John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons

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Language Stuff

Almost everyone uses language, so inevitably almost everyone thinks they are an expert in it. I don’t consider myself an expert, though most of my work requires at least language competence and sometimes actual skill, but I do follow the blogs featured on this feeds page.

(If you are wondering where the translation-related feeds have all gone, I have put them on their own page.)

Most of the blogs represented here are in English, most of the time, but don’t be surprised to find other languages used. Go with the flow – I occasionally find myself pleasantly surprised at how much I can grasp in languages I have never seen before.

Language On the Net

languagehat.com » Compass Award: Tarkovsky.

Wednesday 19 March 21:44:37 UTC 2014

I’ve gotten into the habit of posting about the International Translation Center/Cardinal Points annual Compass Award contest (2012, 2013), and I’m particularly happy to do so this year because it’s dedicated to the poetry of Arseny Tarkovsky, one of my favorite modern Russian poets (and one far too little known outside of Russia; I’ve written about him a couple of … [Link]

Language Log » Chineasy? Not

Wednesday 19 March 14:29:12 UTC 2014

Last Friday, the following article appeared in The Wall Street Journal: "A New Way to Learn Chinese: Entrepreneur ShaoLan Hsueh aims to bridge the gap between East and West by teaching Westerners how to read Chinese". The article is preceded by a video that begins with this note: Entrepreneur and author ShaoLan Hsueh has devised a simplistic method for teaching … [Link]

Omniglot blog » ‘Academic’ style language teaching

Wednesday 19 March 12:24:32 UTC 2014

I’ve noticed that when some people write about language learning, particularly those who encourage you to learn languages on your own, they often make disparaging remarks about the ‘academic’ style of teaching found in language classes. Apparently this style of teaching is boring, dry, focused on grammar and learning vocabulary, and/or has too few opportunities to speak the language you’re … [Link]

Language Log » "Hard to understate"

Wednesday 19 March 10:55:56 UTC 2014

Nick Wingfield, "Microsoft Pins Xbox One Hopes on Titanfall, a Sci-Fi Shooting Game", NYT 3/9/2014: “It’s hard to understate how incredibly important Titanfall is for Xbox,” Yusuf Mehdi, chief marketing and strategy officer for devices and studios at Microsoft, said in an interview. If it's not clear to you why this is semantically and psycholinguistically interesting, see here. As previously … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » jeenyus

Wednesday 19 March 7:30:00 UTC 2014

a way cooler and smarterer way to spell "genius" Nick: "You know that girl Zoe?" Josh: "Yeah, she's a total jeenyus." [Link]

languagehat.com » Down with the Nasty Asiatic Vowel!

Wednesday 19 March 0:05:38 UTC 2014

This is a very silly story, but how can I resist a story that involves Russian vowels? According to this Atlantic story by Farangis Najbullah, the ever-controversial Vladimir Zhirinovsky “has now targeted a letter in the Russian alphabet”: The letter in question is the vowel “ы”—a difficult-to-pronounce sound for non-native Russian speakers that is usually transliterated simply as “y” in … [Link]

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