jetzt streichen - fatal, wie eine neue Studie von Fraunhofer ISE und EWS Schönau zeigt. Ohne Einlenken drohen massive Einbußen beim Solarausbau und die Klimaziele geraten in Gefahr. 👇

#parentalengagement Stop it with the 'word gap' argument and ideology. Yes, I've used it in the past - I was wrong.
Don't judge parents on the basis of heavily critiqued research. Instead, read this...
ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... Thanks to @iancushing.bsky.social

I've been a faculty member in #Linguistics at a high-profile US university for for over a decade now. Most years I've been involved in graduate admissions. As of this year I'm the Graduate Chair for my department. I thought it might be helpful to share some advice for grad applicants...

The Marica De Vincenzi Foundation is inviting applications for its post-doctoral fellowship! The fellowship offers up to 2 years of post-doctoral support abroad for Italian psycholinguists. Spread the word! Deadline is 3/10 - see info here: nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

Family of man killed by off-duty ICE agent in LA demands charges: ‘The ache will never go away’ After Renee Good’s killing in Minneapolis, calls grow for accountability in the shooting of Keith Porter Jr on New Year’s Eve

Nochmal eine kleine Erinnerung, wenn so oft von ZWEI Menschen die Rede ist, die innerhalb von einem Monat von ICE-Agenten erschossen wurden. Es sind DREI. Auch wenn es anscheinend weit weniger wichtig ist, sobald der Erschossene POC ist.

Justice for Keith Porter! #fuckice

Ein weiterer Link von der @nytimes.com mit einer Videoanalyse der Erschießung von #AlexPretti. Ergebnis: zu keinem Zeitpunkt ging irgendeine Gefahr von ihm aus und trotzdem wurde er mit insgesamt 10 Schüssen getötet.
#Minneapolis
#AlexPretti
TW

Wichtige, sinnvolle Petition:

"Ich möchte weiterhin jegliche von Menschen für Menschen geschaffene Kunst erhalten, denn so ausgefeilt und leistungsstark die Algorithmen auch sein mögen, sie bleiben nur Nachbildungen, Kopien, Imitationen."

a close up of a rat looking at the camera with the word drunken written in the corner ALT: a close up of a rat looking at the camera with the word drunken written in the corner

🎉 Finally out in Journal of Phonetics, tutorial with @paulbuerkner.com

📖 "Bayesian beta regressions with brms in R: A tutorial for phoneticians"

Accepted manuscript here: doi.org/10.31219/osf...

Repo: github.com/stefanocoret...

Publisher link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

It's the 3rd of January 1939, your name is professor James Smith and you are staring at a drawing of a fish. It's not a regular fish. It is a completely impossible fish.

Hey authors! Check to see if Anthropic stole your book to train their slop generator on. You’re entitled to $1500 per stolen Work.

Look up your work, and if you’re in the database, file a claim
secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup/

I’m a tad late to this party but as someone who’s spent a long time outside of academia and is considering crossing back into it: all of the above!

New blog with Julia Snell @snelljulia.bsky.social published by the Higher Education Policy Institute @hepi-news.bsky.social

💡We encourage Higher Education senior leaders to take proactive steps to tackle accent bias to foster a more inclusive and equitable Higher Education system.

blue and green cover of the book "Sociophonetics: Implications for Phonological and Phonetic Theory", edited by Jennifer Nycz and Lauren Hall-Lew, published with Oxford as part of the Oxford Surveys in Phonology and Phonetics

📚 Sociophonetics: Implications for Phonological and Phonetic Theory (co-edited by me and @lhlew.bsky.social) is now available online at Oxford Academic! (print copies coming end of January) academic.oup.com/book/61815

📢 On 9 January 2026 Marlies Wulf will give a presentation on the work of the United Nations German Translation Service in NY and its working methods.

The chatbot will see you now: how AI is being trained to spot mental health issues in any language Calls to a clinic in Uganda are helping create a therapy algorithm that works in local languages, as specialists look to technology to address the global mental health crisis

A fascinating piece from @theguardian.com reports on an innovative project at Butabika Hospital in Kampala, Uganda, where patient helpline calls are being used to train an AI-powered therapy chatbot in local African languages.

🔗 tinyurl.com/yj9n3yr4

🧵👇

#langsky #linguistics #AI #mentalhealth

The Routledge Handbook of Ethics in Forensic Linguistics The Routledge Handbook of Ethics in Forensic Linguistics is the first comprehensive reference work to explore the ethical dimensions of forensic language analysis across a range of applied and academi...

Delighted to announce this book is finally being published! Over 3 years in the production. I've written Chapter 3 - Ethics and Professional Conduct Oversight in Forensic Linguistic Expert Evidence.
#ForensicLinguistics #Ethics #ExpertEvidence

Text: "Nächste PRÜF-Demos Demos 13.12.2025 Hamburg 14 Uhr, Stephansplatz 13.12.2025 München PRÜF-Premiere! 14 Uhr, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz Platz Scholl 10.01.2026 Düsseldorf PRÜF-Premiere! 10.01.2026 Hamburg 10.01.2026 München 14.02.2026???“

Text "Aktueller Planungsstand" aufgelistet sind alle Bundesländer mit ihren Landeshauptstädten. Jedes Bundesland ist mit einer Ampelphase versehen, wobei grün für "Termin steht" gelb für "Termin kommt" und rot für "Hilfe!*" steht. Bayern, Hamburg und NRW sind grün markiert, BW, Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hessen, Niedersachsen und Rheinland-Pfalz gelb und MV, Saarland, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein und Thüringen sind rot eingestuft.

Text: "Warum so langsam? Weil wir es ordentlich machen wollen. Und ein bisschen anders als sonst. Damit PRÜF Erfolg haben kann, brauchen wir neben Ausdauer auch tolles Kulturprogramm und Menschen, die in dem Bereich besonders viel Erfahrung haben. Deshalb: In den rot markierten Städten suchen wir nach Kulturinstitutionen die das Bühnenprogramm und die Außendarstellung gestalten. Wir freuen uns über eure Vorschläge an vernetzung@pruef-demos.de."

Text: "Was ist mit anderen Städten? Wenn ihr in einer Nicht-Landeshauptstadt seid, würden wir uns sehr freuen, wenn ihr beispielsweise gemeinsame Anreisen zu eurer Landeshauptstadt organisiert oder dort bei der Planung der Demo helft. Wenn ihr zusätzlich gerne eigene Demos machen wollt, macht das bitte am 4. Samstag im Monat, so nimmt man sich nicht die Menschen weg und verdoppelt die mediale Aufmerksamkeit. Meldet euch gerne einmal unter vernetzung@pruef-demos.de @pruef-d für ein kleines Briefing, wie das ablaufen kann."

Wir werden mehr! Willkommen im Club, @pruef-by.bsky.social und PRÜF Nordrhein-Westfalen! ❤️❤️❤️ Wir freuen uns auf eure PRÜF-Premieren am 13.12.25 in München und am 10.01.26 in Düsseldorf! Alle Infos unter www.pruef-demos.de #pruef

Die nächsten PRÜF-Demos sind am 10.01. in Hamburg, München und Düsseldorf, jeweils um 14 Uhr!
Mehr Infos gibts bei @pruef-hh.bsky.social @pruef-by.bsky.social und @pruef-nrw.bsky.social #pruef

So odd, my Apple podcast app is missing quite a few episodes, I just realised, this one among them. Have you heard of anybody else having this problem? 🤷🏻‍♀️
(I’ll use the link to listen instead, thank you!)

what does ‘misbehaviour’ sound like? in new open access work i ask this question in the context of school discipline policies, looking at how ideologies of ‘im/proper language’ and ‘im/proper behaviour’ coalesce and get co-constructed with one another. doi.org/10.1080/0962...

That tracks. 😉

125th Anniversary Scholarships for Black British Researchers - University of Birmingham This new scholarship scheme will fund up to 10 talented Black students who want to pursue a postgraduate research degree in Autumn 2025.

Black British Sign Language project PhD studentship at the University of Birmingham (BSL translation of the ad will soon be provided): contact me if you're interested! 😀https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/scholarships-and-funding/postgraduate-scholarships/125-linguistics-communication

And now I really want to know where you grew up because Eifel bumpkin me just went „????🤯😭????“… 😅

Great, thank you!🙏