What took me so long? Today I learned about a new-to-me linguistics blog and podcast called “A language I love is…” This blog has been around since June of 2020, and the podcast since 2023, so I certainly should have heard about them before now! Hosted by Danny Bate — who describes himself as “linguist, broadcaster, writer, cat fanatic” — they will be of interest to you if you love anything about languages or linguistics, even if you’re not a linguist, broadcaster, writer, or even cat fanatic.

But being a cat fanatic always helps.

If you’re not a linguist, please read the first blog post even if you switch to the podcast. It will anchor you to some of the conventions used in Danny’s writing for non-linguists. I don’t always follow all those conventions myself, possibly because I write about so many different topics, but I think I will pay more attention to them from now on.

Because of the way podcast software tends to work, I didn’t start listening with Episode 1; today I listened to the most recent offering, Episode 43. That was all it took to get me hooked (near-rhyme unintended). The subject is Old Norse, which I didn’t know I was interested in — but since I’ve been fascinated by Ancient Greek, Latin, and linguistics for almost my entire life, and by Norwegian for more than half of it, I figured I would give it a try.

The episode completely captivated me! It will take me a minute to catch up on all the earlier posts and episodes, so stay tuned…

Categories: Linguistics