Top all-time · #15927
Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne
Personal blog · lingthusiasm.comculturewriting
Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne writes Lingthusiasm, a personal blog at lingthusiasm.com about culture and writing. Since 2017, 5 different Hacker News readers have linked it 7 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-15, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linguistics blog and podcast by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Commenters cite it for topics such as emoji as gesture, evidentiality, the Beowulf translation and slang, and point to the podcast.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Weird and deep conversations about the hidden language patterns that you didn't realize you were already making....
Most-linked posts?
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-11-19
What Hacker News says?
There’s good reason to think that emoji are more like gesture than language. When you crunch the numbers (and I have), the face, hand, and heart emoji are by far the most popular — not the emoji that represent noun-like items. Furthermore, the vast majority of emoji are used beside words, not all by themselves in extended emoji-only stories. People aren’t using emojis as a substitute for language, they’re using it a…
Comment linking /post/154520059101/lingthusiasm-episode-1-speaking-a-single-language
on “How to Say (Almost) Everything in a Hundred-Word Language (2015)”This translation was discussed on a recent episode of the Lingthusiasm podcast: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/632086691477323776/lingthusias...
Comment linking /post/632086691477323776/lingthusiasm-episode-49-how-translators-approach
on “Beowulf: A New Translation”with reference to your second question, you can listen to this podcast: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/157327666801/lingthusiasm-epis... There is also this frequently quoted book (I haven't read it yet): Through the Language Glass: How Words Colour your World by Guy Deutscher
Comment linking /post/157327666801/lingthusiasm-episode-5-colour-words-around-the
on “Wanderwort”The linguistic term for this, as I recently learned from the Lingthusiasm podcast, is "evidentiality" and apparently a number of languages have it as a feature. Some languages get really granular with it, having different forms of expression depending on whether you've seen something, done something, overheard it, etc. https://lingthusiasm.com/post/184928796346/change-the-audio-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evid…
Comment linking /post/184928796346/change-the-audio-lingthusiasm-episode-32
on “Languages That Could Change the Way You See the World (2015)”For you language nerds: the author Gretchen McCulloch also hosts a podcast, Lingthusiasm! ( https://lingthusiasm.com/ )
Comment linking /
on “Don’t Blame the Internet for New Slang”Her podcast Lingthusiasm [1] (with Lauren Gawne [2]) is well worth listening to as well. 1. https://lingthusiasm.com/ 2. https://laurengawne.com/
Comment linking /
on “A Defense of Text-Speak”