Top all-time · #5014
Gretchen McCulloch
Personal blog · allthingslinguistic.comwritingculture
Gretchen McCulloch writes All Things Linguistic, a personal blog at allthingslinguistic.com about writing and culture. Since 2013, 16 different Hacker News readers have linked it 17 times, most often “The opposite of a shibboleth is a frisco”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this linguistics blog for posts on dialects and accents, word origins such as 'lox' and 'red' for orange hair, and the 'because' construction. Comments cite its posts as sources.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A blog about all things linguistic by Gretchen McCulloch. I cohost Lingthusiasm, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics. I'm the author of Because Internet, a book about internet language!
Most-linked posts?
- The opposite of a shibboleth is a frisco2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-01-02
- A weird Internet career in linguistics2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-11-13
- /post/72252671648/why-the-new-because-isnt-a-preposition-but-is2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-08-28
What Hacker News says?
Affirmative action programs are controversial because people who have privilege generally don’t like other people getting that privilege (because then they are no longer special). As an analogous situation, men often claim that women talk too much. There’s fairly strong evidence that the claim is merely sexist nonsense[1]. So forgive me if I’m unwilling to give a crap about whether people who look like me (white men…
Comment linking /post/145374253955/do-women-talk-too-much-hint-science-says-no
on “Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo”Submitted The opposite of a shibboleth is a frisco as a story · 32 points
HN discussionYes, of course your "right mate" example is also grammatically correct. The point is that people routinely and naturally do the complicated transformation to "will the man who has written the book be followed?", and that transformation can't be done by simple pattern matching. Hence, humans who are able to do the complicated transformation must be mentally parsing the sentence. The fact that there is an alternative…
Comment linking /post/72252671648/why-the-new-because-isnt-a-preposition-but-is
on “Announcing SyntaxNet: The World’s Most Accurate Natural Language Parser”Submitted A weird Internet career in linguistics as a story · 4 points
HN discussionAn excellent example of an anti-shibboleth, also known as a "frisco": https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/45448571632/the-opposit... These signal words act as a silent, passive test of competence in that once you hear them, you can be assured of the speaker's ignorance and discount their opinions accordingly.
Comment linking /post/45448571632/the-opposite-of-a-shibboleth-is-a-frisco
on “The phrase "no evidence" is a red flag for bad science communication (2021)”Submitted Names for mama, papa, and other kinship terms in 500 languages as a story · 2 points
HN discussionReddit[1] made me aware of 2 specific examples: "pin" == "pen" : http://allthingslinguistic.com/post/81929757765/cather-wren-... "soda" vs "pop" vs "coke": http://popvssoda.com/ All the examples I've seen overlap closely with the Southern belt of states. For a more HN-flavored survey, I wonder if there's a clear regional boundary for "tuple" . I've heard it pronounced "too-pull" (sorta like "pupil") and "tuppel" (li…
Comment linking /post/81929757765/cather-wren-catherine-fangirl-and-the-pinpen
on “North American Regional Dialects and Accents (2016)”Submitted The orgin and constraints of “shitgibbon” compounds as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIn English (but also in other languages like my Italian) orange hair is called red because the color orange arrived too late with the orange fruit. https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/33117530568/why-dont-we...
Comment linking /post/33117530568/why-dont-we-say-orangehead-instead-of
on “Colour in the Middle Ages”Submitted What Is a Weird Internet Career? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionMore coverage of Gretchen's book is quoted on her daily linguistics blog: https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/186456220892/reviews-of...
Comment linking /post/186456220892/reviews-of-because-internet
on “Why Has Language Changed So Much So Fast? ‘Because Internet’”Submitted All Things Linguistic as a story · 1 points
HN discussion“Lox” is also one of the oldest words in English. It is a proto-Indo-European word that has retained the same meaning and sound for thousands of years. https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/185617923376/the-englis...
Comment linking /post/185617923376/the-english-word-that-hasnt-changed-in-sound-or
on “The Raw Truth About Lox (2003)”Submitted Harry Potter and the Neural Network Fan Fiction as a story · 1 points
HN discussionYes I was kind of wondering if this is a new thing, like because[0,1,2] or if it's canonical English. I was looking for an analysis like [0] on this, but I couldn't find any. 0: http://allthingslinguistic.com/post/72252671648/why-the-new-... 1: http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/because-a... 2: https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/because-has-becom...
Comment linking /post/72252671648/why-the-new-because-isnt-a-preposition-but-is
on “What is a kubelet?”Submitted What makes an effective synonym for Benedict Cumberbatch? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionUrl changed from https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/150001033323/blind-peop... , which points to this. A related article is https://www.thecut.com/2016/09/blind-people-gesture-like-sig...
Comment linking /post/150001033323/blind-people-gesture-and-why-thats-kind-of-a-big
on “Blind speakers gesture like their sighted counterparts: study (2016)”
