Lee Orfila
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leeorfila.bsky.social
Lee Orfila
@leeorfila.bsky.social
PhD student in sign linguistics at UT Austin | 🧮✌️| I work on documentary linguistics of Mongolian Sign Language | hearing

Техасын Их Сургуулын Аустин хот дахь докторын оюутан | 🧮✌️| Монгол Дохионы Хэлний хэл шинжлэл сурдаг | сонсголтой
Mongolians are celebrating the end of #IWDP2025 (and the last of the warm weather) with a cornhole and tug-of-war tournament!
September 28, 2025 at 6:24 AM
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.
September 27, 2025 at 4:34 AM
Reposted by Lee Orfila
🔊 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.
January 11, 2025 at 8:17 PM
Reposted by Lee Orfila
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.
November 29, 2024 at 5:32 PM
Reposted by Lee Orfila
Oh my goodness! I am in love with this holiday ASL song from Gallaudet. 😍😍😍

youtu.be/Cy6kxqe0XQw?...
Gallaudet University Holiday Greetings 2024
YouTube video by GallaudetU
youtu.be
December 19, 2024 at 1:01 AM
Reposted by Lee Orfila
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
After nearly three decades, a Minnesota summer camp for kids with HIV/AIDS is closing and up for sale... because retroviral drugs are so effective that there aren't enough campers.

Science works, y'all.

www.startribune.com/closure-of-n...
Closure of northern Minnesota camp is ‘the greatest story.’ Here’s why.
Willow River, Minn., camp One Heartland is for sale after serving kids there for nearly three decades.
www.startribune.com
December 28, 2024 at 1:24 AM
Reposted by Lee Orfila
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?
December 28, 2024 at 8:06 PM
Reposted by Lee Orfila
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. 🐦🐦
Overreliance on English hinders cognitive science

– premature claims of universality (due to over-sampling of English speakers)

– limited cognitive constructs being examined (due to the use of English as a meta-language)

(doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.09.015) 🐦🐦
December 21, 2024 at 6:35 PM
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.
December 22, 2024 at 11:30 PM
Reposted by Lee Orfila
"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
December 21, 2024 at 3:56 PM
Reposted by Lee Orfila
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...
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 ....
tech.news.am
December 22, 2024 at 12:11 AM
Reposted by Lee Orfila
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:
Happy solstice!

Languages have certain things in common because of our human bodies

But they’re also all produced (so far) from the same planet and going through the same fourth dimension: time

This episode: days, months, years, metaphors, and more on how languages measure the passing of time
15: Talking and thinking about time
Lingthusiasm Episode 15:  Talking and thinking about time When we talk about things that languages have in common, we often talk about the physical side, the fact that languages are produced by human bodies, using the same brain and hands and vocal tract. But they’re also all produced (so far) by people from the same planet and going through the same fourth dimension: time.  As the earth revolves around the sun again, each of your Lingthusiasm cohosts is going through another longest (Lauren) or shortest (Gretchen) day, and we’re reflecting on how languages measure the passing of time. This episode of Lingthusiasm is a chance to reflect on the cyclical nature of years and days, the metaphors we use to talk about time in space, from time-space synesthesia to whether the past is behind us or in front of us, and why we measure time in seconds, but not thirds. (We definitely know that tense is also a time-related concept, but it’s such a cool topic that we’re going to give it its very own episode – something to look forward to!)  Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here Announcements: Thanks to everyone who has made this year of Lingthusiasm so great! It’s been a year since we made our first episodes live, and we have been so delighted by how many people share our enthusiasm for linguistics. Thanks especially to our patrons, who keep the show running (and ad-free).  This month’s Patreon bonus episode is our first full-length bonus and it’s a question and answer session from our Montreal liveshow! Now you can have the full lingthusiastic liveshow experience with Bonus 8 (the main show) and Bonus 10 (the Q&A). We’ve still got IPA scarves and more in the merch section, but if you’re looking for a gift that doesn’t require postage, why not give someone a gift subscription to bonus episodes on Patreon?  Here are the links mentioned in this episode: A ghost driving a meat coated skeleton ‘Minute’ etymology (Etymonline) Children using time words (All Things Linguistic) When’s a new year? (Superlinguo) Metaphors We Live By The French Revolutionary Calendar (Wikipedia) Chinese/English time metaphors Aymara time metaphors Clinton campaign logo Time-space synesthesia Time-space synesthesia timelords? You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening. To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list. You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon. Lingthusiasm is on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo. Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Emily Gref, and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles. This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).
lingthusiasm.com
December 21, 2024 at 5:38 PM
Reposted by Lee Orfila
I appreciate that this has been the example in "anankastic conditional" for 18 years
December 22, 2024 at 1:48 AM
Reposted by Lee Orfila
Happy Solstice, everyone! ❄️🌍
December 21, 2024 at 11:00 AM
Reposted by Lee Orfila
at 100 degrees there’s a phase transition to ふわふわ~
fuwa-fuwa 😅
Phase Transition xkcd.com/3025
December 17, 2024 at 5:00 AM
Reposted by Lee Orfila
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.
December 18, 2024 at 1:34 PM
Reposted by Lee Orfila
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.
December 18, 2024 at 9:14 AM
Reposted by Lee Orfila
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) 🐦🍂
December 17, 2024 at 10:38 PM
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 ❤️
97 years and a week is a helluva run. May we all be so blessed.

When Michael Silverstein died, I opine that to be an academic with a serious impact is to essentially be immortal. As long as your ideas live, you live.

Thanks, Dr. Labov. Proud to be link in your ongoing chain. I’ll pass it on.
December 18, 2024 at 2:42 AM
Reposted by Lee Orfila
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 ❤️
97 years and a week is a helluva run. May we all be so blessed.

When Michael Silverstein died, I opine that to be an academic with a serious impact is to essentially be immortal. As long as your ideas live, you live.

Thanks, Dr. Labov. Proud to be link in your ongoing chain. I’ll pass it on.
December 18, 2024 at 2:29 AM
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.
December 18, 2024 at 2:30 AM
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!
December 17, 2024 at 8:18 PM
Reposted by Lee Orfila
linguistics
I don’t know why I’m still so pissed off that the answers to “what, where, and when” are “that, there, and then.”
December 14, 2024 at 4:39 AM
I love an iconic neologism. I feel like these pair nicely.
December 16, 2024 at 10:46 PM
Reposted by Lee Orfila
"Computer generated machine #translations cannot render culturally appropriate translations as would be provided by live #interpretations from a human sign language #interpreter."

#SignLanguage #SignedLanguages
December 16, 2024 at 4:05 PM