John Gordon Ross

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 » Scots Yiddish.

Sunday 21 September 22:27:48 UTC 2014

Philologos at the Forward has a fine column on a long-forgotten dialect: Recently, as Scotland’s independence vote began to loom large in the media, someone asked me if I had ever heard of Scots Yiddish. “I canna say that I have,” I answered, only to be told that there was an entire chapter on the subject in David Daiches’s autobiographical … [Link]

Language Log » Why not a simple, straightforward directory?

Sunday 21 September 18:13:44 UTC 2014

From C.M., a sign in the Sydney, Australia, suburb of Waterloo: [Link]

Language Log » Form, function, fun

Sunday 21 September 11:14:26 UTC 2014

In "Pragmatics as comedy" (1/28/2010) I discussed a blog post and two comedy sketches that enact familiar rhetorical structures through a series of self-referential descriptions. Thus Chris Clarke's "This is the title of a typical incendiary blog post" (1/24/2010): This sentence contains a provocative statement that attracts the readers’ attention, but really only has very little to do with the … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » Cumbrella

Sunday 21 September 7:00:00 UTC 2014

A condom. An umbrella for your penis preventing the cum outside. Amy: Do you have the protection?Ben: A cumbrella? Yeah I've already put it on. [Link]

Omniglot blog » Language quiz

Sunday 21 September 6:52:22 UTC 2014

Here’s a recording in a mystery language. Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken? Share [Link]

languagehat.com » Fifth Business.

Sunday 21 September 0:40:12 UTC 2014

My wife has been reading Robertson Davies’s Deptford Trilogy, and the things she’s muttered or asked about as she’s read have been so intriguing that I’ve started the first novel in the series, Fifth Business . I’ve known about the book most of my life — seen it in bookstores, heard it mentioned, and so on — and always wondered about … [Link]

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