RSS Parrot

Ancient DNA and Uralic.

https://languagehat.com/ancient-dna-and-uralic/

Published: July 18, 2025 19:54

Christy DeSmith writes for Phys.org about a new DNA study: Where did Europe’s distinct Uralic family of languages—which includes Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian—come from? New research puts their origins a lot farther east than many thought. The analysis,…

Etymology Nerd.

https://languagehat.com/etymology-nerd/

Published: July 17, 2025 20:49

Callie Holtermann writes for the NY Times (archived) about a linguist who posts online as Etymology Nerd and who was mentioned here last year: Adam Aleksic has been thinking about seggs. Not sex, but seggs — a substitute term that took off a few years ago…

Dhofari Deciphered.

https://languagehat.com/dhofari-deciphered/

Published: July 16, 2025 15:48

Soumya Sagar writes for Science about a new decipherment: Rock faces within the caves and dried riverbeds of Oman’s Dhofar governorate bear nearly 2400-year-old writings that snake across the surface in a mysterious script. For more than a century, these…

Lettervoxd.

https://languagehat.com/lettervoxd/

Published: July 15, 2025 18:38

Josh Sucher writes: Last week, my brother and I took in a screening of the 1976 classic Network that just happened to be captioned. As a result, it really struck me how impressive the vocabulary in that movie is. Immane! Oraculate! Auspicatory! So many of…

Pookila.

https://languagehat.com/pookila/

Published: July 14, 2025 13:23

A news story introduced me to the word pookila, referring to what apparently is more commonly called the New Holland mouse. Naturally I was curious about the word, but it doesn’t appear to be in any dictionaries, not even Wiktionary. A little googling got…

Global Latin.

https://languagehat.com/global-latin/

Published: July 13, 2025 21:21

New Perspectives in Global Latin: Second Conference on Latin as a Vehicle of Cultural Exchange Beyond Europe, edited by Elisa Della Calce, Paola Mocella, and Simone Mollea (de Gruyter, 2025), includes intriguing titles like “Afonso Mendes, the Catholic…

Samatar’s Olondria.

https://languagehat.com/samatars-olondria/

Published: July 12, 2025 22:03

As I wrote here, one of my birthday presents this year was Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria (and I note with a shudder that that Amazon page says “A Stranger in Olondria: a novel (Olondria, 1)” — please don’t let this be yet another trilogy!); I’ve…

Winging It.

https://languagehat.com/winging-it/

Published: July 11, 2025 21:17

Jen in Edinburgh wrote me to say she’d been wondering “why we say that we’re going to ‘wing’ something […] I have actually looked it up in the OED and found out – but it wasn’t a reason I expected at all, so if it surprised me, maybe it will surprise other…

Rajomon.

https://languagehat.com/rajomon/

Published: July 10, 2025 19:37

I just watched the “Japanese historical drama horror film” Kuroneko (lots of fun if you like films with samurai and ghosts; this one features Minamoto no Raikō as a character, not to mention the titular black cat), and was struck when a large city gate was…

Bullitt.

https://languagehat.com/bullitt/

Published: July 9, 2025 21:08

I rewatched Bullitt and was gripped once more by what this Wikipedia article calls “the first modern car chase movie.” But that is not a topic for LH; it suddenly occurred to me to wonder what kind of a name Bullitt is, and that makes for a post (a thin…

Block Ornaments.

https://languagehat.com/block-ornaments/

Published: July 8, 2025 20:10

I recently ran across the term block ornament, completely opaque unless you know the meaning; OED (entry revised 2022): slang (British and Australian) Obsolete. A small piece of inferior meat placed for sale on the butcher’s block, as opposed to a joint…

Kooloora Revives Darkinjung.

https://languagehat.com/kooloora-revives-darkinjung/

Published: July 7, 2025 18:08

Or, to put it more expansively and comprehensibly, Toukley’s Kooloora Preschool revives endangered Darkinjung Aboriginal language; Sarah Forster and Emma Simkin report for ABC on the kind of program I like supporting (I’ve added links): Students at a NSW…