Gareth Roberts @garicgymro Twitter profile

Last Seen Profiles

@xdzinn777

@ronabaebae

@fashionjeketi

@MoezKacem3

@ThandoMandlazi6

@xaitax

@MadBedlam

@Ducksui0

@don_minnick

@ClwbCanna

@nikhilmittal288

@twmactoo

@Dev_Motebe

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@bokeplokalmalam

@battaglia0201

@Preview__0

@Trancez0r

@MUFC_Futsal

@Scotch_Orchard

@SAMETCOMLEK74

@4evatrell

@D_Price5

@zelestiaa

@urfutureghostt

@Shawninhoooo

@lliomillwardvox

@mickcelts67

@voseando

@0xtetriz

@javichuoficial_

@Ahmedom73581Www

@CANCERUNITED1

@3luckysoab2

@stw_pdg

@elliottjking

Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

4 months

This happened to me once: Immigration Officer: Where do you live? Me: Philadelphia. IO: How can you live there? Me: Oh, it's not so bad. The weather's better than the UK... IO: No. As a UK Citizen, how can you live there? Me: Oh, I see. I'm on an H1B. IO: There you go.

Zahra Hankir

@ZahraHankir

4 months

immigration officer to me at JFK today: Why do you live in America? me to immigration officer: Frankly that's a question I ask myself every day Immigration officer (straight face): No I don’t mean existentially, I’m asking what you do here in the United States me: oh

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

4 months

This reminds me of when I was a student waiting for a bus in Nottingham and a woman was getting off holding a baby and needing to get a folded pushchair out. I must have put my hands out as an offer to help, but instead of accepting help with the pushchair she handed me her baby.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

4 months

I think I've mentioned this before on here. I was an undergrad at the time. I sort of assume she was tired and not thinking very clearly, but she gave every impression that this felt like no big deal to her, which is how society *should* be!

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 month

A good tip is that you don't necessarily have to make the whole thing a high-stakes out-of-the-blue surprise. (In fact that has real downsides.)

🍂Sad Scout Boi 🇻🇦🎃

@Copter_roflez

1 month

Married dudes how did you find your wife’s ring size? Obtaining that intel incognito seems like a challenge that isn’t really talked about a whole lot from what I’ve seen.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

6 months

So many of us are no doubt kicking ourselves we didn't think of that

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

2 years

It is extremely common for nonlinguists to refer to languages as “ancient” or “the oldest language in Europe” or (as here) “one of the oldest languages in the world’. They should stop. 1/

Saulė

@sankuperis

2 years

How to ruin an article with the first sentence

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

8 months

This is one of those things that is common in many many places (including most of Britain and Ireland, among a number of other countries) but which people keep thinking is super specific to where they live

Michael Redmond

@redmondmichael1

8 months

People in Glasgow thank the bus driver when they're getting off the bus. I think it's a brilliant tradition and I don't think it exists anywhere else in Britain or Ireland...does it?

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

4 months

@olson8401 I think he was likely bored asking the same question all day and trying to liven it up by asking it in different ways

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

3 months

@AlexRoseGames @Helene_G_du_P_M Ask her how many legs a spider has. When I lived in Russia I was intrigued to discover it's not common knowledge there in the way it is in other countries I've lived.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 month

Even after living here for 13 years, I still get caught off guard by the difference in what "middle class" tends to imply in 🇺🇸 (ordinary working family, not especially well-off) versus 🇬🇧 (posh, high-earning).

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

9 months

If you spend much time online, or with extended family, over the holidays you’ll know that many non-linguists love being “pedantic” about language. 1/

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

6 months

The Latin name for Gaul was Gallia. These two names are unrelated. The name Galicia in Spain is not related to either. The name Galicia in Eastern Europe is unrelated to any of these. The word Gaelic is unrelated to any of the above words. This is not an April fool's joke.

Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

6 months

@JackLynch000 The one that probably gets me the most is Latin Gallia and modern French Gaule

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

7 months

The man who named pi fathered the man who discovered PIE

Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

7 months

Fun fact: William Jones, the Welsh farm boy from Llanfihangel Tre'r Beirdd who introduced the symbol π for 3.14159..., was the father of the William Jones who realised that Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek might all be related to each other, and to the Germanic and Celtic languages.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

4 months

@focusfronting Pretty much any narrative that identifies some group of humans as magically immune to the vices of other humans is doomed to age extremely badly (and is often genuinely dangerous)

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

8 months

Undergraduate institutions of British Prime Ministers since Churchill (who did not attend university): Oxford Oxford Oxford Oxford Oxford Oxford None Oxford None Oxford Edinburgh Oxford Oxford Oxford Oxford Oxford

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

6 months

When I talk to people outside academia they often ask me what the applications of my work are. I'm increasingly inclined to simply reject the question. Learning more about things and understanding things better are valuable in themselves.

Dr Charlotte Lydia Riley

@lottelydia

6 months

why would anybody be *shocked* by an £800k taxpayer-funded Shakespeare study? it’s Shakespeare?? the writer who we have collectively decided — for better or worse — is Britain’s greatest artist???

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

4 months

@Swilua It was very practical and rational—it was a good distribution of labour and the chances of me doing anything bad were very low. But I still don't think it's the choice most people would have made!

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 month

In my case we talked about the possibility beforehand and sized her finger and talked about ring tastes. Then I surprised her with the timing of the proposal and the ring itself.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

3 years

The hilarity of discovering that the English words for soffa, coffi, and car are just "sofa", "coffee", and "car" 😂

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

2 years

Academics don't get paid anything for their papers; in fact many journals charge the authors to publish. So if you pay money to a journal for a copy of a paper, the authors see 0% of it.

gryphoneer

@OneRadChee

2 years

YOU THERE. YES, YOU. WHAT'S A LITTLE-KNOWN FACT ABOUT YOUR PROFESSION THAT WOULD MAKE OTHER PEOPLE LOSE THEIR SHIT?

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

10 months

@em___rem Agreed. I try to actively emphasise to students that I don't need to know the details.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

7 months

Fun fact: William Jones, the Welsh farm boy from Llanfihangel Tre'r Beirdd who introduced the symbol π for 3.14159..., was the father of the William Jones who realised that Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek might all be related to each other, and to the Germanic and Celtic languages.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

6 months

This is, impressively, the opposite of true. Not only is English not a de jure official language of the UK, Welsh *is* de jure official in Wales.

More Random Advice🦖(Dino Accredited)👑

@ARandomKaren

7 months

@LouMiddleton10b @Primark English is the official language of the UK. There is no requirement to speak Welsh.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

7 months

This. People often imagine that languages spread widely because they're easy to learn or otherwise linguistically well suited to the task. In fact, such things are pretty much irrelevant. Languages spread by the military, economic, and cultural power of their speakers.

Sian Harries - @sianharries.bsky.social

@sianharries_

7 months

English is not an easy language to learn. The reason so many people speak it across the globe isn’t because of how easy it is, it’s because of olden days bullying and force

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

2 years

As a linguist, I can say: There are many things to be concerned about, but this isn't one of them. This is just Language doing what it does and what it has been doing since there's been Language.

Seán Ono Lennon

@seanonolennon

2 years

I’m noticing more people using ‘is’ when the noun is plural and they should be using ‘are.’ I guess it isn’t important but it just adds to my general feeling of dread over the state of things.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

2 years

My favourite (somewhat but not entirely tongue-in-cheek) criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects: If you attempt to speak it and its speakers are impressed, it's a language. If you attempt to speak it and its speakers are offended, it's a dialect.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

6 years

@KTHopkins I went through Welsh-medium education. Now I'm an Ivy League professor forced to live in Trump's America while Britain makes one of the stupidest decisions of its history. I can't prove any of this is due to Welsh-medium education, but I'm not sure you're looking for proper data.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

6 years

The evidence for bilingualism having cognitive benefits beyond the ability to speak another language is very poor, but I'll tell you this: I've never ever met anyone who regretted being bilingual. I've met many people, however, who regret that they're not.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 month

But the romantic idea of secretly buying an expensive ring and using it to propose to someone who isn't expecting to be asked is not a great model for other reasons. You really don't want their answer—in either direction—to be influenced by the feeling of having been surprised!

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

9 months

So some people really seem to want "Welsh" to once have meant "foreign" or "foreigner”. However, that doesn't seem to be the case. 1/ 🧵

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 month

An alternative is to make the proposal a surprise but use a placeholder ring and then go and choose a ring together.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 year

Worth perhaps adding that using a company's name as a verb is not in any way a nightmare for linguists

evan loves worf

@esjesjesj

1 year

Holy shit lmao

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 year

@christapeterso @name17861547 If you tip via an app, you are essentially giving money to the restaurant and hoping they redistribute it to the workers. So it may be that this is actually a tip button that acknowledges that. Or it's a trick.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 year

One of the most hilariously inept descriptions of Welsh I've seen

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

2 years

If you are at all involved in writing instructions for #BoardGames , please please do NOT refer to players who could be of any gender as "he". Just don't. This is depressingly common and there is absolutely no good reason for it.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

6 months

I similarly felt vaguely jealous for a little while of people who owned really big bath towels. Then I realised that the only difference between me and them was that they'd bought some really big bath towels.

Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

6 months

Every so often my clothes wear out and I run low on things like socks, underwear, or pajama pants. It takes me slightly longer than it should do at this stage of my life to recall that I can quite easily buy new ones.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

4 months

A nice example of both prosodic variation and the acquisition of prosody

Nooruddean

@BeardedGenius

4 months

I could tell you this is baby talk in a Scouse accent and it still won’t prepare you for it

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

4 years

We live next door to a Chinese couple who speak very little English. Their (4ish?) grandson is currently up a tree in their back yard doing a language exchange with my daughter (6;7) who is going to teach him how to say hello in Welsh if he tells her how to say it in Chinese.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

4 months

@loobah_l Like I say

Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

4 months

@Swilua It was very practical and rational—it was a good distribution of labour and the chances of me doing anything bad were very low. But I still don't think it's the choice most people would have made!

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

4 years

@timmystonks @brokeazzbitch From Hugh David's (1997) On Queer Street: A Social History of British Homosexuality 1895–1995 (p. 285).

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

8 months

This is not a silly question. Given that plenty of languages do fine with even less gender marking than English (some languages don't even have any gendered pronouns), it's not obvious why some other languages have it, given that it presumably imposes at least some cost..

florence ☧

@morallawwithin

8 months

I don’t get how languages with grammatical gender even exist. Like why don’t people just start using the same one for every noun

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

3 months

@TomFitzJesus @rachelwilbury @Rollinintheseat You know Irish is a separate language that's still spoken in Ireland right?

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

4 years

@evolpebligh @maryhitchman I have a teach yourself Scottish Gaelic book somewhere in which the first dialogue involves a highlander telling you how crappy life is, before inviting you home, where at least he has whisky.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

3 months

@camruined A lot of people are slightly missing the point by saying that taxes can change within short distances. After all, shops tend to remain fairly stationary, and they have to calculate the tax at point of sale anyway, so the could put it on the price tag!

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

6 years

@B_Schmidt Maybe that's the real reason Susan didn't go back to Narnia...

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 month

@ceaubin I should probably clarify that I was referencing this!

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 month

If you ever do need to surprise someone completely with a ring, a straightforward option is to secretly borrow a ring they already own and take that with you to the jeweler. (Of course this only works if they already own rings that they often take off.)

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

8 months

English "much" is not related to Spanish "mucho". Latin "habere" (ancestor of French "avoir", Spanish "haber" etc.) is not related to German "haben" or English "have". Language is packed to the gills with astounding-seeming coincidences.

Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

8 months

A fun (if in parts grisly) little article worth reading should you ever be tempted to believe that this or that work of literature contains deliberate anagrams concealing secret messages

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

6 months

Am I misinterpreting this reply or is it just a pretty unhelpful and mean-spirited response to a reasonable and genuine question?

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

2 years

People are often surprised to be told that language is changing all the time. But to recognise this you surely only have to listen to people speak in recordings that were made easily within the lifetimes of people around today.

BBC Archive

@BBCArchive

2 years

What sort of thing did Australians expect to find in England? 🌏 #OnThisDay 1961: Alan Whicker interviewed some Aussies just before they set sail from Melbourne to Essex.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

4 months

Astonishing and infuriating how many people think that asking ChatGPT is a reliable way to get good-quality information. When various people pointed out that it's not, this person replied to suggest that the only alternative was to bother experts on Twitter with questions 🙄

Sid

@darthsidius1985

4 months

@yvanspijk Hmmm. Here's something from chatgpt though. There's a possibility it may have PIE root.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

2 years

@punished_cait Good diagram, except that it uses the problematic term "England" instead of Occupied East Wales.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

9 months

It is interesting that Old English names are so deprecated in England. My impression is that the Norman Conquest just destroyed their social prestige so decisively that they never recovered. I'm curious if people who know more think that's right though.

Wylfċen

@wylfcen

9 months

It's dumb that some Anglo-Saxon names sound incredibly lame now. Egbert is Old English for ‘blade-bright’ (ecgberht), it was born by warriors and kings. Mildred meant ‘kind strength’ (mildþryþ). We’re gonna have to revive Old English for people to appreciate the names.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

2 years

Your regular reminder that it is literally impossible to speak your language without an accent. It's like claiming your tongue doesn't have a colour or your foot doesn't have a size.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

9 months

If something is true of how most English speakers use the language, then that’s a fact about English; how could it be an error? On what basis could the minority form be more correct? 5/

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 month

@ceaubin I mean, were you calling it the Iliad?

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

9 months

This is actually a nice example of a widespread idea of how grammar works that's just... not well-founded. 1/

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

2 years

I was wondering if someone familiar with 🇺🇸 academia can help me understand something. My chair just told me that apparently I've been given ten year (sic) to associate [with?] a professor. Does this make sense to anyone?

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

3 months

Let's put this in simple terms: If your main language is English and you make fun of how another language is spelled and pronounced, you look like a dumbass

Evan Bradley

@yEvb0

3 months

Irish orthography is more shallow/transparent than English orthography

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 month

Tired of reemphasising points about "correctness" and "grammaticality" in language. So here are some fun linguistic facts: 1. Not all languages have tense 2. There are around 6000 languages in the world of which about 5% are sign languages 3. Most people are multilingual

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 month

A reminder that this is not a coherent statement. If there's a grammatical rule that English speakers tend to break, then it's not a rule of English. 🧵

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

2 months

@anne_theriault I feel like you might enjoy the flag of Meirionnydd, the region of Wales I grew up in

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

9 months

This is one of the biggest differences between how linguists think about language and how non-linguists tend to. And it’s a VERY familiar point. In fact it’s a feature of the first class in most introductory linguistics classes and the first chapter in most textbooks. 2/

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

5 years

Historically humans have often been wary of directly naming entities they're scared of or are wary of invoking. So they'll change the word in some way, or replace it with more innocuous word that (e.g.) starts with the same sound. This is called taboo deformation. (1/n)

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 month

Note that this doesn't mean there can't be a surprise involved! Just that it's not a good way to raise the subject of marriage.

Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 month

In my case we talked about the possibility beforehand and sized her finger and talked about ring tastes. Then I surprised her with the timing of the proposal and the ring itself.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

2 years

This is partly because it’s almost never clear what they mean by “oldest” and partly because—even if age if defined very precisely—it’s usually very hard to differentiate languages helpfully on this basis. 2/

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 year

Of the countries I've lived in, the US is easily the most welcoming to people not born there. But the flip side (and, really, driver) of this attitude is that many many Americans don't really fully understand the concept of *not* being American.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

9 months

The issue can be exemplified quite well with the statement “Most speakers of English make this grammar error”. This claim is meaningful and plausible to many non-linguists but it's probably pretty much nonsensical to most linguists! 4/

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

2 years

@kukukadoo Sure, but is he even in want of a wife?

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

2 years

@MartinPilgrim1 By not eating your dinner off your own body you're falling for a classic trick of Big Soap

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

5 months

People are *so* bad at grasping that England and Britain aren't the same thing. Even in England.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

8 months

One is tempted to conclude from the list that—if you want to be Prime Minister—you're better off not going to college at all than going to Cambridge.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

6 months

Following this tradition, here are some pairs of words that do in fact have a common ancestor Eng. cow; Eng. bovine (from Latin bos) Eng. hemp; Eng. cannabis (from Greek κάνναβις) Eng. feather; Eng. pen (from Latin penna) Eng. two; Armenian երկու (erku)

Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

3 years

I prefer to honour St April's Day by presenting real facts that look false. So here are some pairs of words that are NOT related. Eng. have; Fr. avoir "have" Fr. Gaule; Lat. Gallia "Gaul" Eng. comrade; Welsh cymrawd "fellow; comrade" Eng. much; Sp. mucho "much"

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

4 years

"Welsh doesn't have any vowels!" is possibly the most annoying language myth to counter for a Welsh linguist because, not only do you have to explain why it's false, you ideally also have to explain how a vowel isn't really best thought of as a kind of letter.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

3 months

Because that's how you'd expect a word spelled like that to be pronounced in Irish. Other languages exist and they have different spelling systems. Grow up.

Lindsay

@Rollinintheseat

3 months

Why is everyone okay with the way “Siobhan” is pronounced?

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

7 months

So the man who named pi fathered the man who discovered PIE

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

9 months

It also follows that the minority form is no less correct. It’s not like we put this up for vote. A lot of people seem to think that, if there’s variation, one variant must be the best one. But that’s just not true. 6/

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

4 years

TIL that the Welsh-speaking population of the US (especially in PA and NY) was sufficiently large in 1860 that the Lincoln election campaign had 100,000 pamphlets published in Welsh.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

3 years

This—as many other linguists (and non-linguists) have pointed out—is simply, straightforwardly, strikingly wrong. And to a great extent it's based on language myths that we try to dispel in introductory linguistics classes. 1/

Joyce Carol Oates

@JoyceCarolOates

3 years

"they" will not become a part of general usage, not for political reasons but because there would be no pronoun to distinguish between a singular subject ("they") & a plural subject ("they"). language seeks to communicate w/ clarity, not to obfuscate; that is its purpose.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 month

If you're think that you can ask ChatGPT a question and rely on the answer being accurate, you don't understand what ChatGPT is.

Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 month

So many people really don't understand what ChatGPT is

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 month

And yes yes yes, I know that well off people in the US consider themselves middle-class too. The point is what is implied by Harris promoting "her middle class roots". It doesn't mean she promoted her well-off comfortable background!

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

2 years

Anyone else garden-pathed by this headline?

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 month

So many people really don't understand what ChatGPT is

Bad Medical Takes

@BadMedicalTakes

1 month

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

9 months

It’s fine and normal for there just to be more than one way to say things. 7/

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

7 months

"If you was" is grammatical in a number of varieties of English, just not in the main standard varieties. Is there honestly any reason to feel this should have been written in one of the latter instead of what's presumably the native variety of the child and/or teacher?

PrimaryCoHead

@PrimaryCoHead

7 months

Props to nursery for the Mother’s Day card… but…

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

6 months

@StatisticUrban To be fair, we—strictly speaking—only know that it's never elected someone *openly* attracted to men.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

4 years

It's long been a dream of mine to submit—under an assumed name—a paper or abstract to a language evolution outlet in which it becomes gradually clear (*gradually* mind you) that I've fundamentally misunderstood the distinction between pidgin and pigeon.

Nathan Schneider

@complingy

4 years

Heard an actual radio commercial trying to make a joke about communicating with pigeons via a language called..."Pige-Latin". FOLKS IF YOU FIND YOURSELVES IN THIS SITUATION ASK A LINGUIST FOR THE CORRECT PUN, BECAUSE PIGE-LATIN IS NOT IT

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

9 months

But offering unsolicited “corrections” on other people’s language when you don’t know that? If you’re not trying to be an ass then I have bad news for you... 25/25

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

4 months

@ajaydiv Was she just curious?!

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

5 years

Examples in textbooks for modern languages like Russian: Привет! Меня зовут Паша. Я студент из Ярославля. Я изучаю историю. Hi! My name's Pasha. I'm a student from Yaroslavl. I study history. Examples from textbooks for ancient languages like Middle Egyptian:

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

2 years

English and Welsh have a common ancestor that was spoken some six millennia ago on (most likely) the Pontic-Caspian steppe. So in this sense English and Welsh are exactly as old as each other. And their common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European, will have its own ancestors. 9/

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

2 months

I think there's an interesting point about language here. I assume "technically correct" means that we should put aside what people actually say and get down to the fundamental ground truth of how English actually is. But here's the thing: It doesn't exist. 1/

Jan Miklaszewicz

@JanMiklas01

2 months

Which is technically correct? (a) A great number of people was waiting. (b) A great number of people were waiting.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 year

@lovedoveclarke @TexasTrashbag A good Dad who used the banana-like hat as bait to poach George from his habitat in the first book

Ryan Petersen

@typesfast

2 years

TIL in the very first book, The Man in the Yellow Hat was a poacher who kidnapped Curious George from the wilds of Africa then brought him back to his bachelor pad to smoke a pipe.

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

3 years

It's quite common to hear people say this sort of thing from time to time. To a linguist, however, it's like hearing people announce that poodles aren't animals.

Michael Rowland

@mjrowland68

3 years

Me too. ‘Gifting’ is not a real word. Don’t get me started on ‘medalled’..

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

2 years

So maybe just stop calling languages old unless you really really really know what you’re doing? 19/19

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

2 years

... the question of “how long this language and its ancestors have been spoken in this particular place” is quite different from the question of “how long the language has existed anywhere”! 7/

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

9 months

But a non-linguist friend asked me—somewhat tongue-in-cheek—to weigh in on it following a holiday argument they’d had, so I thought it might be worth saying something about it here for anyone who might appreciate a linguist’s thoughts on it. 3/

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

1 year

@mage_leader @gilestelscanvas Wait. Are you genuinely trying to suggest that describing... *checks notes*... Mary Renault, W. H. Auden, and E. M. Forster as non-straight is "retconning"? Have I got that right?

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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro

3 years

I prefer to honour St April's Day by presenting real facts that look false. So here are some pairs of words that are NOT related. Eng. have; Fr. avoir "have" Fr. Gaule; Lat. Gallia "Gaul" Eng. comrade; Welsh cymrawd "fellow; comrade" Eng. much; Sp. mucho "much"

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