Does English Really Have 20 Vowels? YouTube video by Simon Roper

“Does English really have 20 vowels?” — new video, great as always, by Simon Roper www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxIK...

"stick-to-itiveness" is pretty good too (and it's in the OED)

That's really something. One of my English-morphology favourites, from a more terrible source, is a North Korean manual going on about "re-working-classizing them". (I also think of them/’em as a verbal suffix in English.) I couldn't find it just now, but they use similar phrases all the time, e.g.:

“Drift, convergence, and the ergative cycle” by Paul Kiparsky (Apr. ’26) web.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/Pa...

“Nez Perce stem classes: phonology or allomorphy?” by Paul Kiparsky (Apr. ’26) web.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/Pa...

“Neutrality and harmony: a Finnish perspective” by Paul Kiparsky (Apr. ’26) web.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/Pa...

“Hard choices: sound change in Northern Greek” by Cleo Condoravdi and Paul Kiparsky (Apr. ’26) web.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/Pa...

Proto-Indo-European verbs (with Prof. Tony Yates) YouTube video by Jackson Crawford

Proto-Indo-European verbs with Prof. Tony Yates @adyates.bsky.social | Jackson Crawford m.youtube.com/watch?v=vQpm...

Language is a biological function of the human organism. The concept of language as a tool goes back at least to the Classics.

PhD student Melissa Lazzari on “The Use of Language Melody in the Interpretation of Ambiguous Adjective-Noun Attachment in Brazilian Portuguese” at the 2026 Graduate Forum of the School of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Calgary

PhD candidate Brooklyn Sheppard and Prof. Steve Winters on “What makes a word stand out? Modelling the cognitive underpinnings of linguistic prominence perception” at the 2026 Graduate Forum of the School of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Calgary

MA student Charys Russell and Prof. Steve Winters on “Examining the effects of variability and level of focus in L2 learning and phonetic training” at the 2026 Graduate Forum of the School of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Calgary

PhD candidate Francisco Ongay González on “Correlation between omitted durative prepositions, telicity, and transitivity: Experimental evidence from Spanish” at the 2026 Graduate Forum of the School of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Calgary

PhD candidate Jesse Weir on “Collecting experimental evidence of wanna-contraction in English” at the 2026 Graduate Forum of the School of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Calgary

Pointed opening remarks by Prof. Storoshenko (@exolinguist.bsky.social) at the 2026 Graduate Forum of the School of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Calgary

That’s great, thanks! As you say, deBrusk has a raised diphthong in Drai but I still hear “saddle” afterwards. I’m not sure what happened to the second diphthong, but it’s great to have examples of raising in the first, thanks again

My eldest has a Chinese-Canadian friend nicknamed Chowski because he married a Ukrainian-Canadian. I’ve also heard McFlyski. There’s no Canadian Raising on these, which got me wondering about other Slavic suffixes. Can -ka and -ko go on non-Slavic names, too? E.g., Chow-ko, Eli-ko, Levi-ka, Sky-ka?

@brettc.bsky.social?

‘Draisaitl’ could show Canadian Raising twice (like ‘nitrite’) but many seem to say “DRY-saddle” instead. Does anyone say [ˈʤɹəiˌsəiɾᵊɫ]?

Woohoo, thanks for existing!

If so, thanks in advance for allowing me to add /-fə/ to my small list of new English suffixes—just ahead of /‑fəɹ/ in e.g. ‘twofer’!
I’m reasonably hopeful that some do say /ˈæntifə ~ ˈæntaɪfə/, because the compound-like pronunciation of ‘judoka’ as /ˈʤuːdoʊˌkɑ/ has given way to a new suffix /-kə/:

‘Antifa’ has the fused pronunciation /ænˈtiːfə/ in English but some speakers pronounce the morpheme ‘anti-’ separately, as either /ˈæntiˌfɑ/ or /ˈæntaɪˌfɑ/, in which case the word is arguably a compound.
Question: has anyone come across the pronunciation /ˈæntifə/ or /ˈæntaɪfə/?

“Three arguments for abstraction in phonology” by Iris Berent (Apr. ’26) in Glossa Special Collection: “Substance-Free Phonology: principles, research directions, and current issues” www.glossa-journal.org/article/id/2...

Those courses sound *epic*! Lucky you — and lucky him/them, for having you as a student :)

Wit, unker, git: The lost medieval pronouns of English intimacy Tales of love and adventure from 1,000 years ago reveal a dazzling range of now-extinct English pronouns. They capture something unique about how people once thought about "two-ness".

Did some readings for this little BBC piece on extinct English pronouns www.bbc.com/future/artic...

A pillar of our field whose work will stand and (from my limited experience doing a bit of fieldwork with him on Wakashan) a genuinely kind and gentle man. RIP

“In memoriam Ian Maddieson (1942–2025)” by Patricia Keating (Apr. ’26) www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Prof John C. Wells_'H-dropping, Weakening, TH-fronting, TH-stopping, L-vocalization, T-glottalling' YouTube video by English Phonetics Archive

2004 lecture by Prof. John C. Wells on Cockney pronunciation features: H-dropping, weakening, TH-fronting, TH-stopping, L-vocalization, and T-glottalling www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_CA...

‘city’ /ˈsɪti/ — short /i/
‘setae’ /ˈsiːtiː/ — long /iː/
‘coeliae /ˈsiːliiː/ — short /i/ + long /iː/

Closing remarks at the Verbatim Colloquium by Jessica Wong, president of the University of Calgary Undergraduate Linguistics Society