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 » The Great Language Game: Followup.
Remember the Great Language Game? Well, its creator, Lars Yencken, has analyzed the over 16,000,000 results and made the results available for download, and you can read a summary, with some nice graphs, here. A taste: “Out of all the 78 languages currently featured in the game, players find it easiest to recognize French (Romance, Indo-European) and the hardest to … [Link]
Wordorigins.org » breaking bad
The popular U. S. television show Breaking Bad (2008–13) is about a high-school chemistry teacher in Albuquerque who, after being diagnosed with lung cancer and with the assistance of an ex-student turned failed drug dealer, begins to cook and sell crystal meth. While the show has been popular with both audiences and critics, the title has baffled many. What does … [Link]
the world in words » How to amass a collection of world leaders’ autographs, from Mandela to Castro
Some of the top names from the autograph collection of Randy Kaplan. He launched his collection in 1996, with the autograph of Bill Clinton, and has gathered 130 autographed baseballs to date. (Photo: Alina Simone) Here’s a guest post from writer Alina Simone. I’m always on the look out for attention-grabbing stats, so when I heard the most valuable autograph of … [Link]
Urban Word of the Day » Saltdaddy
The complete opposite of a sugardaddy, one who tries, but is broke and fronting. Man, I said I wanted a new comforter set from Macy's not the goodwill….he is such a saltdaddy!
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Language Log » Grammar scandal at WSJ
Misspelling prosecutor as prosector is one thing; we all make letter-omission slips occasionally. But misspelling your version as you're version in a headline in a quality newspaper? It's a whole different magnitude of editorial sin. Yet at the time of writing, The Wall Street Journal's European edition has a headline up online saying "Prosector to Oscar Pistorius: 'You're Version's a … [Link]
Language Log » His Coffeeness
Kendall Willets had long ago noticed that Korean honorifics show up disproportionately in commercial settings, but this article brought up something new. The -si- 시 infix is only supposed to apply to the verb if the subject has higher status, but in service settings it's expanding to everything, including coffee. The big LOL sentence for me, was when the Coffee … [Link]
Language Log » "We're updating our novel-length Terms of Service?"
Yesterday I got an email from airbnb.com, under the heading "We're updating our Terms of Service". It starts this way: Hi Mark, Our business and our community have grown, so we are updating our Terms of Service, Host Guarantee Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy. These changes will be effective for all users on April 30, 2014. When you use … [Link]
languagehat.com » Ready on Dostoevsky.
I don’t often recommend podcasts because I don’t often listen to them, but I very much enjoyed George Miller’s interview with translator Oliver Ready, “about his five-year engagement with Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment 
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