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

Urban Word of the Day » fapchat

Sunday 24 August 18:33:48 UTC 2014

The act of "sexting" using snapchat "Aye bro, wanna hang out?""Nah bruh bouta fapchat the bae" [Link]

Language Log » Sex and pronouns

Sunday 24 August 17:22:29 UTC 2014

Andy Schwartz recently gave me a copy of word counts by sex and age for the Facebook posts from the PPC's World Well-Being Project. So I thought I'd compare some of the Facebook counts to data from the LDC's archive of conversational speech transcripts. As a start, here's a comparison of rates of pronoun usage in the PPC Facebook sample … [Link]

languagehat.com » RIP Richard Dauenhauer.

Sunday 24 August 13:57:14 UTC 2014

A nice LA Times obit by Jill Leovy of Richard Dauenhauer, “a linguist, anthropologist, playwright and former Alaska poet laureate who died Tuesday of cancer in Juneau, Alaska”: Dauenhauer, 72, made recording, transcribing and advocating for the Tlingit language his life’s work. He trained a cadre of teachers and translators to continue his efforts. He sought not just to revive … [Link]