John Williams, Linguist

I never bothered to participate in school sports because the same guy won everything every year. His name was Victor Ludorum

@mooseallain.bsky.social 😉

Mais c'était un très bon petit bourgogne

My 11-year-old sitting with her pile of Halloween candy, sorting it into a bar graph

We have progressed from data collection to data analysis.

#UxbridgeEnglishDictionary REDOLENT: when you break your resolution to give up something in the run-up to Easter then try again later in the year

lasso-------------------O🐴

Happy to share Alan Partington's book. Open source: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... One-line summary: 'This volume/long essay traces the intertwined histories of linguistic and philosophical thought that shaped—and sometimes resisted—the emergence of corpus linguistics.'

Me trying to upload a video for my students. (thanks @jembutters.bsky.social for the inspiration)

The fascinating world of ‘oodle’ words The exploration of the letter sequence -oodle- reveals a range of verbs suggesting leisurely or aimless actions: to poodle, soodle, noodle, moodle, flap-doodle, and doodle. There's a notable connection between others of these words and concepts of sound, emphasizing subdued noises or triviality.

The fascinating world of ‘oodle’ words

The exploration of the letter sequence -oodle- reveals a range of verbs suggesting leisurely or aimless actions: to poodle, soodle, noodle, moodle, flap-doodle, and doodle. There's a notable connection between others of these words and concepts of sound,…

It wasn't till the age of 62 that I first plucked up the courage to ride a motorbike. To be fair, it would have been difficult to concentrate on the road ahead with a monkey clinging to my back

Someone's been stealing all the toilets from
a new housing development
So far the police have nothing to go on... RS

Map showing the French communes of Mantes-la-Jolie and Mantes-la-Ville

Elle est jolie, enfin pas trop vil(l)e

Some research funders insist that (at least) the PI named in the bid must be a direct employee of the bidding institution. So my institution has had to backtrack to some extent

Solent University threatens P&O-style 'Fire & Rehire' with pension cuts UCU today announced that it has entered a formal trade dispute with Southampton Solent University over plans to force all its staff onto inferior pension schemes, paving the way for a strike ballot if...

Unprecedented, potentially unlawful retrograde proposals made by @solentuniversity.bsky.social

If you have a vested interest in HE, this concerns you.

We must stand together to resist these outrageous proposals.

#HE #TPS #LGPS #Pension #post-92

www.ucu.org.uk/article/1423...

Now they want us to 'upgrade' to the full Windows 11 package, about which I've heard bad things. No thanks, I don't want to 'encrypt' my plug-in devices before being allowed to use them.
youtu.be/C44iCr6czAo?...

🚨The higher education ballot is now open. 🚨

Get your vote in and tell colleagues to do the same. 🗳️

Demand Secure jobs. Demand Respect. Vote YES.

The outcome of organisational reviews captured:“Everything was over-organised and so failed to work properly. The new bureaucracy, which was supposed to impose order, was still enjoying itself writing memos and making out permits, and everything was delayed” (Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday)

Our institution has just adopted MS OneDrive for file storage. Here's an interesting 'feature': some folders - even though I 'own' them - simply won't accept file uploads. But if you rename the folder, it then accepts uploads. You can then rename it back to what it was and uploads will still work 🤔

I believe the credit for this inspired translation goes to Anthea Bell

The @ucu.org.uk "We are the University" ballots will be posted to members on Monday. Look out for a pink envelope at your registered address arriving next week. We encourage all members to vote and make their voice heard. #WeAreTheUniversity #LboroUCU

I intially read this as if 'rock markets' was a noun compound, designating some kind of financial trading facility for buying/selling granite, limestone, etc - or rare Deep Purple or Led Zeppelin records

"new improved workload model"

I was playing chess over lunchtime, for the first time in a while. I inadvertently attempted an illegal castling move - it was a rookie error!
(thanks to a colleague for that one)
#LunchPun

The growing awareness of the 'linguistic landscape' all around us, enriched by multi-modality, borrowings from other languages, and accessible evidence of language change

YouTube video by Foil Arms and Hog English Speakers Cant speak English

www.youtube.com/watch?v=b58J...

Buccal Up
Ex-Tractor
My Jaw Car

“Doth thine box rolleth on wheels?”
“It doth not, good sir!”

( Original screengrab by @stevewriteswords.bsky.social )

get shot of - that's a near synonym, but there's no meaning of 'shoot' that corresponds to it. Personally I don't find it very productive to analyse the internal grammar of idiomatic chunks like this - they should just be treated as lexical items in their own right

YouTube video by Jade Grandin de l'Eprevier - Communiquons! Ne dites pas «Je», dites «les Français»

Littéralement cette vidéo :

youtu.be/gED3jk06ll4?...

This exhibition on the South Coast's forgotten railway workers is opening on Monday in our very own Park Building in Portsmouth. We're looking forward to seeing it! bsky.app/profile/rwld... via @rwldproject.bsky.social