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 » The Awful Consequences of Prescriptivism.

Friday 17 October 23:47:45 UTC 2014

From A Hack’s Progress (J. Cape, 1997), the autobiography of Phillip Knightly (this takes place in Fiji): The new editor, another New Zealander, drove Hanrahan, the sub-editor, mad with lectures on pedantic points of grammar. Late one night, overcome by the heat and tension, Hanrahan listened to half an hour on the use of the pluperfect, then snatched a painting … [Link]

Language Log » Syntactic wigs

Friday 17 October 19:08:37 UTC 2014

Bruce Rusk shared with me this photograph from a store in Vancouver’s Chinatown: Although the lettering in the window is from Chinatown, it is Chinglish without Chinese. "Syntactic Wigs" is such a bizarre locution that I thought this might be a one-off, but when I googled on it I found that the same malapropism has occurred repeatedly in a variety … [Link]

Wordorigins.org » Women in The Guardian

Friday 17 October 12:38:00 UTC 2014

Maddie York, an editor at The Guardian, has penned an article for that paper’s “Mind Your Language Blog” in which she objects to the use of woman as an adjective, as in woman doctor or woman writer. The subheading for the blog post—which York may not have written, as headlines are often not written by the reporter—reads: ‘Woman’ is not … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » i'm going to sleep

Friday 17 October 7:00:00 UTC 2014

I don't want to fucking text you You: I love you bae: I'm going to sleep [Link]

Language Log » Rainbow snail

Friday 17 October 4:47:56 UTC 2014

A new species of snail has been identified in eastern Taiwan. They're calling it Aegista diversifamilia as a way of remembering "the struggle for the recognition of same-sex marriage rights." The tie-in is that the snail is hermaphroditic. But this is really nothing new to snail-lovers, since the great majority of pulmonate snails, opisthobranchs, and slugs are hermaphrodites. I was … [Link]

Language Log » Grater, grader, whatever

Friday 17 October 0:40:47 UTC 2014

Dan Hanzus, "Gruden on DJax: 'He wants to block, he just is little'", Around the NFL 10/16/2014: The Washington Redskins did not sign DeSean Jackson to be a road-grater. The 5-foot-10, 178-pound wide receiver gets paid to make big plays, not clear the way for them. But that didn't stop several D.C.-area media members from calling Jackson out for his … [Link]

languagehat.com » Kolmogorov.

Friday 17 October 0:14:24 UTC 2014

I’m racing through Blindsight , by Peter Watts (grim and gripping, and recommended to sf fans… but the plural of plexus is plexuses, not “plexii,” for God’s sake — I just had to get that off my chest), and when “Kolmogorov complexity” was mentioned I thought “Surely that should be Kholmogorov?” Because холм [kholm] is the Russian word for ‘hill’ (the … [Link]

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