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

languagehat.com » Caused For.

Sunday 3 August 13:45:57 UTC 2014

I pass along this disturbing news from the Log to forewarn the public that there are apparently a fair number of people (to judge from the comment thread there) who accept the following constructions as perfectly good English: “The accident caused for two lanes and one inbound express lane to be blocked.” “Philadelphia has been looking to start a fire … [Link]

Language Log » More on UM and UH

Sunday 3 August 13:35:18 UTC 2014

A few days ago ("Fillers: Autism, gender, and age" 7/30/2014), I noted an apparent similarity between male/female differences in UM/UH usage, and an autistic/typical difference reported in a poster by Gorman et al. at the IMFAR 2014 conference. This morning I thought I'd take a closer look at the patterns in a large published conversational-speech dataset. Executive summary: There is … [Link]

Language Log » I want to / two fish

Sunday 3 August 13:19:55 UTC 2014

In the comments to "slip(per)" (7/22/14), we have had a very lively discussion on whether or not people would pronounce these two sentences differently in Mandarin: wǒ yào tuōxié 我要拖鞋 "I want slippers." wǒ yào tuō xié 我要脫鞋 "I want to take off my shoes." Of the more than two dozen individuals having native fluency in Mandarin whom I surveyed, … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » hashtag abuser

Sunday 3 August 7:00:00 UTC 2014

When you overuse the hashtag symbol, especially on non-Twitter/Instagram apps. Includes having more hashtags than words in your post, adding the prefix "insta" to everything, tagging things that aren't really related, and making hashtags longer than sentences. FB post: Staffing the ambo today, looking forward to a great shift. #ems #fire #firedepartment #fireandrescue #instafire #instafirerescue #instagood #crossfit #hangingwiththecrew #workinghard #idonthatemyjob … [Link]