Gretchen McCulloch
LightNews LightNews
banner
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
Gretchen McCulloch
@gretchenmcc.bsky.social
24K followers 4.2K following 11K posts
Internet linguist. Wrote Because Internet, NYT bestseller about internet language. Co-hosts @lingthusiasm.bsky.social, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics.

she/her 🌈
Montreal en/fr 🇨🇦
gretchenmcculloch.com
Posts Replies Media Videos
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
I've finally managed to get my hands on a Bonne Maman #jamvent calendar this year!

I also have...quite a lot of linguistically interesting books I've been meaning to post about lately

So what if I did like...a jam x books challenge? A book from my shelves loosely inspired by that day's jam?
Closeup on the Bonne Maman jam Advent calendar, with art of snowy trees and penguins on sleds, on top of a blurry floral watercoloury scarf in reds, blues, and white.
November 14, 2025 at 5:39 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
Which of these snowballs would you assign the name bouba, and which kiki?
A fluffy, flaky snowball on the left, a round, smooth, dense snowball on the right
November 13, 2025 at 8:11 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
One of these pitch ideas might be of interest to linguists who are looking to write for a general audience!
Surprising ethno-linguistic enclaves around the world. There are German-speaking Mennonites in Kyrgyzstan, a village in the Venezuelan jungle whose inhabitants speak an old fashioned German dialect, Greek-speakers in Southern Italy, and quite a lot of Thai people in Svalbard. We’re interested in pieces about groups like these – how they got there, what life is like for them, and so on – especially if you have photographs and have visited them yourself.
November 8, 2025 at 5:07 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
One of these shapes is called boo-ba and one is kiki. Which is which?
A pumpkin carved with a rounded blobby shape and a sharp, spiky shape.
November 1, 2025 at 2:07 AM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
Train reading: Margalit Fox's Talking Hands, which I bought like a decade ago and never actually got around to cracking open till now, but it's neat!
Book: Talking Hands by Margalit Fox. Subtitle: In a remote village where everyone speaks sign langy, scientists are discovering the essential ingredients of all human language -- and uncovering the workings of the human mind. Book cover has hands signing and a desert image, and is held in my hand with a background view of train tracks and blurry greenery.
October 26, 2025 at 8:28 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
if this is a Monstre Kiki, what would a Monstre Bouba look like
A spooky package with a pointy, 3-eyed chocolate monster labelled "Monstre Kiki"
October 16, 2025 at 3:39 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
Higgledy piggledy
Timothée Chalamet
Has a name meriting
Endless design

Much like his forerunner
Benedict Cumberbatch:
Hexasyllabically,
Easy to rhyme
tweet from childish branzino @absflora: timothée chalamet is the new benedict cumberbatch in the sense that you can say ANYTHING and we know who you mean. tiffany chevrolet. timpanogos charlemagne. symphony cabernet. jiminy castaway.
October 9, 2025 at 6:57 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
okay well TECHNICALLY also there's this very special edition of Because Internet as a Halloween costume, please enjoy
Tweet from Sally Reed @SallyJWReed: This is a #BecauseInternetBook. Now there are two of them. That's right, @GretchenAMcC, I dressed up as your book. Because nerd. With a photo of a smiling person in a yellow shirt with paper pinned to it reading "Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language. Gretchen McCulloch" in yellow and light blue, matching the copy of Because Internet she's holding
October 2, 2025 at 5:00 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
I like this quote from James Murray (original main lexicographer behind the Oxford English Dictionary)

as cited in @dannybate.bsky.social's Why Q Needs U
Language is mobile and liable to change … a very large number of words have two or more pronunciations current … giving life and variety to language … it is a free country, and a man may call a vase a vawse, a vahse, a vaze, or a vase, as he pleases. And why should he not? We do not all think alike, walk alike, dress alike, write alike, or dine alike; why should we not use our liberty in speech also, so long as the purpose of speech, to be intelligible, and its grace, are not interfered with?
August 19, 2025 at 7:04 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
brb making "hich" happen
Screencap from the middle of a paper: questions like ‘where?’, ‘whither?’ or ‘what?’ and answer them with demonstrative words like ‘there’, ‘thither’ or ‘that’. English, like many languages, allows a range of spatially calibrated answers—here versus there (and yon in older English), hither versus thither, this versus that. Moreover, many languages are like English in having proportional formal relationships between question words and demonstratives. The English formula is wh- for questions, h- for proximal demonstratives, and th- for distal demonstratives, but we don’t do this consistently HIGHLIGHT (we don’t express ‘now’ with hen, or answer which? with hich or thich). END HIGHLIGHT Some languages, like Japanese or Tamil, have systems that are both richer and more consistent (see Evans 2012b for [screencap cuts off mid-sentence]
July 21, 2025 at 6:10 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
Today I learned that Because Internet is officially on a @penguinrandomhouse.bsky.social "Credibility Bookshelf" zoom background

"The Little-Bit-of-Everything Reader"
This bright bookshelf is perfect for the user trying to convey a colourful reading list.
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/blog/1768/do...
A bookshelf Officially Described by PRH as "The Little-Bit-of-Everything Reader This bright bookshelf is perfect for the user trying to convey a colourful reading list. With prize-winning novels like Reproduction and The Nickel Boys, and buzzworthy non-fiction titles like Trick Mirror, We Are the Weather, and We Have Always Been Here, this bookcase tells your coworkers that you are fully dialed-in to the current cultural zeitgeist. They might even come to you for their next book club recommendation." (Because Internet is in bright yellow at the top right)
July 7, 2025 at 9:38 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
Really cool example of games + linguistics from Kathryn Hymes at #LingComm25 - made a game for working on language skills for people with aphasia
Three boxes leading into one: Aphasia Community Members: contribute knowledge from their personal experience with aphasia and the broader community Speech Language Pathologists: evaluate theraputic foundation of the games throughout development Game Designers: Build scalable playful systems (all leading into box called "Co-Design Team Aphasia Games for Health)
April 8, 2025 at 4:51 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
Science communication journals highlighted by @ionica.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy which linguists could be publishing in...maybe? They don't publish a ton of humanities/social sciences (but they do some?)

#LingComm25
Bar chart titled communication studies: percentage of research studies and systematic studies focussing on different disciplines, in order from most to least: No discipline Biology Environment/ecology Technology Social sciences Physical sciences Humanities Arts Earth sciences Mathematics Sciences & Humanities Communication Research: Journals: Science communication, Public Representation of Science, JComm (Journal of Science Communication)
April 8, 2025 at 1:37 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
Ionica Smeets talking about "Maths and Life", a book she made with collaborators about kids' real-world math questions, like "Can you have a bath in your own tears?"

@ionica.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy
#LingComm25
Can you have a bath in your own tears? What if you collected all the tears in your whole life? Would it be enough to fill a bath? Could you float in it and go underwater? Let's start by thinking how many tears you cry in your whole life. Is it a hundred? A thousand? A million? Or is it a quindecillion, that's a 1 followed by forty-eight zeros? Adult: And to know that, we have to know who cries the most. Child: Girls, of course! Adult: Funny you should say so, because it's not entirely true... Adult: Until they're thirteen, boys and girls cry the same amount! Child: Huh?
April 8, 2025 at 1:31 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
A theme emerging from #LingComm25 is "niche-blending" aka combining linguistics with something else to stand out more

Started with Sophia Smith Galer applied to linguistics + food, picked up by @languageatplay.de re linguistics + videogames
niche-blending - video storytelling around language drives huge audience engagement - so does food - so why not combine the two?
April 7, 2025 at 1:33 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
Can attest that Fauxmage is used in the wild
A bag labelled bilingually in English and French: popcorn/maïs soufflé, "no cheese" cheesiness/au fauxmage
March 27, 2025 at 11:14 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
This is super neat and as a bilingual Canadian I'm excited to check out this program!

Finally, a bilingual show for a bilingual country

Canada has two official languages, but you’d never know it by watching TV or listening to the radio. We did something about that
www.tvo.org/article/fina...
But I was that proverbial dog with a bone. I beseeched The Agenda’s executive producer, Stacey Dunseath: “We can do this. We are the only two channels in the country that can undertake this because unlike elsewhere, we don’t have multiple levels of bureaucracy to gum up the works.” “What do you have in mind?” Stacey asked. I described a show in which I would be the English-speaking host and a TFO anchor would be the French-speaking host. We’d then book four perfectly bilingual guests who could answer questions in both official languages, and we’d seamlessly switch between French and English. We’d tape the program and put subtitles in after, translating whatever language was being spoken. “Say yes and then let’s get your counterpart at TFO to say yes,” I begged.
March 25, 2025 at 11:25 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
It has come to my attention that some folks still have not seen the term "acoustic bike" (as in, not an ebike) and in case that's you, today is your lucky day
Cyclist: a rider of an acoustic bike, e-bike, or trike
March 4, 2025 at 3:00 AM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
Roses are red
I bet you'll agree
Which shape is bouba
And which is kiki
Left: a spiky shape. Right: a blobby shape. Both are green but that's not relevant
February 14, 2025 at 4:02 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
Because Internet in translation!

Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean!

It's very surreal to have my words translated into three languages I don't speak (and one I sorta do, but not this well)

Links for how to get them gretchenmcculloch.com/book
Counterclockwise: Because Internet in Spanish (Arroba Lengua, on an instagram inspired cover), in Japanese (yellow cover), Chinese (grey and blue), and Korean (multicolour on black) on a blue scarf with assorted Unicode symbols Backs of covers of Because Internet in Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean
January 29, 2025 at 6:23 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
Happy double portmanteau new year
A sandwich shop named croissan'wich with a sign on the front glass window saying croissan'wich you happy new year 2025
January 2, 2025 at 6:56 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
classic favourite example of structural ambiguity, rescued from the old site
tweet text: this dog park bench makes it seem like this woman never saw a dog in her life and she also never smiled plaque text: In loving memory of Nicole Campbell, who never saw a dog and didn't smile.
December 10, 2024 at 7:49 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
A moment of levity for the timeline
Can't remember all of the medieval germanic languages? Try this handy mnemonic! "Old ogres often oozed oily grease onto old oak objects" Old English, Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Old High German, Old Swedish, Gothic, Old Norse, Old Dutch, Old Low German, Old Norwegian Cartoon of a medieval peasant with a large thumbs up saying "You got this!"
November 7, 2024 at 3:39 PM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
I mean that's certainly a thing you could believe...

www.redbubble.com/people/lingt...
A scarf with white IPA characters on navy draped around a person's neck, face cropped out of frame A scarf with white IPA characters on a diagonal rainbow background loosely bunched on probably a table or something A red IPA scarf on a wood table with a latte A group of seven linguists wearing assorted IPA scarves and grinning for the camera in a hotel ballroom
November 3, 2024 at 6:53 AM
gretchenmcc.bsky.social
Oh yeah also if you're an international phonetic alphabet fan, @lingthusiasm.bsky.social makes IPA merch
www.redbubble.com/people/lingt...
A teacup on a table surrounded by draped scarves with the international phonetic alphabet on them (red and black) and abstract tree diagrams (blue and white)
November 2, 2024 at 5:58 PM