John Gordon Ross

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

World Wide Words: Updates » New online: File

Friday 18 July 20:40:05 UTC 2014

Why 'file' can mean both a metalworking tool and a storage place for data . [Link]

World Wide Words: Updates » New online: Logicidal

Friday 18 July 20:40:04 UTC 2014

'Logicidal' doesn't quite mean the death of words, but it comes near. [Link]

languagehat.com » Blimba.

Friday 18 July 19:07:46 UTC 2014

In a chapter on African football/soccer, David Goldblatt’s The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer has this sentence: “Muti, ju-ju, m’pungu, blimba are just some of the many words in African languages for the complex of beliefs that are held in the supernatural, in the animist realm of the spirit and in practices of witchcraft, magic and divination.” … [Link]

languagehat.com » Word Crimes.

Friday 18 July 15:49:47 UTC 2014

I have, of course, been sent the link to Weird Al’s new “Word Crimes” video, a parody of last summer’s hit “Blurred Lines.” My response: “I enjoyed the parody but deplored the prescriptivism.” I didn’t have much more to say, and wasn’t planning to post about it, but I liked Lauren Squires’s guest post at the Log enough to link … [Link]

Omniglot blog » Gleann Cholm Cille

Friday 18 July 11:10:49 UTC 2014

Tomorrow I’m off to Oideas Gael in Gleann Cholm Cille in Donegal in the north west of Ireland to do a course in harp playing. This will be the tenth time I’ve been there, though the first time I’ve done the harp course. Normally I go for a summer school in Irish language and culture where I do Irish language … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » Mobile Moment

Friday 18 July 7:00:00 UTC 2014

Any time you reach for a smartphone to find an answer or solution on the internet in a time of crisis. Dad had a mobile moment when he forgot how to tie his bowtie last week, but luckily YouTube came through for him. [Link]

Language Log » 25 Questions for Teaching with "Word Crimes"

Friday 18 July 1:53:27 UTC 2014

The following is a guest post by Lauren Squires. While "grammar nerds" are psyched about Weird Al's new "Word Crimes" video, many linguists are shaking their heads and feeling a little hopeless about what the public enthusiasm about it represents: a society where largely trivial, largely arbitrary standards of linguistic correctness are heavily privileged, and people feel justified in degrading and … [Link]

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