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 » "Spastic" and a different kind of "word crime"

Sunday 20 July 15:19:28 UTC 2014

Weird Al Yankovic's new song "Word Crimes" has generated a lot of heated discussion among linguists and other descriptivist types who didn't take kindly to its litany of language peeves — satire or no satire. (See my original post and Lauren Squires' guest post for extended commentary.) But in detailing various "word crimes," Weird Al managed to commit a linguistic … [Link]

Language Log » Default reasoning

Sunday 20 July 12:29:16 UTC 2014

Yesterday's Tank McNamara: For further discussion, see e.g. R. Reiter, "A Logic for Default Reasoning", Artificial Intelligence 1980; or Robert Sugden, "Salience, inductive reasoning and the emergence of conventions", Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 2011. [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » Flintstone Feet

Sunday 20 July 7:00:00 UTC 2014

Flintstone feet is someone with feet that can walk on anything barefoot . Fred Flintstone didn't wear shoes and could walk,run on grass,dirt,concrete etc . You see a girl walking down the road ,holding her shoes in her hand and feet are all dusty and dark. She has Flintstone feet [Link]