Humans Who Read Grammars

Happy news, it is possible to access lectures from the Centre of Excellence for Language Dynamics (CoEDL) on any podcasting app! Now you can also look this smart while listening to lectures about linguistic diversity on your normal podcast app! For more on the map of linguistic diversity in the bubble, go here . The centre has long had lectures up at iTunes U , but it wasn't until now that I figured out how to get them out of the apple-bubble and into podcasting apps for android etc (i.e the RSS URL)*. I tried it out yesterday, I ended up listened to Russell Gray's talk on grand challenges of linguistics while grocery shopping at Aldi - a throughly pleasant experience that I wish you all! (I'm a podcast freak, every alone moment spent not working is spent listening to podcasts.) The centre has several different programmes and projects, and the lectures are organised into different "courses" or "podcasts" accordingly. Below, I've included ...

Hello internet and dear subscribers, What channels, blogs, podcasts etc about linguistics are you following?  I'm keeping a list of interesting ones (in case you haven't noticed; I'm big on lists). It's here.  You can tell me about your tip by commenting there, or on our twitter, tumblr  or  face-a-books . You're also welcome to browse the list or the tag " following linguistics online " for tips to brighten your day. I'll try to add some brief description to every item in the list.

Did you know that the brilliant journal of satirical linguistics - The Speculative Grammarian  also features a very entertaining podcast  ( iTunes link here )?  The podcast includes readings of articles (my current fav is the one on vampire linguistics, listen to mp3 here ), the occasional musical number or dramatical piece and also a talk show called "Language Made Difficult". The talk show is hosted by the LingNerds (and editors of SpecGram): Trey Jones ( whom I "cyber-stalked" once ), Keith W Slater, William Spruiell and Sheri Wells-Jensen. It's a fun show, you should tots start listening. Also.. I'll be appearing in future episodes of that show in a segment called "Lies, Damned Lies and Linguistics". All the way from Australia you can hear me trying to tease apart which one out of three facts is a lie. Won't tell you how I did, you'll have to tune in. It's all free and online, start up your fav web browser and/or podcast clie...

Go get your first taste of linguistics with this nice new free online course! There's a new course on coursera (online platform for good free distance courses) in linguistics! The course is led by prof Marc van Oostendorp and is called "Miracles of Human Language: An Introduction to Linguistics"*. It's from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and very interesting! It takes 5 weeks of 4-6 hours per week, it's free (no fees anywhere), all material and readings are provided online for free and in general it looks like a very well organised and interesting introductory course. The course will also feature videos from informants speaking foreign languages which you will analyse! If there was ever a good opportunity to try out a little bit of linguistics for the first time - this is the one! As all y'all probably know there are also linguistics lectures that you can watch online. For example: the NativLang-channel , Ling Space,   MIT linguistic...

The excellent radio/podcast show Talk the Talk just did an episode on nativeness of language that is really, really good. They've interviewed Dr Vyvyan Evans who just came out with a book about why language isn't an instinct and they ask really good questions and get really good answers. I know I'm saying "really good" a lot, but that's just because I'm very excited and this is awesome. I'll calm down in a bit. In the meantime, enjoy this gif as a display of my excitement which cannot be expressed fully in words and go listen to the show!

Like I've said before, you know what I most often like better than reading grammars? Talking to speakers/signers and experts! You know, it's not a good idea to say "so, you're a linguists - what languages do you speak?", but at the same time linguists do speak and do research into a lot of languages and by collaborating we can make more effective use of our time investigating linguistic diversity. See my old posts here about "how many languages do linguists speak?". These past two weeks I've been out on a little tour doing just that. I've been to several places in Germany: Hillerse, Berlin, Potdsam, Leipzig, Freiburg and then over to the UK to meet people at SOAS. These are some of the people I've met and had time to sit down with:   Ulrike Mosel - retired professor of the University of Kiel, renowned specialist on oceanic languages, especially Samoan, Teop & Tolai, and also originally an orientalist, as it was called then, with a...