On the radio this morning, I heard an interview with the Chair of the UK’s Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). The interviewer asked about yesterday’s faux pas (mis-step) in which the OBR inadvertently and mistakenly released a report early. The report was part of the material intended to be released shortly after the Chancellor of…… Continue reading Oversight over an oversight
Month: November 2025
World Linguistics Day
Apparently, today (26 November) is World Linguistics Day. This event started in 2024 as National Linguistics Day in the UK. This is a ‘new awareness campaign which is designed to be a focal point in the year to get people thinking, talking and learning about the science of language’. It seems to have been designed…… Continue reading World Linguistics Day
The Ashes are starting. Are they singular or plural?
The Ashes cricket series between the national teams of England and Australia starts in less than 7 hours. In between wondering about the cricket, I found myself contemplating verb agreement. Sports teams and singular or plural verbs As is reasonably well known, verb agreement works differently in different varieties of English when the subject of…… Continue reading The Ashes are starting. Are they singular or plural?
AI will replace us all? Maybe it’s not quite ready.
I was trying to read an old will in researching my family history. Old wills are really hard work. The writing is very neat and regular, but the letters all look the same. I can read them, but only with immense effort. It is very hard to skim the text quickly to find the nuggets…… Continue reading AI will replace us all? Maybe it’s not quite ready.
Albanian suppletive verbs
Sometimes, an inflected form of a verb was originally an inflected form of another verb. For example, went—the past tense form of the English verb go—was originally the past tense of the now obsolescent verb wend. This phenomenon is called suppletion and I have discussed it before at https://languagemiscellany.com/2024/11/borrowing-verb-forms-from-another-verb/ Albanian has a surprisingly large number of verbs with…… Continue reading Albanian suppletive verbs
Phonemes and allophones
Phonologists and phoneticians typically distinguish phonemes from allophones. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that distinguishes one word from another word. For example, the English word mat is distinct from pat because mat starts with the phoneme /m/ whereas pat starts with the phoneme /p/. A phoneme is not always pronounced in the…… Continue reading Phonemes and allophones
None is responsible, all can be absolved
I came across the following statement after the acknowledgements in linguist Neil Smith’s 1989 book The Twitter Machine: Reflections on Language: ‘None of the above has seen any part of this book, and can accordingly be absolved of all responsibility for errors and idiocies.’ Unfortunately, the 2nd clause (‘can accordingly be absolved…’) needs an explicit…… Continue reading None is responsible, all can be absolved
Albanian words of unknown or uncertain origin
In previous posts, I mentioned 70 words inherited by Albanian directly from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and another 68 words borrowed by Albanian from other languages (mostly Indo-European). In this post, I look at another 32 Albanian words with no confirmed source in PIE or in borrowings. Together, these 3 posts cover the 170 Standard Albanian words…… Continue reading Albanian words of unknown or uncertain origin
Make your own language?
Do you want to create an artificial language? A new book How to Create a Language: The Conlang Guide, Jessie Peterson (2025) might help. LINGUIST List 36.3205 Books: How to Create a Language: Peterson (2025) The book guides readers through developing their own full, working constructed language. It introduces basic concepts and the decisions needed…… Continue reading Make your own language?