On Saturday I found out that Alan Hudson died. Alan was my doctoral advisor at the University of New Mexico until his retirement in 2005, and a source of support after that. I first met Alan when I visited the UNM Linguistics Department in 1997. Alan welcomed me into his office with a broad smile, and asked, “So Angus, have you made up your mind about whether you want to come here?” “Well…” I said.
In a comment, Candy asked: Can we also please talk about how “cis” is used as a term of abuse against feminists? As in, “shut up privileged cis bitches?” It’s the bit where trans activism begins to overlap with Men Rights Activism.
It’s happened to me too: I’m angry, or upset, or excited about something. I go on Twitter. I’ve got stuff to say. It’s more than will fit in the 140-character limit, but I don’t have the time or energy to write a blog post. So I just write a tweet. And then another, and another. I’ve seen other people doing this, and I’m fine with it. But for a while now I’ve seen people doing something more planned, numbering their tweets.
People say you should stand up for what you believe in. They say you should look out for those less fortunate, and speak up for those who don’t get heard. They say that those of us who come from marginalized backgrounds, like TBLG backgrounds for example, but have enough privilege to be out in relative safety should speak up for those who don’t have that privilege.
I’m a parent. It doesn’t make me better or worse than anyone else, it’s just a category that reflects some facts about me: I conceived a new human with my wife, we are raising and caring for that human, and we expect to have a relationship with him for the rest of our lives. Some people don’t take parenthood seriously, so it doesn’t impact their lives very much, but their kids suffer.
Last month I wrote about the fact that intelligibility – the ability of native speakers of one language or dialect to understand a closely related one – is not constant or automatic. A major factor in intelligibility is familiarity: when I was a kid, for example, I had a hard time understanding the Beatles until I got used to them.
It’s that time again! A bunch of really eager computer scientists have a prototype that will translate sign language to speech! They’ve got a really cool video that you just gotta see ! They win an award! (from a panel that includes no signers or linguists). Technology news sites go wild!
The spectacle of two bilingual Presidential candidates arguing in Spanish last week reminded me of the Twitter feed, “Miguel Bloombito,” created by Rachel Figueroa-Levin to mock our former Mayor’s Spanish for the amusement of her friends. I may be coming late to the party here, but Bloombito is still tweeting, and was recently mentioned by one of my fellow linguists.
I’ve written about default assumptions before: how for example people in different parts of the English-speaking world have different assumptions about what they’ll get when they order “tea” or a “burger.” In the southern United States, the subcategory of “iced tea” has become the default, while in the northern US it’s “hot tea,” and in England it’s “hot tea with milk.” But even though iced tea is the default “tea” in the South, everyone there
