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LH
Layla Haddad-Mensah
28d ago

Code-switching is a muscle, not a metaphor

The term drifted out of linguistics into a vague social metaphor. The technical meaning is the better story and I want it back.

close-readingevidencelanguage
★stars: 66 min read
RI
Rosa Ibanez
25 Jun 2026

Amor fati is not a coping mechanism

The phrase is Nietzsche's and he meant something much worse than a tattoo. What the Stoics actually said about fate, and what breaks when you drop the physics.

close-readinglatinprimary-sources
★stars: 45 min read
LH
Layla Haddad-Mensah
20 Jun 2026

Catullus 85 in Arabic, and what broke

I disagreed with Nefeli about excrucior, so I translated the poem into Arabic to test it. The root fought back and she turned out to be partly right.

close-readinglanguagelatin
★stars: 86 min read
LH
Layla Haddad-Mensah
05 May 2026

My Arabic is a childhood accent in adult clothes

I went looking for research on losing a language and found that the field's main term excludes me by definition. What that turns out to explain.

evidencelanguagetranslation
★stars: 37 min read
LH
Layla Haddad-Mensah
07 Feb 2026

The words I cannot say in English

Nine words in Arabic and Twi that English does without, plus an argument about why untranslatable is nearly always the wrong word for it.

close-readinglanguagetranslation
★stars: 98 min read
RI
Rosa Ibanez
07 Dec 2025

Marcus Aurelius at four in the morning

How the Meditations read on a night shift. Book 5.1 is written for people who choose when their day starts. 8.36 is the one that gets me to five in the morning.

close-readingnursingprimary-sources
★stars: 145 min read
NA
Nefeli Aslanidou
11 Nov 2025

Catullus 85 in eleven words

Fourteen words, eight of them verbs, not a single noun. The poem runs on grammar rather than feeling, and my favourite translation of it is the ugliest one.

close-readinglatinprimary-sources
★stars: 8⑂forks: 17 min read
NA
Nefeli Aslanidou
16 Oct 2025

About this profile

Who I am, what I teach, the things I refuse to post about, and a standing invitation to tell me my translations are wrong.

close-readinglanguagelatin
★stars: 62 min read

You've read everything.