April 2020: expletive infixation and singular they

Hello!

We put up many posts on Mutual Intelligibility, the new newsletter that I'm producing with Lauren Gawne with resources for people who are teaching (or self-teaching) linguistics online (thanks to our contributors Liz McCullough and Katy Whitcomb!). Here are a few of them: 

• 3 links for sociolinguistics

• 3 links for semantics and pragmatics

• 3 links for field methods

• Resource Guide for IPA vowels

• Resource Guide for Morphology

• Resource Guide for World Englishes

I made lists on Bookshop.org about Linguistically Interesting Fiction and Pop linguistics books, if you're looking for distractions that also support independent bookstores. 

The Lingthusiasm main episode was an interview with Kirby Conrod about the grammar of singular they (see also the show notes and transcript). This month's Lingthusiasm bonus episode was about synesthesia - when letters have colours and time is a braid. 

We're officially giving out four LingComm Grants! If you have an idea for a linguistics communication project, make sure to apply by June 1st! 

Lauren Gawne gave a video talk about our joint work on emoji and gesture. We also continued to work on scripts for Crash Course Linguistics. 

A new Language Files video came out: Abso-b████y-lutely - Expletive Infixation, product of the ongoing collaboration between me, Tom Scott, and Molly Ruhl.

National Print/Top Online:

• Electric Literature– feature  “Why “Ok.” Is the Most Terrifying Text You Could Ever Receive” – 4/10

• Medium’s Wonk Bridge – mention – 4/15

• Tor.com– roundup “Books that Grab You” – 4/21

• American Magazine – mention – 4/24

• Jotwell/Technology Law Blog – mention –  4/24

• Time – feature “'Stay Safe!' The Art of Emailing During the Coronavirus Pandemic” – 4/24

• Tom’s Guide – roundup “The best books to read while stuck at home” – 4/26

• CNBC's Make It – feature “The psychological reasons why everyone’s burned out on video conferencing” – 4/27

Podcasts

• Broccoli & Ice Cream – interview – 4/17 

• 1 Way To Make an Emoji – interview – 5/2

Local Print/Online:

• RIT’s Reporter – feature – 4/27

Selected tweets:

• A Because Internet cameo on the official Steak Umm brand account

• Trying a joke template with words ending in t/d

• On distractions from the news cycle

• choose your international phonetic alphabet characters quarantine house

• Recipe of Theseus

• The Library of Congress archives memes under "folklore" (featured in the QI twitter account!)

• A thread about verbs in recipes

• quarantimes days: robot vacuum cleaner, learning old english

• welcome to the dark side, we have c̶o̶o̶k̶i̶e̶s̶ linguistic analyses of viral tweets

• you never lacked time. you lacked two ___.

• kids setting timers and doing pretend video calls

• structural ambiguity: reclusive scientists

Selected blog posts:

• Warnings about COVID-19 are being translated into Australian Indigenous languages

• Guides for teaching or self-teaching the International Phonetic Alphabet

• Linguistics jobs: transcriptionist (for Lingthusiasm and other linguistics podcasts)

• this bad boy can fit so many forbidden articulations in it

• The Superlinguo Linguistics Jobs interviews master list

• An article about efforts to translate internet resources into Kaqchikel and other indigenous languages

• toss a coin to your translator

• other people, quarantime-googling: how to cut own hair
  linguists: how to learn [insert language]

This month's photo is of Because Internet in the Technology section of Elliott Bay Books, from back when I was there in February. Remember browsing bookstores? I’m glad so many indie bookstores are doing online delivery, but man, browsing. That was nice.

Thanks for coming along,

Gretchen