New merch! Kiki/bouba scarves, "What the fricative" shirts, IPA backpacks, and more!

A new round of Lingthusiasm merch is here!

Kiki and bouba on scarves, mugs, notebooks, and more! 

If I give you a rounded, lumpy shape and a sharp, spiky one, and tell you that one is called kiki and the other bouba, which name would you attach to which shape? It turns out that people's responses are surprisingly consistent! This classic experiment in cross-modal perception featured in Lingthusiasm episode 21: What words sound spiky across languages?, has become a favourite subject of linguistics memes, and is now available as Lingthusiasm merch! You can now ask random people at a conference, in class, or at work which one is bouba and which is kiki, in black, red, green, yellow, pale blue, pink, or white. (We've also released the bouba/kiki images under a CC-BY license, should you wish to use it in linguistics experiments of your own.) 

"What the fricative?" on t-shirts and more! 

You know how some pieces of technical terminology just really sound like they moonlight as minor swear words? "What the fricative" totally looks like something you exclaim when you stub your toe, and yet it actually just refers to the entirely innocuous class of sound that is produced by creating friction with the stream of air as it comes out of your mouth, such as /s/, /z/, /v/, and yes, /f/ itself. Now you can confuse people by not actually swearing and secretly give yourself an excuse to chat linguistics with them, thanks to our What the Fricative items in black or white text! (Is this your first time hearing about fricatives? We're going to have a whole episode about them next week, you're just finding out about this early because you're a patron!) 

Our classic International Phonetic Alphabet print on backpacks, duffel bags, and phone cases! 

The original merch item that started it all, our print with all of the characters of the IPA on it, is now available on more items beyond the scarves, socks, mugs, masks, and notebooks that you might already be familiar with! 

The earlier merch is all still around, if you've been vaguely thinking about getting an IPA scarf, NOT JUDGING YOUR GRAMMAR, JUST ANALYSING IT shirt, or just having a browse. All of the Lingthusiasm merch makes a great gift for the linguist or linguistics fan in your life, and as a patron you get to find out about new merch before anyone else! Check out the merch page at lingthusiasm.com/merch for the previous rounds of Lingthusiasm merch (it'll be updated with this new merch in a bit, once this announcement is public next week).

As ever, we love seeing photos of any Lingthusiasm merch in your lives! Tag us in them @lingthusiasm on social media (or private message us photos of your babies in Lingthusiasm onesies if you're not keen on posting baby photos publically, we still love to see them!)

Stay Lingthusiastic!

Gretchen & Lauren