John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons

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Entries Tagged as 'Language'

Linguistics for Lazy People

February 18th, 2009 · No Comments

Seems like it is whenever I have most things to do that I find seriously fun things to distract me. Nothing new about that, it happens to all freelancers. But just at the moment, I have toothache and laughing is quite painful. And a Language Hat post has introduced me to Speculative Grammarian, “the premier […]

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Tags: Language

Street Sign Silliness

February 2nd, 2009 · No Comments

Punctuation purists led by John Richards, founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society, are up in arms over Birmingham City Council’s decision to omit apostrophes from street signs. Reactions have run from the usual indignation to outright horror. Apostrophe Abuse ironizes about it cleverly, calling Birmingham “the city where apostrophes arent welcome,” while Apostrophe Catastrophes goes […]

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Tags: Language · Life

The End of Civilization As We Know It

February 1st, 2009 · 2 Comments

Over at You Don’t Say,* the blog of Baltimore Sun copy editor John McIntyre, there has been a discussion going on about Wikipedia. I must point out that the Wikipediaphobes have not, quite, said that the online encyclopaedia will bring about the End of Civilization etc. as the title of this post would suggest. On […]

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Tags: Language · Life

Opposing Orwell

January 12th, 2009 · 1 Comment

David Beaver has a post on Language Log about George Orwell’s 1946 essay Politics and the English Language. I find much to disagree with in Mr Beaver’s post, and Language Log’s Comments Policy says “blog comments should be short. If you have a lot to say, post it on your own blog and link to […]

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Tags: Language · Life · Writing

Hokey Cokey Nonsense

January 5th, 2009 · No Comments

There’s a light-hearted discussion going on over at Language Log about the Hokey Cokey, provoked by the Telegraph digging up the old story about its lyrics being anti-Catholic (a distorsion of “the Latin “hoc est enim corpus meum” or “this is my body” used by Catholic priests to accompany the transubstantiation during mass,” says the […]

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Tags: Language · Translating

Liberal or Literal?

December 12th, 2008 · No Comments

Corinne McKay of Thoughts on Translation has touched a nerve with her post on “We just translate”…or do we?” Translators have two often contradictory goals: accuracy of translation, and quality of language. She gamely mentions failing two translation tests in a row for different agencies, one on the grounds that her translation was “too faithful […]

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Tags: Language · Translating

Etymology Knowledge Test

December 11th, 2008 · No Comments

A post on Talk Wordy to Me led me to an entertaining on-line etymology quiz which I recommend to language buffs. It is, as TW puts it, “freaking hard.” TW got 6 out of 10 right on two occasions before deciding enough was enough, and I am pleased to say that I got 7 out […]

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Tags: Language

Call Me Don John

December 10th, 2008 · No Comments

Found on Overheard Everywhere (I run the feed from Overheard in the Office on the Whittle It page, but I love them all, even if many of the entries sound more scripted than accidentally eavesdropped on): The Best Apples Don’t Go Into Applesauce. Or Teaching English teacher (about Don Pedro in Much Ado about Nothing: […]

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Tags: Language · Life

Fry and Laurie on Language and the Word “Gay”

December 10th, 2008 · No Comments

Absence from the UK meant I had never seen Fry and Laurie until I caught a post on Jill Sommers’ blog, Musings from an Overworked Translator (here’s a hint, Jill – ease up). She posted the following language-related Fry and Laurie YouTube video which made me laugh out loud even though I don’t know who, […]

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Tags: Language · Life