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Gareth Roberts

@garicgymro.bsky.social

4.1K followers 2.3K following 2.8K posts

Welsh linguist in Philadelphia. I grow languages in the lab. Opinions my own. He. Ieithydd o Gymro yn Philadelphia. Tyfaf ieithoedd yn y lab. Barnau fy hun. Fo. https://linktr.ee/garicgymro

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Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · Sep 3

For those (many) of you who would like to hear me say something vaguely informative about language, just NOT AT LENGTH, I present the 60-second* lecture I gave at noon today.

*Precise length not guaranteed

Penn Arts & Sciences @sas.upenn.edu · Sep 3

Gareth Roberts, Associate Professor of Linguistics, presents "How Old is Language?" at today's first 60-Second Lecture of the fall semester. @upenn.edu @garicgymro.bsky.social #60Second #language #linguistics

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Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · 1h

Everyone should learn Welsh.

samwisegameboy 🇵🇸 @blaidd.bsky.social · 1h

well since i hit an impasse with learning irish, d'ya suppose i should pick up welsh for the bit

Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · 2h

Mae corbryf yn bodoli hefyd, yn ôl GPC

Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · 4h

No. Adder is actually cognate with (i.e., has a common ancestor with) Welsh neidr "snake" and Latin natrix "watersnake". But "a nadder" got reanalysed as "an adder", hence the lack of an initial /n/. No relation to atter.

Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · 4h

Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · 4h

This weekend's #BoardGames:
1. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
2. Tag Team
3. Vegetable Stock
4. War of the Ring
5. Worldbreakers
6. Sea Salt and Paper
7. Castles of Burgundy
8. BombBusters
9. Medium

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Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · 4h

Because the English was attercop not copatter, so it was borrowed as adar cop and not cop adar, so it became pry cop and not cop pry. And both types of compounds occur in Welsh, of course. A "land picture" would be "llun tir", but landscape is tirlun, for instance.

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Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · 5h

This term was then borrowed into Welsh, where atter became reanalysed as Welsh adar "birds". So adar cop was interpreted as a spider that eats birds—which of course few Welsh spiders do! They eat flies. The Welsh word for fly is pry(f). So now spider in Welsh is pry cop!

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Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · 5h

Readers of the Hobbit may be familiar with attercop as an old regional English term for spider. This has a slightly interesting trajectory. First, atter is an old word for venom, but that association had been lost so the term applied very generally to spiders...

Darling Axe Editing @darlingaxe.com · 9h

"Cobweb" comes from an old word for "spider," coming from Old English "coppe." So a cobweb is really just a spider's web.

#etymology

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Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · 21h

Not surprisingly, most visitors to Wales really want to pronounce "y" like [i].

Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · 21h

Yeah, I don't think I've heard "co-ed" for coed from English people so much, but Betsy for "Betws y" is very common indeed.

Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · 1d

Britannia wasn't exactly an exonym. It ultimately seems to be based on a Brythonic endonym, of which Welsh Prydain ("Britain") is a descendant. And even the Caledonians (like their descendants the Picts) seem to have had pretty Brythonic looking names.

Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · 1d

I'm not sure this is ideal given that Dumbarton means "Britons' fort"!

Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · 2d

Not quite all. Many English placenames are not pronounced as they look—and other languages have less reliable orthography than Welsh. But this was in large part simply a response to the widespread myth that Welsh placenames are not pronounced as they look, when the opposite is true!

Reposted by Gareth Roberts

Christian Ilbury @christianilbury.bsky.social · 2d

Please share!

We have a number of fully funded PhD studentships in "Designing Responsible Natural Language Processing". I'm a possible supervisor & I'd be keen to support projects on sociolinguistics-AI, e.g., accent bias in AI, language+gender/sexuality+AI.

www.responsiblenlp.org

Our CDT is based in the Edinburgh Futures Institute – the University of Edinburgh’s brand new hub for research, innovation and teaching focused on socially just artificial intelligence and data.

www.responsiblenlp.org

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Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · 2d

I don't! I'm told the one in PA is usually pronounced as if spelt Bryn Mâr. My guess is that that's how most of them are pronounced, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear Bryn Môr either.

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Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · 2d

Bryn Mawr was originally Humphreysville until the railroad came, but the name came from the house of Rowland Ellis who (like me!) migrated from Dolgellau, so it has proper roots in the Welsh Quaker migration. Several other Bryn Mawrs in 🇺🇸 are named after Bryn Mawr, PA.

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Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · 2d

I've encountered a myth in Philly that most of them were later inventions with no real Welsh roots, but that's not true. Gladwyne is the only blatant invention by non-Welsh speakers that I know of. (It doesn't even look very Welsh if you're from Wales!)

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Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · 2d

Exactly. To my knowledge most of the Welsh placenames are from the earlier Quaker migration. At least one of them (Uwchlan) was a local coining by Welsh settlers but most are simply named after places in Wales.

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Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · 3d

In Wales most placenames are pronounced exactly as they look. However, tourists often make the mistake of pronouncing them as they look *in English*, which makes it immediately obvious that they're tourists.

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 4d

What’s the word where you’re from that, when pronounced exactly as it looks, identifies a tourist immediately?

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Reposted by Gareth Roberts

Linguischick @cocchino.bsky.social · 4d

We're hiring! UT Linguistics invites applications for a position in computational linguistics to begin next academic year 2026-27 (rank of tenure-track Assistant Professor or Associate Professor with tenure). apply.interfolio.com/175156

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

apply.interfolio.com

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Reposted by Gareth Roberts

Eelco B @eelcob.bsky.social · 4d

And ‘refused to acknowledge’ is putting it lightly en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America...

American Service-Members' Protection Act - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Reposted by Gareth Roberts

Micah @rincewind.run · 5d

I am not a constitutional scholar but I am pretty sure “the president my personally levy taxes and choose what they fund” is not in fact what the founders intended

George Pearkes @peark.es · 5d

Well that's not how appropriations work at all

*WHITE HOUSE TO TRANSFER TARIFF REVENUE TO FUND WIC: LEAVITT

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Reposted by Gareth Roberts

BBC Newsnight @bbcnewsnight.bsky.social · 5d

“You described Reform and other parties across Europe today as among the 'right wing equivalents of the fascists in the 1930s'. Why?”

“Because that’s what they are”

@vicderbyshire.bsky.social asks Lord Heseltine about remarks he made at Conservative Party Conference.

#Newsnight

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Reposted by Gareth Roberts

Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 5d

The UAE is an authoritarian autocracy, a petro-state with no income tax for citizens, to bribe them for the lack of democratic voice or free speech

It is 85% migrant, a segregated society with a ban on integration in principle and practice, few rights, equal opportunities, nor voice for incomers

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Gareth Roberts @garicgymro.bsky.social · 5d

Aha!