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 » Looking for ‘Arses.
No, not the arses you think; from BBC Radio: Ian McMillan goes on a quest to find one of Britain’s strangest linguistic features. Somewhere between Sheffield and Chesterfield, people stop saying house and say something that sounds a lot more like ‘arse. It’s an isogloss, a kind of linguistic boundary line where accent and dialect changes. Ian calls it the … [Link]
Language Log » Heart-mind
This is another one of those posts that I wanted to write long ago (actually almost a year ago), but it got lost in the shuffle until now, when I found it going through my old drafts. It was prompted by an article that Christine Gross-Loh wrote for The Atlantic (October 8, 2013) titled "Why Are Hundreds of Harvard Students … [Link]
Language Log » UM / UH in German
We've previously observed a surprisingly consistent pattern of age and gender effects on the relative frequency of filled pauses (or "hesitation sounds") with and without final nasals — what we usually write as "um" and "uh" in American English, or often as "er" and "erm" in British English. Specifically, younger people use the UM form more than older people, while … [Link]
Language Log » Behekitninerpillar
Left-handed toons from 8/13/2010, "Jasper got a dog", starts like this: 
And ends like this: 
Luckily for all of us, language doesn't work that way, except to some extent in NPR word puzzles. [h/t to Anders Horn] [Link]
Urban Word of the Day » that's how we roll
that is how we act or are expected to act yeyuh, that's how we roll me homie
[Link]
languagehat.com » Pausing Over Pronunciation.
A nice piece by Anne Curzan on not being sure how to say a word; she begins by describing reading aloud to students from a quote and seeing the word islet coming up: Torn about the status of the “s,” I decided to try to turn this moment of pronunciation panic into a teachable moment. I stopped when I got … [Link]
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