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Patrick Cox

@patricox.bsky.social
392 followers 335 following 49 posts

Subtitle podcast: @subtitle.bsky.social Stories about languages and the people who speak them. subtitlepod.com

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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Norwich Hospital Radio right now is playing the Three Tenors: Wes Hoolahan, Craig Bellamy and the great Justin Fashanu.
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
If anything, an understatement. www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the...
mcsweeneys.net
The Script of Every American Movie Set in Ireland
FADE IN. EXT. COUNTRYSIDE – DAY Open on rolling hills of violently oversaturated green. The scenery suggests a temporal twilight zone, some time be...
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Michael Erard @michaelerard.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
ICYMI: with the help of my son's amazing cello teacher, Petronella Torin, and the extraordinary journalist @patricox.bsky.social, we recreated the music of Olga Janáčková's last words, which her father had described in her final days. subtitlepod.com/how-composer...
subtitlepod.com
How composer Leoš Janáček set his daughter’s last words to music - Subtitle
As 20-year-old Olga Janáčková lay dying from typhoid fever, her father wrote down everything she said. Later, he transformed those words—and gasps—into music. The grieving father, Czech composer Leoš ...
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
“‘Keeping’ and not ‘losing’ my Irish is probably the greatest gift I have given myself.”
theguardian.com
The Irish language is a joy not a burden: in what other tongue is a penis a wild carrot? | Una Mullally
Record numbers of pupils are seeking opt-outs from compulsory learning. This is misguided – Irish is a portal to a world of imagination, says journalist Una Mullally
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Hildur Knútsdóttir @hildur.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
When you register your name in the Icelandic phonebook you can choose to state your profession. And they have a pretty loose definition of what exactly a profession entails. This person for example has opted for „þjóðhetja“. It means „National Hero“.
Illugi Pétur Ágústsson
þjóðhetja
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Sylvia Sierra 🪾🏔️ @sociolinguista.bsky.social · 26/07/2025
this is so sad if true. if nothing else it educated me about North Korea's draconian language policies www.dailynk.com/english/nort...
dailynk.com
North Korean youth risk arrest for speaking like South Koreans
North Korean authorities are doing everything they can to stop the spread of South Korean pop culture, or hallyu.
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
In which Orwell vigorously “responds” to Grammarly’s suggestions to “stay on-brand” and write “with A.I. prompts.”
nytimes.com
Opinion | Don’t Throw Your Dictionary Away
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Prof Sarah-Jayne Blakemore @sjblakemore.bsky.social · 16/07/2025
I was explaining to my Ukrainian colleague the phrase ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’. She told me the equivalent in Ukrainian is ‘The only free cheese is in the mousetrap’ - which is so much better
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
The answer is no. But read the article, it’s good history. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...
newyorker.com
Does the United States Need an Official Language?
Donald Trump’s executive order succeeds where decades of right-wing efforts have failed.
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Michael Erard @michaelerard.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
Y'all! I am so happy you can hear this. It's one of the most amazing things I discovered while researching Bye Bye I Love You (and again thanks to @martenvandermeulen.bsky.social) and was so so moved by cellist Petronella Torin's recreation. A big appreciation for @patricox.bsky.social as well.
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
Studies with results like these can be bunk, but this one is legit—which makes it super interesting. www.scientificamerican.com/article/does...
scientificamerican.com
Do You Think Differently in Different Languages?
The brain’s response to information depends on language’s grammatical structure
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Kate Wiles @katemond.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
I firmly believe in not judging people's language use – because it's the right thing to do, yes, but also because I could never achieve the levels of saltiness of the 16th-century Flemish scholar Jacob de Meyere, who called French the 'scum of Latin'.
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Financial Times @financialtimes.com · 14/04/2025
Breaking news: The European Commission is issuing burner phones and basic laptops to some US-bound staff to avoid the risk of espionage — a measure traditionally reserved for trips to China www.ft.com/content/20d0...
Old mobile phones and keyboards. Overlaid text reads: FT Exclusive: EU issues US-bound staff with burner phones to avoid espionage
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
Essential reading, now also essential listening.
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Julia Barton @bartona104.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
Been working a long time on this one. Thanks to @niemanfoundation.bsky.social for granting me the time and space to finally start to understand why US broadcasting (and stepchild podcasting) is so weird! continuous-wave.beehiiv.com/p/no-self-wi...
continuous-wave.beehiiv.com
No self-winding phonographs!
Radio's "liveness bias" started as a regulation, then turned into a business model that grew ever more absurd
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
Such a terrible idea I thought it was an early April Fools story.
theguardian.com
What does WH Smith’s new high street name TGJones actually mean?
New owner Modella says made-up moniker aims to evoke ‘sense of family’, but brand experts unconvinced
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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
Irish English words added to the OED in its latest update: blaa, class, debs, ludraman, act the maggot, mineral, morto, spice bag www.oed.com/discover/new...
oed.com
Oxford English Dictionary
The OED is the definitive record of the English language, featuring 600,000 words, 3 million quotations, and over 1,000 years of English.
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
Nice to share the name with yer man.
irishtimes.com
In a Word...Patrick
When I joined this newspaper years ago, I announced: ‘I am Patsy and by this name shall I be known heretofore. Hear ye me!’ And, lo, so it has been
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JudithFlanders @judithflanders.co.uk · 25/02/2025
I wrote an entire book on alphabetical order,* and a) this never occurred to me; and b) holy shit that's crazy. *It's called A Place for Everything, since you ask, available in all good bookshops now.
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Michael Erard @michaelerard.bsky.social · 13/02/2025
This evening is the first public event for Bye Bye I Love You: a talk at Planet Word, the language museum in Washington, DC. I'm excited to be onstage with Britt Oates, an anthropologist and manager of public programs at PW, who GETS IT. planetwordmuseum.org/events/book-...
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
My Danish pals have written their own fork in the road email. denmarkification.com
denmarkification.com
Help Denmark Buy California – Because Why Not?
Buy it from Trump, the bigliest crowdsourcing ever
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
A sense of longing for that time between the wars when OK, the economy was shot and the newer politicians were creepy but we all put on too much makeup and danced till dawn to atonal music. www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/con...
mcsweeneys.net
Concepts for Which I Suspect Germans Have a Single Word
Dedicated to schadenfreude and fremdschämen - - - 1. The form of disappointment that accompanies realizing that the snowy egret you have fleetingly...
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The Kyiv Independent @kyivindependent.com · 08/02/2025
Ukraine is the birthplace of the Hasidic Jewish movement and has deep roots in Jewish history stretching back more than a thousand years. Yet until recently, crucial sacred texts — including the Torah — have never been translated into Ukrainian.
kyivindependent.com
In bomb shelters and without power, Ukrainian Jews translate the Torah into their national language for first time
When Oleg Rostovtsev hovered between life and death after a serious operation last April, he asked friends and family to do something that, until recently, had been impossible — to pray for him by rea...
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 25/01/2025
Shame no more. This is Ireland’s top bilingual podcast. m.independent.ie/entertainmen...
m.independent.ie
‘I just felt so much shame about being raised in the Irish language’ – The How to Gael podcasters on helping a generation discover a grá for Gaeilge
Upon first meeting Louise Cantillon and Doireann Ní Ghlacáin, it becomes clear that I need to focus. It’s not that I expected to sit back, relax, and coast through our conversation, but I hadn’t antic...
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
"Correct" grammar was weird and not especially correct in 1913. Just like now. www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
Could you pass a Cambridge English exam from 1913?
Three teachers sat - and failed - the first Cambridge English exam 112 years ago. How would you do?
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
Bob Dylan is unpredictable but I don’t think he is going to, um, update this line: ‘Key West is the place to go / Down by the Gulf of Mexico.’ youtu.be/G-oOCo1Y1bw?...
youtu.be
Bob Dylan - Key West (Philosopher Pirate) (Official Audio)
YouTube video by BobDylanVEVO
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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 21/01/2025
‘In the US, the language of migration tends toward the hydraulic: surge, wave, pressure, influx. These terms cast human movement as a physical force rather than the outcome of decisions made across decades.’ Pooja Bhatia on Haitian refugees, from April: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
lrb.co.uk
Pooja Bhatia · Diary: Leaving Haiti
In 2015, for the first time, large numbers of Haitians made the seven-thousand-mile journey through South and Central...
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Kyle Paoletta @kpaoletta.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
Today on @literaryhub.bsky.social, my passage in AMERICAN OASIS about Ofelia Zepeda's legacy of preserving and teaching the O'odham language in Tucson and southern Arizona lithub.com/were-not-liv...
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
Judge caught in a 1970s time warp calls a football fan’s racist slur ‘banter.’
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Fionchadd @fionchadd.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
A friend of mine took this photo yesterday
A photo of the front of a bookshop. Above the shop windows, under the name of the shop is a quote attributed to Neil Gaiman. A man on a ladder is scraping Gaiman’s name off.
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
Keep reading.
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
"Just doing journalism" *includes* fact-checking, it's not an either-or.
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
Daughter taking her first college #linguistics class today. Not her major but I'm super-duper proud.
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
If you think Scandinavians are all the same, get ready to have your mind blown. Swedes and Finns deploy opposite approaches in their tolerance of silence.
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Lynne Murphy @lynneguist.bsky.social · 31/12/2024
The Separated by a Common Language 2024 US-to-UK Word of the year is: LANDSLIDE It was the Labour win that decided it, but literal use of the word is up too. separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2024/12/us-t...
separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
US-to-UK Word of the Year 2024: landslide
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The Neighborhood Publicist @nhoodpublicist.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
Everybody remember to go get you a library card to help keep them funded
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Michael Erard @michaelerard.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
Language journalism has never been considered a separate thing in the minds of editors and publishers, and only through the efforts of people like @patricox.bsky.social to self-identify. But language isn’t a general assignment topic, like the weather or current events.
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
For a rewarding read, a pan always beats a rave.
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Greg Jenner (Historian) @gregjenner.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
A small but curious thing is how so many major political figures have distinctive first names. If you hear any of these without context… Donald, Mitch, Elon, Jared, Melania, Kamala, Keir, Boris, Kemi, Nigel … I reckon your brain immediately goes to these people?
names.to
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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
Someday in the not-so-far-future this headline is going to be used as an example in a linguistics class about how language changes can be so considerable that we no longer recognize the meaning of a sentence.
defector.com
The Hawk Tuah Memecoin Rug Pull Is The Apotheosis Of Bag Culture | Defector
I can’t ease you into this one, so: Haliey Welch, colloquially known as the “Hawk Tuah girl,” launched a bespoke cryptocurrency token called HAWK last Wednesday, the same day she told Fortune it was “...
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
Stabbed to death for not speaking English. www.amny.com/new-york/man...
amny.com
Lower Manhattan stabbing leaves teen dead, another wounded because victims did not speak English: sources | amNewYork
One migrant teenager is dead and another was seriously injured in a Lower Manhattan stabbing on Thursday night carried out by a group of attackers allegedly
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
It’s a confidence trick just getting up in the morning at this moment in human history.
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
The former colonies are exchanging notes. www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...
irishtimes.com
Amitav Ghosh: ‘Ireland is where the British created all their colonial methods, it’s where they tried it out first’
Acclaimed Indian writer Amitav Ghosh’s new work explores how the climate crisis has its roots in European colonialism
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Misty Miller ☻ @mistymadonna.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
LIFE HACK: Answer your phone "Hello you're on the air" and 99% of the time people will just hang up.
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
So good to read @eviljoemcveigh.bsky.social deliver an epic and much-deserved takedown here.
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Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 27/11/2024
People are often surprised when I tell them this: both Twitter and Facebook/insta/threads are now specifically engineered to downgrade, hide, suppress real journalism. If this platform is different, that's a huge change
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Patrick Cox @patricox.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
1. Flew nonstop from coast to coast. (Not proud.) 2. Now at a conference of people who love to read, write and cordially discuss their disagreements. #sblaar 3. Photo is mainly blue. A Bluesky trifecta?
Photo of @patricox.bsky.social at the American Academy of Religion national meeting in San Diego.
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Subtitle @subtitle.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
PS: Subtitle has a newsletter! Get some languagey news and fun tidbits delivered to your inbox every 2-3 weeks. mailchi.mp/fbeb6300f27d...
mailchi.mp
A Yiddish homecoming in Lithuania
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Maija Tervola @maijatervola.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
Well, this is convenient. In Finnish, kakisto is literally a collective derivative from the word kakka ’shit’. Kak-isto Shit-collective We have a lot of these derivatives with trees: kuusi ’spruce’ > kuusisto ’set of spruces’ etc. #linguistics #Finnish
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