Post by @nwarner@tenforward.social

2025-03-17 06:37 UTC

I&#39;m so proud of my academic department (Linguistics at University of Arizona). We run a table at the Tucson Festival of Books, in the Science City portion, where we get lots and lots of members of the general public of all ages involved in hands-on activities about language. We use ultrasound to show them how their tongues move while they talk, which got reactions like freaky! awesome! weird! cool! We also did an activity about what language family your family&#39;s/ancestor&#39;s language fits into, which was a huge hit. I twisted a whole lot of arms last week to get enough volunteers to staff the table (and did eventually succeed), and I&#39;m so proud of our department for putting the effort in to do public outreach about science this way. #linguistics #Tucson #UniversityOfArizona #AcademicChatter

Replies (4)

@tschfflr@fediscience.org 2025-03-17 07:27

@nwarner@tenforward.social That is so cool! Great job! 👏

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@theresmiling@ibe.social 2025-03-17 12:23

@nwarner@tenforward.social That sounds very interesting and extremely cool!

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@LeafyEricScott@fosstodon.org 2025-03-17 14:31

@nwarner@tenforward.social oh hey! I just realized it was you who I talked with yesterday about the etymology of "Arizona". Nice to meet you in person!

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@SaguaroLynx@c.im 2025-03-17 14:45

@nwarner@tenforward.social I really LIKE the Language Families board! 8- ) I have studied languages in 1 "North American" and 3 of the 4 European families: * Uto-Aztecan ( Tohono O'odham ) * Italic / Romance ( Latin, French ) * Germanic ( English* , German ) * Balto-Slavic ( Czech ) I've also wrapped my tongue around words from a few other families: * Polynesian ( Hawaiian ) * Sino-Tibetan ( Chinese ) * Na-Dene ( Tlingit ) I hope that I can join you all at a future event! ( * English: American is my parental language and I've encountered quite a few of the differences in "British": spellings, vocabulary, & even grammar. :- )

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