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 » Biscriptal juxtaposition in Chinese
We have often seen how the Roman alphabet is creeping into Chinese writing, both for expressing English words and morphemes that have been borrowed into Chinese, but also increasingly for writing Mandarin and other varieties of Chinese in Pinyin (spelling). Here are just a few earlier Language Log posts dealing with this phenomenon: Mandarin" href="http://languagelog.ldc.u~ rel="bookmark">"A New Morpheme in Mandarin" … [Link]
Language Log » Filled pauses in Glasgow
In previous posts about filled pauses, we've seen a consistent and large sex difference: women use (what's transcribed as) "um" somewhat more than men do, and men use (what's transcribed as) "uh" a lot more than women do. This pattern has been found in two large conversational telephone speech corpora involving a mix of ages and American regions, in a … [Link]
Urban Word of the Day » nose brunch
(n) a term used to describe a midday session of cocaine use, often ritualized by line cooks during their most stressful shift of the week. "hey, i'm beat, let's take a break real quick for a nose brunch"
[Link]
Omniglot blog » Language quiz
Here’s a recording in a mystery language. Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken? 
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languagehat.com » Slang of the Times.
Megan Garber, Adrienne LaFrance, and Ian Bogost have a delightful post at Citylab on how the Gray Lady has dealt over the years with the jargon of the young and/or underclass, presumptively unintelligible to its well-bred readership. They open with a quote from a recent article about a $25 penalty for pot possession in Washington, D.C.: “A ticket when you … [Link]
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