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
Language Log » The grammar of "Abide with me"
On Tuesday at my mother's funeral we sang "Abide With Me". It's a popular hymn for funerals, possibly because people like the line "Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory?"; but as we sang the fifth verse (you can see the lyrics here) I couldn't help noticing a syntactic point. No, don't be shocked that syntax could be on … [Link]
languagehat.com » Costello.
My wife asked me “How come Costello is an Irish name? It doesn’t sound Irish.” I had to agree that it didn’t, so I checked my go-to book for surnames, Rybakin’s Словарь английских фамилий = A Dictionary of English Surnames (Moscow, 1986), where I found that it represented an Irish MacOisdealbhaigh, pronounced something vaguely like mc-ISH-dalwa, and you can sort … [Link]
Omniglot blog » Mountains and molehills
I discovered yesterday that the French word for mole is taupe /top/, and I wondered if this might be related to the English word taupe, which, according to the OED, means ‘A brownish shade of grey resembling the colour of moleskin’ or in others words, mole-coloured. The English word taupe comes from the French, which comes from the Latin talpa … [Link]
Urban Word of the Day » resting douche face
similar to the resting bitch face. when a guy just looks like an asshole but hes actually a nice guy with a face of a complete doucher Naw dude Aidan's chill, he just has a resting douche face.
[Link]
Language Log » Oracle
Bryan Van Norden sent in this photograph taken at the Hong Kong International Airport: 
Oracle is an American computer technology corporation that produces an object-relational database management system called Oracle RDBMS. The database takes its name from a project that founder Larry Ellison had worked on while employed at Ampex. Whoever came up with the Chinese name for the company … [Link]
Language Log » Once more on the present continuative ending -ing in Chinese
On "Savage Minds", Kerim has a new post entitled "How do you pronounce '革命ing'?", which features this initially enigmatic photograph: 
The photograph shows Taiwanese historian and political activist, Su Beng (aka Shih Ming), in front of a banner that reads: Táidú 台獨, which is short for Táiwān dúlì 台灣獨立 ("Taiwan Independence") Quánmín gémìng ing 全民革命ing ("the entire people [are carry]ing … [Link]
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