John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons

John Gordon Ross header image 3

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

Language Log » Cursive

Sunday 30 March 20:33:40 UTC 2014

Three years ago, we looked at the decline in handwriting skills, both in alphabetic languages and with characters: "Cursive and Characters: Dying Arts". See also "Japanese survey on forgetting how to write kanji ", "The esthetics of East Asian writing", and several posts on "Character amnesia". Before the advent of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices which do our … [Link]

languagehat.com » Why Some Languages Sound More Beautiful.

Sunday 30 March 18:14:13 UTC 2014

This piece by Bernd Brunner may not have any particular conclusion to offer (“In the end, beauty in language is just one of those things”), but it’s always enjoyable to think about ineffabilities like “why do so many people think German sounds awful?” — and the fact that the author is German (it’s translated by Lori Lantz) makes it interesting … [Link]

Language Log » Refreshing the S-word

Sunday 30 March 14:23:17 UTC 2014

Today's Pearls Before Swine: The treatment of words for "stupid" has a been a serious problem for at least two millennia, as discussed here ten years ago ("The S-word and the F-word", 6/12/2004). It's interesting that three of the strip's four initial examples involve words for stereotypically female jobs. It's true that this has been a major source of term-replacement … [Link]

Language Log » PSDS

Sunday 30 March 12:53:01 UTC 2014

Linguists are generally scornful of "eye dialect", in both of the common meanings of that term: As an "unusual spelling intended to represent dialectal or colloquial idiosyncrasies of speech", like roight for right or yahd for yard; As a "the use of non-standard spellings such as enuff for enough or wuz for was, to indicate that the speaker is uneducated". … [Link]

Omniglot blog » Language quiz

Sunday 30 March 6:00:15 UTC 2014

Here’s a recording in a mystery language. Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken? FacebookTwitter Google+Share [Link]

Archive

No Comments

0 responses so far ↓

  • There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.

You must log in to post a comment.