What's the most obscure hyper-local word or phrase you know?
For example, where & when I grew up, woodlice were knows as "cheeselogs". As far as I know, that's specific to one town in the UK. I don't know how long it was in general use, or even if it continues to this day.
In which day should the ALL HANDS meeting take place? On Tuesday. Why? Because it's the day of "the thing"
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Tuesday comes from Old English Tīwesdæġ, literally 'Tīw's day'. Tīw was the name of the Germanic god that's also known by his Old Norse name Týr
Tuesday is not related to Dutch dinsdag, and German Dienstag. These stem from West Germanic *þingas dag instead, literally 'day of the thing', which was the day of the popular assembly, the *þing
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Source: https://www.patreon.com/posts/tiws-day-103746729
Is there a #linguistic term for an interlocutor saying the last word of the previous speaker’s sentence in unison with them? Not just occasionally or when the previous speaker is having trouble recalling a word, but nearly every sentence, possibly even when that sentence is not the end of a turn? I’m looking for articles or research about this out of personal curiosity.
#UK flower industry thrown into chaos by new Brexit border checks
“Firms said food and plant checks and #Latin names causing costly delays with lorries waiting hours in first week of post-EU regime
Of all the effects of #Brexit, probably the least anticipated was that flower exporters and customs officials would have to learn Latin.” #linguistics#flowers#plants
Translation:
Hey, duck babes. Did you come to look for something to eat? Yes. You came to look for something to eat. But I can't give you anything to eat because of bird flu.
"Recognition of the significance of speech acts has illuminated the ability of language to do other things than describe reality. In the process the boundaries among the philosophy of language, the philosophy of action, aesthetics, the philosophy of mind, political philosophy, and ethics have become less sharp. "
Canadian word nerds, rejoice. Two decades after the last Canada-specific dictionary was published, a new one is on its way. Editors Canada has taken on the project, with John Chew, head of the North American Scrabble Players Association, as editor-in-chief. Quill and Quire reports that the letter Q, a small portion of which is online now, could be released this summer. While lexicographers usually start with M, Chew plumped for Q because it includes Indigenous and Inuktitut words and many medical and scientific words. Here's more.
'Librarian Andrew Gray has made a “very surprising” discovery. He analyzed five million scientific studies published last year and detected a sudden rise in the use of certain words, such as meticulously (up 137%), intricate (117%), commendable (83%) and meticulous (59%). [...] The explanation for this rise: tens of thousands of researchers are using [...] LLMs tools to write their studies or at least “polish” them.'
I desparately need an emergency #Linguistics service to challenge my new-to-me-and-maybe-stupid idea that #pierogi (the most delicious food) and #pierogue (the boat) are relatives.
It‘s just too plausible, they are little ships!
I can live with being one of today‘s lucky 10‘000, just tell me it‘s true!
If you miss the Twitter API for your corpus research, you might find some consolation in this little app that I put together. It’s very much a DIY effort, so please do report bugs and suggest improvements. What it does though is enable you to download up to nearly 1,000 tweets per run from a search results page. Here goes. @linguistics#linguistics