Andrew Garrett
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andrewgarrett.bsky.social
Andrew Garrett
@andrewgarrett.bsky.social
Linguist @ UC Berkeley. Language documentation, archiving, and historical linguistics. "Basic Yurok" (2014) and "The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall: Language, memory, and Indigenous California" (2023). Running; semi-competitive age-grade racer.
Reposted by Andrew Garrett
Students need to remember that Inigo Montoya method for emails and greetings:
"Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

Polite Greeting
Name
Relevant Personal Link
Manage Expectations

Keep it BRIEF.
am i the only 1 who wishes ppl would remind me that we've interacted before if it's plausible i've forgotten? I've had like 3-4 emails that seems like 'cold emails' ab research opportunities but then it turns out we've exchanged emails in the past & it's awkward to not have realized this? just me?
February 10, 2026 at 4:44 PM
Apply now to participate in the 2026 Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous California Languages, held at UC Berkeley and sponsored by the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival in collaboration with @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social!

www.aicls.org?page_id=566
February 9, 2026 at 10:15 PM
Reposted by Andrew Garrett
When I wrote this a year ago I had no idea how bad things would get. Today, eight years after she left us, I'm trying to follow Ursula's advice: write and worry. Write and act. Worry and keep writing.

lithub.com/the-way-of-w...
The Way of Water: On the Quiet Power of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Activism
In the past two months, I’ve found myself thinking back to an essay Ursula K. Le Guin posted on her blog in November 2016. It was one of her last long essays, and she wrote it at a time when she—li…
lithub.com
January 22, 2026 at 5:48 PM
Reposted by Andrew Garrett
My course syllabi now contain a link to this document, "why Professor Holliday Doesn't Use Generative AI". Feel free to share/repurpose or just check out the links for your own reference. It won't stop some of them, but I want students to know why. docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Why Professor Holliday Doesn’t Use Generative “AI”
Why Professor Holliday Doesn’t Use Generative “AI” This is a (very) incomplete list of journalistic and scholarly sources that provide information about limitations and documented drawbacks of variou...
docs.google.com
January 21, 2026 at 3:28 PM
Some fine books here!
If you're at the @lingsocam.bsky.social meeting, go check out Bye Bye I Love You at the @mitpress.bsky.social press table, check out @andrewgarrett.bsky.social's gem while you're there, and say hi to my editor, @philiplaughlin.bsky.social!
January 9, 2026 at 3:31 PM
Agreed, good forensic work. What it shows is repulsive.
January 8, 2026 at 1:57 PM
Reposted by Andrew Garrett
This paper is batshit insane. It also (of course) has A TON of bullshit references that do not exist. Hey @springernature.com retract this AI slop and fire the editor that let it pass. There is evidently no review or quality assurance process in place at this journal.
January 8, 2026 at 11:20 AM
Some highlights from today's visit to "A Larger Reality: Ursula K. Le Guin" @oregoncontemporary.bsky.social in Portland, Oregon. A great show!
December 21, 2025 at 11:51 PM
Reposted by Andrew Garrett
Next year, the 19th Encuentro Internacional de Lingüística en el Noroeste (ELNOR) will take place at the University of Sonora. Here is the first call for abstracts. Abstracts and presentations may be submitted in Spanish or English. Please share.
December 20, 2025 at 5:23 AM
TIL that Theodora Kroeber invented lexicostatistics. OK, an exaggeration, but in this 1926 paper she ("T. K[racaw] Brown") & coauthors counted Polynesian culture traits & worked out culture pairs w/ more matches than chance predicts & which are therefore closest.

www.jstor.org/stable/661296
December 18, 2025 at 2:47 AM
My book The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall: Language, Memory, and Indigenous California (2023) is now open-access to read or download:

escholarship.org/uc/item/59w3...

Thanks to @mitpress.bsky.social, where you can still buy lovely print copies (mitpress.mit.edu/978026254709...).
December 12, 2025 at 2:08 PM
I had a good time today looking at various @ursulakleguin.com "A Wizard of Earthsea" memorabilia in the Parnassus Press records, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley
December 12, 2025 at 3:00 AM
Reposted by Andrew Garrett
Do you know Zoom & other companies are encouraging discrimination against employees for things like "pausing too long" or not sounding sufficiently "charismatic"? Read all about our dystopian present in my new paper, out today in JASA!
(Seriously, read it. It's important)
doi.org/10.1121/10.0...
Socially prescriptive speech technologies: Linguistic, technical, and ethical issues
Speech technology tools can be powerful and transformative for individuals, businesses, and governments. Socially prescriptive speech technology (SPST) systems
doi.org
December 3, 2025 at 12:57 AM
Reposted by Andrew Garrett
Susan Tallman on plunder and repatriation at the museum
The Plunderers’ Dilemma | Susan Tallman
Museums have been apologizing for the overlap of their ethnology collections with the subjects of colonial occupation, yet many still struggle to articulate a clear mission.
www.nybooks.com
November 30, 2025 at 1:17 PM
Alfred Kroeber (d. 1960), w/ colleagues who predeceased him, Robert Lowie (d. 1957) & Paul Radin (d. 1959), & their wives Luella Lowie (d. 1970) & Doris Radin (d. 1991). Three German-Austrian-Polish-American students of Boas, once colleagues and now neighbors. Sunset View Cemetery, El Cerrito, CA.
November 23, 2025 at 1:49 AM
"What kind of linguist am I?" Apparently, I can only be a man.
📚 A Babel classic from our Best Of issue - what kind of linguist are YOU?
🔗 Find out at babelzine.co.uk/wp-content/u...
✉️ ... or request a free print Best Of issue from babelthelanguagemagazine@gmail.com
November 22, 2025 at 2:07 PM
Linguist / anthro types: I've been thinking about writing more personally than the usual academic piece, about "fieldwork" experiences & how they've changed me, my relation to my discipline, etc. I'd love to find models of any kind & places that might publish such writing. Cat photo for attention.
November 17, 2025 at 1:37 AM
New podcast about @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social linguistics grad student Tyler Lee-Wynant and the work of the California Language Archive. Give it a listen! (You can turn the volume way down when my voice comes on.)

news.berkeley.edu/2025/11/06/b...
For 50 years, she recorded her Pomo language. Her voice is helping one student reclaim his culture. - Berkeley News
For Berkeley graduate student Tyler Lee-Wynant, linguistic materials in the California Language Archive featuring his great-great aunt have opened a portal to his family’s history and led him to teach...
news.berkeley.edu
November 7, 2025 at 4:04 PM
Work in the California Language Archive to support language reclamation:

news.berkeley.edu/2025/11/06/2...
23 boxes and a suitcase full of tapes: How a linguist's lifelong work is shaping Indigenous language today - Berkeley News
Collections at UC Berkeley's California Language Archive help keep Indigenous languages alive. This is the story of one of them.
news.berkeley.edu
November 7, 2025 at 1:39 AM
Here's a short, inattentive (but positive), and hastily written review of my book by William M. Chace, in "Common Knowledge"

philpapers.org/rec/CHATUO-25
William M. Chace, The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall: Language, Memory, and Indigenous California - PhilPapers
This impressive book reveals the ferocity with which a present generation can bring charges against those of a past generation alleged to have committed errors. Alfred Kroeber, one of the most ...
philpapers.org
October 24, 2025 at 8:25 PM
Awesome passive-aggressive brackets! (The original failed to capitalize "Zeitgeist".)

Source: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
September 19, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Reposted by Andrew Garrett
This fall brings not just one but two exhibitions about Ursula and her work.

In Portland, A Larger Reality: Ursula K. Le Guin opens October 31st at Oregon Contemporary.

In London, The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin opens October 10th at the AA Gallery.
September 16, 2025 at 4:27 PM
I'm very proud of this paper, now published in Anthropological Linguistics: "Alfred Kroeber’s Documentation of Inuktun (Polar Inuit)," a study of the earliest substantial documentation of Inuktun (NW Greenland) and what it shows about Inuit dialects and change.

muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...
September 15, 2025 at 1:42 PM
"It is important to refuse the notion that this is just how things are right now, invoking a feckless realpolitik that justifies complicity with a brutal and rising authoritarianism."

www.chronicle.com/article/when...
Opinion | When Universities Become Informants
A practice from the McCarthy era makes an ugly return.
www.chronicle.com
September 14, 2025 at 1:49 AM