September 2022: WorldCon, xkcd on Lingthusiasm, and IPA lens cloths

Hello!

This month, I went to Chicago for WorldCon (ChiCon 8), in which I was on the panels Ask A Scientist, That's Not How That Works!, and Using SFF for Science Communication, as well as doing a Table Talk (where a small number of fans get to hang out and ask questions). It was very fun to see and hang out with lots of interesting people!

The main episode of Lingthusiasm was Episode 72: What If Linguistics, in which Randall Munroe of xkcd asked us his very good absurd hypothetical questions about linguistics. Here's a completely real and normal photograph of what that looked like:

Gretchen McCulloch @GretchenAMcC

Real photograph of @xkcd asking me and @superlinguo questions on @lingthusiasm

Randall Munroe @xkcd

Thank you to @GretchenAMcC and @superlinguo for inviting me on their podcast and enthusiastically answering all my linguistics questions! This episode covers everything from how to spot an artificial language to what “it” refers to in the sentence “It’s 3pm and hot.” https://t.co/iHfFKvHjAD

The bonus episode was Bonus 67: Behind the scenes on making an aesthetic IPA chart - Interview with Lucy Maddox.

Speaking of which! We've heard excitement all month about the fun, minimalist design of the classic International Phonetic Alphabet chart which we released in August and which we're printing on a massive order of microfibre lens cloths for Lingthusiasm patrons at the Lingthusiast tier or higher. (There's still a few hours left to sign up for that from when this newsletter goes out, if that's something you've been procrastinating on - it closes once it stops being October 5th, 2022 anywhere in the world, so a lot of folks may be able to sneak in a couple extra bonus hours.)

I also started a bracket on how people spell the clipped form of "usual" (spoiler: they're all confusing)

Gretchen McCulloch @GretchenAMcC

ALRIGHT FOLKS It's the bracket you've been waiting for, the time when we finally figure out how to least confusingly spell the clipped form of "usual" Vote in the polls below:

Selected tweets:

• Sci-Fi or Fantasy

• Alt Text Masterclass

• Full stops can annoy Gen Z, warn linguists (including in Because Internet)

• "But clerk, I am Bill Labov" (pagliacci meme)

• langue d'AÏ

• I read the book Babel by R.F. Kuang and greatly enjoyed it

• Bouba Kiki primal reaction image

Blog Posts:

• Linguistics jobs: Language Engineer

This month's image is still the aesthetic IPA design because we've been doing a few final tweaks on it this month! 

Thanks for coming along,

Gretchen