Lee Orfila

A game of tug of war on a soccer field. The two teams consist of five people each, mixed men and women. The teams are standing ready, but the referee is still holding the rope. A few spectators stand on the sidelines, but the crowd is mostly out of frame. The weather is beautiful and sunny. Behind the field, a large park with teees is visible.

On the same field, a man is playing cornhole. He is caught mid-throw, with the hackysack in the air. Behind him, several people stand around a table. A large blue-and-white banner hanging on the fence displays text in Mongolian and several logos, including the logo of the International Week of Deaf People and the Mongolian national seal.

Mongolians are celebrating the end of #IWDP2025 (and the last of the warm weather) with a cornhole and tug-of-war tournament!

Yumjirdulam is a short Mongolian woman with short brown hair and glasses in a dark brown pantsuit. Behind her a screen shows an image of two documents and the logos of government agencies. Six audience members are visible in front of her watching attentively, though most of the audience is out of frame.

Deaf activist Yumjirdulam presents on a project in progress to submit new legislation for Deaf rights in Mongolia.

Byambasuren is a tall Kongolian woman with long dark hair in a blouse and jacket She is signing, hands blurred, in front of a complicated orgizational chart.

Deaf linguist Byambasuren presents on the structure of the Japanese Federation of the Deaf and ideas that the Mongolian Association can take away.

Baasanjav is a middle-aged Mongolian woman with long black curly hair wearing a black dress and sharp white suit jacket. She stands in front of a acreen showing a bright, neon-pink slide with large Mongolian text that reads "Dohionii helnii erh."

Baasanjav, director of the Deaf Education NGO, presents on what sign language rights mean for deaf people. She is pointing at her hand as she sign RIGHTS.

Ganbaatar is a middle-aged Mongolian man in a navy suit. He is standing in the center of a semicircle ofhairs in front of a screen displaying information in Mongolian about International Week of the Deaf.

Mongolian Deaf linguist M. Ganbaatar demonstrates the sign for International Week of the Deaf to attendees.

A spacious white conference room with chairs arranged in a circle around a central presentation area with a large screen, some banners for the event, and a bright blue and yellow flag showing an abstracted outline of a hand. At the center a middle aged Mongolian man in a plaid button down and glasses points to the flag. Audience members are mostly out of frame, but one elderly woman is visible raising her hand in an imitation of the image on the flag.

Currently setting up for the meeting of the National Deaf Association of Mongolia. Enkhbaatar, Association president, does a little crowd warm up asking people about the meaning of the flag.

Quote tweet by Richard Hanania from 1/11/2025. The quoted tweet, which has a community note, is by Christopher F. Rufo on 1/10/2025. Christopher's tweet reads: "I'm sorry, but we have to stop with the ridiculous sign language interpreters, who turn serious press conferences into a farce. There are closed captions on all broadcast channels and streaming services. No wild human gesticulators necessary." The community note (which has supporting .gov links) reads: "Fact: Not all broadcast channels have closed captions, which isn't universally effective anyway; many Deaf rely on ASL for comprehension as ASL offers nuances captions miss. This is part of ADA requirements, passed by GOP." Richard's tweet reads: "The community note shows that the process has been captured by the disability lobby. It’s not about access, CC works fine. They have to pretend like it doesn’t to force this absurdity onto us. And the ADA amendments of 2008 have led to a nightmare, as I explain in my book."

🔊 PSA for nondisabled people 🔊

It's time to step the FUCK up if you wanna be an ally.

ASL interpretation is being targeted by right wing cry baby douchebags.

Shut this shit down when you see it. SPEAK UP. This barrage of ASL hate is heavier than usual.

a11y-ai Accessibility explained by those impacted. Check any website for barriers and generate the perspective of those who face them.

A11y-AI is an experiment using the storytelling capabilities of generative AI to bring the impact of accessibility violations to life. It aims to inspire web professionals to take action.

As a disabled web accessibility practitioner. This pisses me off. Extremely.

GENERATIVE AI DOES NOT AND CANNOT EVER REPRESENT DISABLED PEOPLE.

Just fucking hire disabled people like me who know what they're doing.

Believing AI over disabled people is ABLEISM and DEHUMANIZING. For fucks sake.

I also remember how queer-friendly it was in the family vocab unit. Spoken language courses I had taken were always strictly cishetero-normative in that unit, so I was surprised and relieved.

I took an ASL class in college. Now ~9 years later, I mostly remember the professor's humor. All the bilingual puns like CAT UP for ketchup, upside-down STAND for understand, etc. And Deaf jokes: Timber ofc, but also the candy bar story and the man trying to find his wife's hotel room.

Gallaudet University Holiday Greetings 2024 YouTube video by GallaudetU

Oh my goodness! I am in love with this holiday ASL song from Gallaudet. 😍😍😍

youtu.be/Cy6kxqe0XQw?...

the progression of AIDS treatment in my lifetime, from how terrifying it was as a child in the 80s to stories like this 40-odd years later, is genuinely one of the human race’s most awe-inspiring scientific achievements. it was a nonnegotiable death sentence for SO LONG

I’m always looking for things that explain a lot but that people have a hard time remembering.

Examples: Air is stuff. Pee comes from blood. All land vertebrates have a single common ancestor. Venus is bright enough to cast visible shadows. Clouds are heavy. Bones are alive.

Any others you know?

A great quote for the linguistic anthropologists among us:

"We anthropologists [...] must re-examine basic premises and realize that English language patterns of thought are not a necessary model for the whole of human society."

— Leach, E. R. (1961). Rethinking Anthropology. p. 27. 🐦🐦

A boxed party game on a store shelf. It is called Irritable Vowels and the tagline reads A word game full of vowel movements." The brand is UG, University Games. The box is playful and colorful, purple with bouncy teal and yellow letters. There is a cutout that shows a plastic, polyhedral object. The side that is visible has a letter A on it.

My linguistics professor from undergrad, Marc Zender, used to call the Great Vowel Shift as the Great Vowel Movement.

It's the fact that the manufacturer is "UG" that really gets me.

"Whatever direction linguistics may take, I hope that more and more linguists will engage with the social issues that spring from linguistic diversity." -- William Labov (2016: 596)

#linguistics #Labov #social #justice #sociolinguistics

Ursid meteor shower is expected to peak on night of December 22 | NEWS.am TECH - Innovations and science The Ursid star shower begins on December 17 and usually lasts about a week. The activity peaks on ....

Happy Solstice everyone
The Ursid Meteor Shower peaks tonight and tomorrow night. These meteors come from debris left by Commet8P/Tuttle. Not as active as the Perseids at just five to ten per hour but, still makes for a nice evening, lights out, in a warm dark hot tub.

tech.news.am/eng/news/512...

The minute is called that because it's the first minute (small) part of the hour

The second-order minute part of the hour is called...the second

And before we had milliseconds, there was a period when a second was divided into 60 "thirds" (!!)

From the "time" episode of @lingthusiasm.bsky.social:

I appreciate that this has been the example in "anankastic conditional" for 18 years

A red and green Earth showing the tilt relative to the plane of the ecliptic. Above reads “ Axial tilt”. There are holly leaves and berries below with “The reason for the season”.

Happy Solstice, everyone! ❄️🌍

at 100 degrees there’s a phase transition to ふわふわ~
fuwa-fuwa 😅

Bill Labov was obviously a brilliant and field-defining linguist, but what I find even more inspiring at the moment is how many of the tributes I'm seeing come from women and POC he taught, mentored, inspired, and helped make space for.

Vale William Labov.

Inspired by a colleague on X, I think my favourite Bill Labov quote is:

“I have resisted the term *sociolinguistics* for many years, since it implies that there can be a successful linguistic theory or practice which is not social.”

Thank you for everything, Bill.

This is your monthly reminder that the Yiddish verb for "to whisper" is *shushken* (שושקען). A cat can *myavken* (מיאַװקען) and a baby bird will *pipken* (פּיפּקען) and leaves blowing in the wind can *shurshen* (שורשען) 🐦🍂

I taught your work to my intro students this semester! We were talking about methods in socioling that get at hidden beliefs, e.g. matched guise experiments.

Every one of my baby sociolinguists cited Social Stratification and/or Consequences of Being a Lame in their final papers. And it was my joy to teach those papers again for the 10th time. In 20 years, those students will certainly be teaching Labov’s work too ❤️

I noticed across various writing assignments that multiple students characterized people who embrace language change as "indifferent" or "not caring" about language, even when the person in question is excited + curious about changes or actively fighting to preserve variation. Hmmm.

I asked my linguistics students before a class whether they thought some languages are older than other languages. Almost every one of them said yes, because Old English obviously has to be older than Modern English. Guess I learned a lesson about defining the terms of a question!

linguistics

I love an iconic neologism. I feel like these pair nicely.