Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 20/05/2026In Finland, there are still a few shivering huddled scraps of snow. Here's how it works: - in winter, snow falls, and grit is spread on top - grit & snow are ploughed & dumped in huge mounds - in spring, snow melts, but grit doesn't! - grit insulates snow - snow melts ever more slowly under the grit 121
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 13/03/2026I think we're all overlooking a pretty obvious way to get the oil across the desert. It's been right there since at least 1990. www.imdb.com/title/tt0100... 021
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 30/12/2025When you're proscribing against prescribing, are you...? (But maybe your user handle gives it away a bit.) 010
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 07/12/2025Interesting correlations! (Not sure about causation.) A Reddit thread on this (www.reddit.com/r/Productivi...) suggests that volleyball is so bad because of knee injuries limiting later life. Sumo and mountaineering I guess are more obvious. 😬 000
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 30/11/2025You know you're working in Finland when the room booking system includes a sauna - or indeed, a meeting room with a sauna! 073
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 13/10/2025Timeline cleanse! Autumn in central Finland. 🍂🇫🇮😊 071
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 07/10/2025If you're painting a ceiling and having to look up the whole time, I have two words for you: travel pillow. 010
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 03/10/2025Stock reply to anyone complaining about singular "they" and pretending it's just about standards and not transphobia. If that's really their jam, they should get back into using "thou". books.google.co.uk/books?id=YKQ... 020
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 15/09/2025Without comment on this specific book / authors, I would note Routledge was downgraded here in Finland for MASSIVELY increasing their publication volumes, apparently at expense of quality. I've also seen lots of anecdotes about declining editorial standards there. julkaisufoorumi.fi/en/news/re-e... 030
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 30/05/2025Today I learned there is no Finnish word for 'overwhelmed'. That is all. 120
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 13/03/2025I think one of my greatest achievements in academic writing might be secretly squeezing in some terminology from A-Level Geology into an academic book chapter about language policy. Interdisciplinarity.🤘 doi.org/10.1017/9781... 151
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 06/03/2025My students imagining anything that happened more than about 4 years ago. 050
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 24/02/2025Can you cut blue cheese with a cheese slicer? No. But is it fun finding out? Also no. 010
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 19/02/2025Someone graduated from the Rainier Wolfcastle School of Government. www.inc.com/kit-eaton/do... 000
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 14/02/2025Roses are red Just like my larynx And now that I think of it Also my pharynx 010
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 06/02/2025I thought we were supposed to avoid research silos? 110
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 04/01/2025Research: swallowing discarded cell batteries causes thousands of sudden, excruciatingly painful deaths every year. Capitalism: we, hah, we clearly haha we can't hahaha replace them!!1! But L00k! We'll make a *big compromise* and use really tough packaging! With a warning logo! 010
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 30/12/2024Earlier I mentioned the thick snow. These moves were done in all different conditions, from +30C to -20C. With the right tyres and clothes, and the right attitude, an e-bike + trailer can really perform huge feats. The bike really does most of the work. 110
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 30/12/2024Onwards, upwards, and widewards, to level 10 e-bike & trailer scale of ambition/riduculolitude. The crowning glory of my towing career. An entire bed (base + mattress). For this I took along a separate sackbarrow and tied it to the back of the trailer. Perfectly stable! 130
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 30/12/2024Next step up, is…. up! And this is where a two-seater trailer really pays off. You can really shoe-horn things in, and tie on pretty tall furniture. Welcome to level 9 in our scale of ambition/ridiculaction. You’ll also have noticed the heavy snow. More on that later. 130
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 30/12/2024The next level after kids’ bikes is an equally obvious step up: towing a grown-up bike! Either in or on the trailer. Simple enough with a few straps. Easier with a quick release wheel but perfectly manageable without. Ambition/ridiculididdle level 8. 100
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 30/12/2024The next level in this scale is pretty obvious when you think about it… Two kids + groceries + two bikes! Ambition/ridiculement level 7. 110
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 30/12/2024So far we’ve been missing the trailer’s intended occupants, human offspring! They often have bikes, which are… sometimes used. Now, our loads so far have been long but no wider than the trailer. So, let’s move on to two kids + groceries + bike. Ambition/ridiculocution level 6. 110
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 30/12/2024As I said, the cage things were pretty easy. Surely you’d still need a car for more, right? Pfff, says the trailer, just getting going here. Groceries + fully assembled kitchen chairs, easy! Ambition/ridiculacity level 5. Only level 5? My friends, please hold on to your hats… 130
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 30/12/2024Moving on to balancing higher & longer: some of those cage drawer things that fill an empty kitchen cabinet. Perched nice and safe with a regular ratchet strap. Ambition/riducutainment level 4. Thing is, the cage thingies were bulky but pretty light. Next up… 110
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 30/12/2024Next up in our trailer adventure: groceries + 2 x hay + flat-packed garden table & chairs, or alternatively whatever that other mess was (moving house or something). Ambition/ridiculation level: 3. Only 3? Oh yes. Strap in, folks… 110
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 30/12/2024Next level of trailer action: groceries + sack of hay + some wall edging thing. Please note imaginative bungee cord to keep that in place. Ambition/ridic level: 2. 120
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 30/12/2024“I need a car for shopping & moving stuff around!” Ahem, allow me to offer a thread showcasing 2 years of moving all sorts of stuff with an e-bike & trailer, in ascending order of ambition/ridiculousness. First, groceries. --> Ambition/ridiculosity level: 1. Beginner. 261
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 18/12/2024I first trained in variationist sociolinguistics, but actually Labov's biggest impact on me was after I'd moved to language policy -- his hugely powerful chapter questioning received wisdom in LP. And it wasn't even his field. He spread light everywhere he went. press.georgetown.edu/Book/Sustain... 021
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 18/12/2024Fun fact about Santa: although he lives in Finnish Lapland all the way up north, he's actually from further south, just near Jyväskylä. 👇🎅📍 maps.app.goo.gl/9o2pUXwf26ng... 093
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 10/12/2024Last year I stupidly suggested an entirely new course for our final year undergrads (and therefore, of course, volunteered to create it). But after a lot of work I'm getting pretty excited for its first run in January! 😀 Get in touch if you'd like access to adapt for your own classes. 👋 5161
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 22/11/2024I... ahem... had a little go at modelling some of that linguistic research myself. doi.org/10.1111/josl... There's also more recent work looking into the effects of social media, e.g. @christianilbury.bsky.social, scholar.google.co.uk/citations?us... 120
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 22/11/2024Really happy to see this chapter out in the wild! Lots of exhausting fun to write it w/ Leanne, & we're in amazing company in Language in Britain and Ireland (3rd ed.). www.cambridge.org/core/books/l... Also, did you know? Bluesky allows LOTS of alt text on images, in this case the whole excerpt.🤓 030
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 21/11/2024The emotion about broccoli on pizza was spot on. 😑🤢 010
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 20/11/2024I was on Bluesky before it was cool, BUT I'm still on X. An innnovator and a laggard. Where does this leave me on the coolness scale?? 120
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 19/11/2024I started a debate on FB about the farm tax changes in the UK, and, long story short, I became inspired to update my LinkedIn profile. 230
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 22/10/2024My main slide on The Research Question, for undergrads developing their first projects. This slide (and the exercise) basically takes up an entire class. 110
Dave Sayers @davesayers.eurosky.social · 11/10/2024Halloween is on the way. Do you wish the International Phonetic Alphabet was a bit spoooOOOOooookier? I present... The INTERRED⚰️national FANG🧛etic AlphaBEAST 👹 r.jyu.fi/IPAspooky Free to use/adapt! (@creativecommons.bsky.social). Repost or I will send zombies to eat your braaaaains. 🧟 🧠🍽️ 152
![UN: Finland's the world's happiest country for the 5th year running!
Finns: [two photos of Finnish men not smiling even slightly]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:epamu2q3qqlhgafxrwv6urwj/bafkreidvkxwastncxgyjs3dgeelecvptnsqe6emrmyh57upqj3pnwpoive)
![Chapter excerpt.
Chapter title: Language Policy and Planning in Britain and Ireland
Dave Sayers and Leanne Henderson
24.1 Introduction
That which we propose to our selves, is, to examin the present State of the Language, to fix what is right by Grammars and Dictionaries, to fill up what is wanting, streighten what is crooked, and make it easy to be learnt by Youth and Strangers. (T. Wilson 1724:5)
So pontificated Thomas Wilson, one of a growing crop of vocal pedants in eighteenth-century Britain (see C. Jones 2006:11), convinced the English tongue was being eviscerated, and keen to remedy it. Prescriptivist thinking was a burgeoning fashion then (Bailey 1991 is a trove of examples), but the roots of this punctilious perfectionism stretched back centuries further. For Irish – Europe’s third oldest literary language after Greek and Latin (Ellis 1987:6) – normative prescription grew from eighth-century monastic schools, codifying an orthography to rival Latin (Ó Muircheartaigh 2015:221–2), and has continued on since.1 In England, in 1440, Augustinian friar Osbern Bokenham’s Mappula Angliae bemoaned the Viking and Norman influence on English and imposition of French in schools: ‘this corruption of English men in their mother tongue’ led them to speak ‘neither good French or good English’ (cited in Leith 1997:193–4). In 1615, a similarly joyless John Green whinged: ‘before the Conquest by Bastard William . . . our English tongue was most perfect . . . [but] the French . . . corrupted it’ (cited in Bailey 1991:48). So, prescriptivism has a long history, fluffed by egos bridling at more powerful languages. In the last few centuries, this began to take normative form, aiming to actively influence language use. In time this grew into evermore concerted action, and ultimately into language policy and planning (LPP) as we know it.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:epamu2q3qqlhgafxrwv6urwj/bafkreigp5hmvfcny7s57gvm5jwi4kamvvnw4xmors657ahqez7hjvv7xzy)
