John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons

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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 » Shtetl/Mestechko.

Thursday 7 August 19:58:19 UTC 2014

I happened on a reference to The Golden Age Shtetl: A New History of Jewish Life in East Europe by Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern and took advantage of Amazon’s “Sample the beginning of this book for free” offer, and having read the introduction I’m now eager to read the book itself. It’s one of those books — like Timothy Snyder’s The Reconstruction … [Link]

Language Log » Male and female word usage

Thursday 7 August 13:43:32 UTC 2014

In a ten-year-old LLOG post ("Gender and tags" 5/9/2004), I cited "the complexity of findings about language and gender, where published claims sometimes contradict one another, and where the various things that 'everybody knows' are not always confirmed by experiment", and warned that This happens in every area of rational inquiry, but it's especially common in cases where generalizations are … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » Unkeyboardinated

Thursday 7 August 7:00:00 UTC 2014

Lacking physical or mental keyboard coordination; unable to type without repeatedly making mistakes. Nancy, don't you know how to type? You're so unkeyboardinated! [Link]

languagehat.com » Stet and An Untranslatable Poem.

Thursday 7 August 0:37:01 UTC 2014

“To cheer you up in the practice of your profession,” John Cowan sent me a link to Stet, a collection of intemperate responses by authors to publishers who have committed editing outrages, e.g.: In all the proof that has reached me, windrow has been spelled window. If, in the bound book, windrow still appears as window, then neither rain nor … [Link]

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