Sam Kelly

@samkellyproof.bsky.social

202 Followers 274 Following

Brit in Argentina. Bad pool player and good reader for pleasure; proofreader for money (also good at that, or at least so I like to think). Professional Member of the CIEP | https://undisputedproof.com Also podcast @handofpod.bsky.social

Newsletter extract, reading: It’s a very interesting study, and I love that they used dictionaries as input to their computational study. I was hoping Scientific American would quote this bit of my take, but since they didn’t, I’ll put it here for posterity: We look at studies like this and go “look what computers can do!” but we need to pause for a moment and notice: the computers are counting things in work that was done by hundreds of language speakers, lexicographers, anthropologists, and linguists who documented these languages. The research team has found a way to put that varied information together and to ask interesting questions of the data set. It was a lot of work, but nothing like the amount of work that needs to go into making the dictionaries in the first place. We need that work done by people out in the linguistic field to continue so that we can continue to ask interesting questions of such data. Dictionaries offer only snapshots of a language at a particular time, from a particular angle.
Screenshot of an email telling me ‘Your Google Workspace monthly invoice is available.’
Spanish-language edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Two hardback books, side by side: on the left, Black Leopard Red Wolf; on the right, Moon Witch Spider King, both by Marlon James