Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar

Gretchen McCulloch

@gretchenmcc.bsky.social

6737 followers 1410 following 1233 posts

Internet linguist. Wrote Because Internet, NYT bestseller about internet language. Co-hosts @lingthusiasm.bsky.social, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics.

she/her 🌈
Montreal en/fr
gretchenmcculloch.com

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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Hey. The fragmentation of the social media landscape has been hard on indie #scicomm 🧪 projects

So if you'd like to follow a podcast that's enthusiastic about #linguistics, could you check out @lingthusiasm.bsky.social?

And if you think your followers might like to, could you give this a repost?

1 replies 88 reposts 83 likes

Reposted by Gretchen McCulloch

Marie Buhtz's avatar Marie Buhtz @mbuhtz.bsky.social
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Lingthusiasm is an immediate listen as soon as each episode comes out!

1 replies 2 reposts 8 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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linguistics makes such a great special interest!!

1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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New Lingthusiasm episode and it's the best* one yet! *one where we talk about the word "best"

0 replies 2 reposts 14 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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woo! ....wait hang on how are you both bouba and kiki

1 replies 0 reposts 3 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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New bonus episode just a few minutes ago :)

1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Reposted by Gretchen McCulloch

Felicia Davin's avatar Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com
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I love Lingthusiasm very much!

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Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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I read more podcasts than I listen to myself as well, transcripts are very important to us!

And here's the whole theme tune if you feel hearing the weird-to-regular-listeners version that also contains lyrics
youtu.be/M-pR73TZDok?...

1 replies 1 reposts 6 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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Patrons get access to a bonus episode every month, which are like the main episodes only occasionally spicier (we have bonus episodes about things like swearing and language under the influence of various substances) And bonus episodes come with the same high quality transcripts as the mains!

0 replies 2 reposts 1 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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Patrons get access to a bonus episode every month, which are like the main episodes only occasionally spicier (we have bonus episodes about things like swearing and language under the influence of various substances) And bonus episodes come with the same high quality transcripts as the mains!

0 replies 2 reposts 1 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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The fragmentation of social media has been especially hard on indie projects being able to raise money which pays for things like our high quality human editing for both audio and transcripts (no ai!) If you've been vaguely thinking of becoming a patron of Lingthusiasm, consider this a reminder?

1 replies 9 reposts 18 likes

Reposted by Gretchen McCulloch

Dr. Fade's avatar Dr. Fade @fade.bsky.social
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They are a good podcast! I say this partly because they do great transcripts. I can't listen well to podcasts at any length. But read 'em? Yes. It's very nice to feel included in this fun-and-informative stuff.

1 replies 4 reposts 9 likes

Reposted by Gretchen McCulloch

Rachel Gutin's avatar Rachel Gutin @rachelgutin.bsky.social
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This is an excellent podcast. Full of fun info about language, and also a pleasure to listen to. (And if you write SFF like I do, it will get you thinking about how you approach language in your worldbuilding.)

0 replies 3 reposts 10 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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Hey. The fragmentation of the social media landscape has been hard on indie #scicomm 🧪 projects

So if you'd like to follow a podcast that's enthusiastic about #linguistics, could you check out @lingthusiasm.bsky.social?

And if you think your followers might like to, could you give this a repost?

1 replies 88 reposts 83 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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I debated with myself which one I should quote tweet and it seems I chose incorrectly haha

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Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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New favourite example of structural ambiguity

2 replies 3 reposts 39 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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Something I found neat about reading #MrsD a year or two ago is seeing characters refer to the eighties and nineties and realizing that they were in their own twenties and had the same temporal relationship to those decades in the 1800s as I do to mine

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Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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I'm involved in this and especially in spearheading the fishbowl sessions after they went so well as a format for organized discussions at the @lingcomm.bsky.social conference, happy to take questions on how those work!

0 replies 3 reposts 11 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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Again I must repeat that linguists are not kidding when we say that your knowledge of the systems of language enables you to understand sentences that have never before been uttered

3 replies 31 reposts 131 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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Oh yay, see you there! I also just got the confirmation email but planorama seems to be down at the moment

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Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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Gendered pronunciation is a thing but I think this particular one is more likely to be regional

2 replies 0 reposts 7 likes

Reposted by Gretchen McCulloch

Prof. EAGZ's avatar Prof. EAGZ @emmmilygz.bsky.social
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One for the syntax folk 🐦🐦

31 replies 346 reposts 1371 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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From reading interviews with the author I get the impression that ditto

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Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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I've requested a copy of the book so we'll see!

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Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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Fictional town that I had a fun time figuring out the real location of from context clues (confirmed in the back matter) but I can say that it's near Lunenburg

1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Reposted by Gretchen McCulloch

Marie Buhtz's avatar Marie Buhtz @mbuhtz.bsky.social
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Since I adore Robin McKinley, this is going directly into my To Read list!

0 replies 1 reposts 3 likes

Reposted by Gretchen McCulloch

Meli's avatar Meli @mismatched.bsky.social
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Today is Everything Happens So Much day, the day on which in 2012 horse_ebooks tweeted "everything happens so much"

3 replies 45 reposts 96 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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It's very pacey and well done, I couldn't put it down at ALL

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Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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Hahahah which of these seventeen residences would you like

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Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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Ooh, this sounds interesting! Do you have any review copies going out and if so can I be on the list?

1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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From This Hour Has 22 Minutes I have learned that everyone in PEI is surnamed Gallant

2 replies 0 reposts 2 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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Not sure if we'll get to A Sweet Sting of Salt on Lingthusiasm bc @superlinguo.bsky.social doesn't read a lot of historical fiction (though I'd argue it could also be shelved under fantasy or romance...) but there are definitely some linguisticsy elements especially wrt learning a language

2 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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It was especially neat for me personally to read this book as someone who also grew up in rural Nova Scotia like the author, about 80% of the surnames in the book were like "oh yeah I went to high school with someone with that surname" But this was more of a fun easter egg for a very gripping book

4 replies 1 reposts 11 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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It was especially neat for me personally to read this book as someone who also grew up in rural Nova Scotia like the author, about 80% of the surnames in the book were like "oh yeah I went to high school with someone with that surname" But this was more of a fun easter egg for a very gripping book

4 replies 1 reposts 11 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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Just read A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose Sutherland and I LOVED it, if you like queer fairy tale retellings or were a fan of Robin McKinley back in the day I cannot more strongly grab your lapels and insist you read this book (Link is to the Canadian cover, which I like better)

2 replies 9 reposts 27 likes

Reposted by Gretchen McCulloch

Asifa Majid's avatar Asifa Majid @asifamajid.bsky.social
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Adult language features vision verbs frequently, followed by hearing, but rarely touch. In young children's language, we find vision verbs do appear first and more frequently, but touch appears before hearing, consistent with embodied accounts of meaning. doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13469

1 replies 20 reposts 61 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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I was very delighted to talk with Jacq about their cool research involving outfit selfies along with sociolinguistic audio recordings! Plus, (gently!) poking yourself with a toothpick to find out which of the two English R movements you're making

0 replies 5 reposts 26 likes

Reposted by Gretchen McCulloch

Helen Rosner's avatar Helen Rosner @hels.bsky.social
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Somehow the baby has confused “bat’riq” (Arabic for penguin) with “bless you”—but she also knows that “saha” is what you say in Arabic when a person sneezes. So, logically, she’s deduced that the English post-sneeze salutation is to heartily say “penguin!”

21 replies 67 reposts 639 likes

Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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oh fuck. that went through English, didn't it.

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Gretchen McCulloch 's avatar Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social
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Woo it's been a while since I've seen such an obvious Google Translate fail (With the knowledge that épeautre is a grain it's pretty easy to figure out what went wrong here)

13 replies 11 reposts 76 likes