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Pavel Iosad

@anghyflawn.net

760 followers 400 following 670 posts

Linguist | Cànanaiche @schoolofppls.bsky.social. Migrant | Neach-imrich: 🇷🇺➡️🇳🇴➡️NI➡️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿. Tin whistle tragic | Droch-chluicheadair na fìdeige. 🇺🇦.

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Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · Apr 14

My soon-to-come book with @cambup-linguistics.bsky.social now has a page with a cover and everything! It’s been almost a decade working on it, and more than that in some form, but it’s finally almost here. 🧵 www.cambridge.org/gb/universit...

Phonological Drift and Language Contact | Phonetics and phonology

www.cambridge.org

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 1d

I don’t think anyone’s disputing that! But ‘is’ doesn’t equal ‘ought’, so that’s where we are. Anyway, we’ve established the British state isn’t actually doing what it’s supposed to in this particular area.

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 1d

and it’s a pretty bad look for speakers of other languages that are much less threatened to judge what counts as sufficiently critical mass for us to start caring. Being a linguistic minority is really tiring, and we have a special duty when there’s no other state to keep them going.

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 1d

I mean, we can just fall back on @dsquareddigest.bsky.social’s original point that promoting them is literally a duty that the British state (in both its Westminster and devolved guises) has taken on itself as a matter of law. But also their speakers are real people who have rights

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 1d

Now pondering if one could make an immigration application and support it with a university degree taught through the medium of Welsh or Gaelic.

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 1d

Well, yes, just like a hypothetical person born British and growing up a monolingual Welsh or Gaelic speaker should not face discrimination on the basis of being somehow insufficiently integrated. If we’re serious about promoting these languages then we shouldn’t treat them as second class.

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 1d

Yes, although my best understanding is that it’s currently (or at least was until recently) moot because the government doesn’t recognise any actual Welsh or Gaelic qualifications as fulfilling the language requirement for immigration applications (happy to be corrected) bsky.app/profile/angh...

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 1d

Have they changed that? My recollection is that in ancient days LitUK counted as proof of language ability, so if you managed to do it in Welsh/Gaelic (which was not trivial) that would count, but then they separated LitUK from language proof and never endorsed any Welsh/Gaelic tests?..

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 1d

The UK government does actually have duties towards Welsh and Scottish Gaelic under the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages; it does for Scots as well, but the scope for Scots is smaller (no Part III)

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 1d

But people should get the chance! Some of them are actually integrated in Welsh-speaking communities! It does happen and they are real people! theconversation.com/profiles/gwe...

Gwennan Higham — Profile on The Conversation

theconversation.com

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 1d

um actually I did my test in Glesga I’ll have you know (no laughing at the back)

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 1d

for all the ‘you bastards don’t integrate’ mantra, they certainly have decimated ESOL provision and qualifications in communities and created a feeding trough for private exam providers

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 1d

Oh yeah, I actually was advised to redo my English test for ILR because no-one was sure if the one I’d done for Tier 2 would count anymore because of all the changes. I took the quickest option, which was an A2 test that involved telling the exams person how my job is ‘linguistics academic’.

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 1d

Have they changed that? My recollection is that in ancient days LitUK counted as proof of language ability, so if you managed to do it in Welsh/Gaelic (which was not trivial) that would count, but then they separated LitUK from language proof and never endorsed any Welsh/Gaelic tests?..

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 1d

A-Level English is not an ESOL qualification, what are they even talking about.

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 2d

Great idea! Some sort of… broad?.. general?.. education maybe? Around 11-13 years of age?

(I know it’s the done thing to consider Scottish schools a disaster zone, and I know the reasons. But that’s literally what they were supposed to be doing, and test culture compromised it.)

Reposted by Pavel Iosad

Akerbeltz / Mìcheal an Fhaclair / LowRisingTone @akerbeltz.bsky.social · 4d

Nicely put @kscanne.bsky.social! But boy do I hate things being worse than you thought they were ☹️ www.technologyreview.com/2025/09/25/1...

How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral

Machine translators have made it easier than ever to create error-plagued Wikipedia articles in obscure languages. What happens when AI models get trained on junk pages?

www.technologyreview.com

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 5d

Surely that’s the same name as מְנַשֶּׁה‎ / Manasseh?

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 5d

I know this because I’ve spent years in an admin role dealing precisely with progression and reassessment and hoo boy the stuff I’ve seen.

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 5d

Completely correct. The UK assessment (and reassessment) system is a ratchet that ruins the lives of students that can’t keep up with the expected pace for any reason, and everyone pretends this is normal.

Wonkhe @wonkhe.bsky.social · 5d

NEW on Wonkhe: What looks like efficiency in UK higher education often masks systemic injustice. Jim Dickinson explores how policies around reassessment quietly entrench inequality buff.ly/89mzFbe

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 7d

the whole ‘you can load up on booze in a shop at 2am’ thing always feels extremely weird visiting from Scotland. I thought we were the ones with the alcohol problem!

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 7d

Not to put too fine a point on it, but… driving.

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 7d

Eh, it wasn’t funny when he shat on Gaelic then, and I don’t think it’s entirely unrelated.

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 7d

Yeah but the strategically crucial degrees actually do include English, drama, and Central and Eastern European Studies, so 🤷

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 8d

All true, though personally I’ve long got my money’s worth through visa fee savings alone. And for some of us the citizenship we have comes attached with far worse strings…

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 9d

Honestly *not* doing citizenship is nuts, and has been for some time. Even that is increasingly under threat: the state has already made it more precarious, and I’d be seriously worried about how those powers will be used if/when the radical right gets in.

Pavel Iosad @anghyflawn.net · 9d

That’s essentially Brian Joseph’s theory of drift, which I think has a lot to recommend it

www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Chapter 3. Demystifying drift

Chapter 3. Demystifying drift was published in Shared Grammaticalization on page 43.

www.degruyterbrill.com