Ben Cartlidge
@benjcartlidge
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Classicist, linguist, violinist, conductor
Liverpool, England
Joined October 2012
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I played the Sibelius violin concerto. And got applause.
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I don't understand how you get so selfish and entitled as to listen to music on public transport without headphones.
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There is no such thing as "oldest language in the world" - the concept isn't even coherent.
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Bring back traditional exams. Three hours; four essays; closed book. You, your pen, and your mind staring the examiner down. I don't accept the ridiculous argument that "in real life you can look things up". In real life you'd look like an idiot if you looked basic things up.
AI cheating has really gotten out of control. I'm having students turn in entire long ChatGPT essays in response to tiny assignments. Like they're asked to write one paragraph and I get a full essay filled with fake references.
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Oh my god
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He misses out a line (τίς τὰρ σφῶε θεῶν ἐρίδι ξυνέηκε μάχεσθαι;) and the metre is very poor. 4/10.
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To my own immense surprise, from September I will be Lecturer in Greek Culture and Classical Receptions at the University of Liverpool. The end of the beginning.
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Am I the only person who didn't count their hours during their PhD?
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Archaeologists of the future: "the mask of Agamemnon had a ritual function"
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Well, now it's official. Off to be a lecturer for a year at Oxford once again.
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E.g.
How in the world were the Proto-Indo-Europeans able to pronounce a word like *h₂ŕ̥h₂gsneh₂ 'spider'?
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We've reached the stage of term where I can crack this beauty out again.
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@MakingArguments
"We regret to inform you that your application was not successful; the competition this year was very strong."
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Famously discovered, with the help of famous academics, who are being famously sacked.
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Actually my favourite Tolkien quote is from one of his letters, about a newspaper article describing C.S. Lewis as 'ascetic':
“‘Ascetic Mr. Lewis’ -!!! I ask you! He put away three pints in a very short session we had this morning, and said he was ‘going short for Lent.'”
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Old news for anyone who read the Aeneid
Archaeologists in BBC's 'Pompeii: The New Dig' have unearthed a wall painting that showed Romans did make – and eat – something remarkably similar to what we would, today, describe as ‘pizza’.
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Proto-Indo-European went extinct because it was hit by an asterisk.
did you guys know a lot of people think the asteroid wiped the dinosaurs out by like. hitting them all at once
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@TopherHarrison_
Slowly boiled frog syndrome is probably right. Couple of big dips (eg 2008, 2016) but on the whole, managed (and deliberate) decline.
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Therapist: "And what do we do when we feel this way?"
Me: "Learn another language!"
Therapist: "No...."
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I sat down to work on my paper about four hours ago. Suddenly there's new bedding on the bed, the floor is weirdly clean, I'm better at D-flat scales in sixths, the bins are empty, the bathroom is spotless and, mirabile dictu, my paper isn't one word longer. What has happened?
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Finnush : we are Suomi
English : Finland
Finnish: huh?
German : Finnland
Finnish : but -
French : Finlande
Finnish : no, wait -
Italian : Finlandia
Finnish : but
Russian : Finlyandiya
Finnish : nooo
Lithuanian :😁
Finnish : oh what now?
Lithuanian : Suomija.
Finnish : BESTIE 🥰
Hungarian: we are Magyarország
English: Hungary
Hungarian: what?
French: Hongrie
Hungarian: wait
German: Ungarn
Hungarian: what is this
Spanish: Hungría
Hungarian: stop
Czech: :)
Hungarian: not you too
Czech: Maďarsko
Hungarian: oh you guys
Czech: we got your back bro
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A cry of despair from the ticket machine's innermost soul. An expression of the emptiness that lies at the root. The ticket machine cried aloud, and its cry was: Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas.
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Taught my students about digamma and they were like "wau".
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A lot about ancient religion is starting to make sense.
Inner turmoil is also like this
This tree stuck by lighting, the bolt passed through tree, heated up the sappy interior (which is a better conductor of electricity)
The insides got so hot, the pressure caused an explosion, cracking it open like this 1/
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@jackj_taba
I'm not arguing semantics. To speak of the "oldest language in the world" is a category error, and a very widespread one: I've been asked this many times. The point is not moot, but an active method by which nationalisms are constructed.
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Anyone else hate their name being used incessantly in direct speech? Like when people say your name in every sentence when talking to you?
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'So they buried Hector, tamer of horses, for $8 a month'
Adding "for $8/month" to the end of any sentence makes that sentence funnier, esp bible verses
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It's only laconic if it comes from the Laconia region of Greece. Otherwise it's just sparkling brevity.
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If the Greeks at Troy had built a giant wooden bear instead of a horse, Laocoon could've said "I fear the Greeks, even when they gift bears".
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Ah, another party upstairs. Looks like more 7am violin practice just got scheduled.
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What's your favourite "idiomatic" expression in your native language/L1 for 'lots of'?
In mine, boring old meat and potatoes British English, it is a tie between 'buckets of' and 'lashings of'.
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Mainly because they can tell the difference
academics who speak and read multiple languages are so obsessed with saying u can’t engage with ideas properly without speaking and reading multiple languages. funny
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Having the "end of contract" chat tomorrow, aka being made redundant, so that's something to look forward to. There's a box on the form which asks me what my next job is. I could cry, I really could.
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Sudden realization of what I would be like as an autocrat.
Meanwhile, Turkmenistan’s president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has just unveiled a gisnt statue of his favorite dog
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Between this and spending my life learning languages, if I get dementia I'm going to be pissed off.
Playing music throughout life associated with sharper brain in older age – study
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Right. Officially in my new post today
#academictwitter
teaching Greek literature in Oxford. The third and weirdest time I've come here.
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@loiseaulivier
I mean, your work being highjacked by weirdos who don't know what pronouns actually are seems like a genuine risk....
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Grammatical gender, a thread.
This has been going on a while, so I thought it worth articulating what I think and why. I respond to some of the earlier discussions, but I won't link anyone in. They are free to engage, or not, as they wish.
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Vegetarian curries are woke?? That's going to come as news to India.
Isabel Oakeshott says Oxford has become 'the wokest city in Britain'.
"It is a city of Brompton bikes, corduroy trousers, vegetarian curries and Palestinian flags."
📺 WATCH Plank Of The Week ►
@Iromg
@PeterBleksley
@IsabelOakeshott
@Barnesy19
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The only English word I'm dying to publish an etymological note on is "crust", just so I can title the paper "Crust: A PIE perspective".
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Front room goals
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Presenting halloumi, the new mi-verb:
ἅλλυμι
ἅλλυς
ἅλλυσι
ἅλλυμεν
ἅλλυτε
ἁλύασι
Fut. ἁλῶ, aor. ἥλυσα, pf. ἑάλυκα or ἅληλα
"I grill sheep's cheese"
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Brits are so embarrassing. Tbilisi has been in the news, there have recently been riots there, and when I say I'm going to "Tbilisi, capital of Georgia" they still think it's in America. I mean, does it *sound* like it's in America??
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Publishing a paper arguing over a single particle is indulgent unless you can call it "What a difference a δή makes".
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Learning Finnish be like
CASES!!!!! OMG CASES!!!!! THERE ARE CASES!!! MORE CASES!!!! CASES ARE GOING UP!!!!!!!! CASESESESESESES!!!! CASES WENT UP!!!!! OMG!!!!!! THERES MORE CASES!!!!!!!! CASES!!!!!!!!!!! CASES INCREASED!!! THERE ARE CASES!!!! CASES CASES CASES—WOW CASES WENT UP!!!!!SCARY CASES! WOW
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Incidentally, some of these men were students who also did sex work. This is part of the reason why universities should acknowledge sex work and seek to support students who do it.
Over 16 months, the bodies of four young gay men were found dead in East London. They were victims of Stephen Port - known as the 'Grindr killer'.
Despite striking similarities in their deaths, detectives failed to link them
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Roses are red
Violets are blue.
Agamemnon's wife killed him,
So could yours too.
#classicalValentines
#advice
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Going to a LIBRARY this afternoon to look at a BOOK feels like a first date except I know what to wear.
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I just never call it X
When was the last time you called it "Twitter"?
Be honest.
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The best language for this is Lithuanian, in which loanwords often have -as added to them to make them inflectable (cf Latin -us and friends). So the pineapple is the "ananasas".
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Well I heard there was a secret chard
That David sent and it pleased the Baird
But you don't really care for green things, do ya?
Well it goes like this, an aubergine,
Some fennel and a tangerine
A twitter post, a...
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TV archaeologist in training. Look at my eccentric jacket. My quizzical expression. Gaze upon the power of my scarf.
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Good lord, a student emailed to say they liked a lecture 😍
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And just to hammer the point home: it's gay/bi men queueing in droves to get vaccinated (and raising the profile of vaccination efforts/opportunities) and going to clinics to get tested for the virus. That's showing community responsibility.
Glad we’re reached the ‘well if the gays/bi men would just stop having sex 🙄’ level of “discourse” over Monkeypox what with potential s28 being reborn to target the Trans & NB community I was missing a global health pandemic being framed as the fault of queer men…Happy Monday
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Professor of computer science tweeting stuff refuted since Aristotle.
Proof that consciousness doesn't exist:
- An atom isn't conscious.
- Adding an atom to something that's not conscious doesn't make it conscious.
- Therefore nothing is conscious.
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I was today years old when I found out about peacock wings, how about you?
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Tbh I think this is just a dude holding his cat
Do these 16ft Statues depict the Biblical Giants known as Nephilim??
“We even saw Giants there, sons of Anak, who come from Nephilim. Next to them we felt like Grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them” -Numbers 13:33
…These statues were found in Mesopotamia (Biblical Iraq)👇🏻👀
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No, because we also have cookies, it's just we use the word to mean *cookies*, which are not biscuits, which *are* biscuits, and not weird scones covered in gravy.
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Now that the Sackler, a round library in the middle of Oxford, has been renamed the Bodleian Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library, I assume undergraduate humour will dub it the 'baaawl-Sac'?
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A continental breakfast is a light meal of (typically) pastries, coffee, and orange juice.
The analytic breakfast however tries to understand what we *mean* by breakfast.
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Yes academia is a wonderful career option, shame there are no fucking jobs in it.
My feed is full of people leaving academia for industry. I’m not saying academia is perfect, but I love being a professor and think academia can be a wonderful career option. A thread on why ⬇️
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μέν will literally have δέ rather than go to therapy
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Thank you, previous owner, for this list of occurrences of the word "thumb" in Martial. Not creepy at all.... Also rather snazzy notepaper.
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If I ever do an edited volume again, I won't bother asking for abstracts. Instead you can be in the volume iff you pass an exam proving you know how Track Changes works. I'm at my wits end.
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Why can't they call Italian journals something normal? Irrationally annoyed by all these series with names like Annali Splendidissimi delle Facolta degli Studi Politici, Rhetorici, Classici et Desperati della Scuola Normale-ma-pure-Splendido di Firenze Classe II,2,a.7
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@johnny_boy1988
I teach languages. You don't know a language if you can't operate in it unless you have a dictionary.
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@sacha_coward
"Now I've got a question for you about lesbians, because I heard something in the covered market, and to be honest with you, it did surprise me."
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"Nimrod" is Elgar's hymn to friendship and this damned place always wants to make it about death. It is NOT about death.
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Yes, I am an adult.
Yes, I do always sit right at the front on the top deck of the bus.
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I'd love to sit at a train station again, to board a train, smile at someone sitting opposite, eat a sandwich, look at the view rushing past, and then get out in another place and sniff at different air.
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Going offline, might delete my account. I cannot face this any more.
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Just to say that I hated Brexit and everything it stood for and stands for and I still do. But over the past couple of months I've been up close to a particular aspect of it that's seriously affected my professional life. And so: I hate Brexit and always will.
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I mean, I may have failed in every other respect, but all my beginners now know the lyrics to All I Want For Christmas Is You in ancient Greek, so that's something.
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Disgraceful. Anyone who emails me gets an offprint. Lots of people who would *never* email me get offprints. Lots of tradesmen who come to the flat leave it mystified by the insistence with which I pressed an offprint on them.
I emailed an academic to ask them to send me a pdf offprint of their otherwise inaccesibly paywalled new paper and was told that to do so would be ‘unfair to the journal’. I must be living in a parallel universe. I’ve reviewed for that bloody journal twice for my usual £0 fee 🤯
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