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

Omniglot blog » Pufflings

Wednesday 10 December 18:23:40 UTC 2014

The other day I discovered that a young puffin is known as a puffling, which I really like the sound of. There are a few other words that include the -ling suffix that are commonly used: sibling, duckling, underling, earthling, seedling, yearling (an animal that is between one and two years old) – can you think of others? There are … [Link]

Language Log » Big Data vs. Amateur Linguistics

Wednesday 10 December 16:48:18 UTC 2014

Neil Dolinger sent in the following banner ad that popped up on his computer screen one day: If you're wondering what this is about, I'll leave it to Neil to tell his own story, because he tells it best: When I visited a website I frequent, the attached banner ad appeared for Toyota. A banner ad from Toyota would not … [Link]

Language Log » sitemeter = malware

Wednesday 10 December 10:14:41 UTC 2014

Apologies to anyone (and it must be lots of you) who tried to reach a LLOG page yesterday and got redirected to x.vindicosuite.com. This was the result of the latest malfunction in the sitemeter.com tool for counting visits and referrals, which we've been using for the past decade. Increasingly often over the past year or so, the sitemeter tracking code … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » Freshman at life

Wednesday 10 December 8:00:00 UTC 2014

Someone who simply has no clue what they're doing in life. They have no common sense, and ask stupid questions, such as "how do I do laundry" or "what is online banking" Person 1: I can't put my keys in the lock, it's not working!!! Person 2: Maybe you should just turn it the other way? Person 2: You know … [Link]

languagehat.com » Old Chinese.

Wednesday 10 December 1:12:54 UTC 2014

Another amazing gift of the internet: Old Chinese: A New Reconstruction , by William H. Baxter and Laurent Sagart, costs over $60, but you can download its Old Chinese reconstructions for free here. Via Matt at No-sword, who quotes this entertaining footnote: We adopt the term “Kra-Dai” proposed by Ostapirat (2000) in place of the traditional “Tai-Kadai,” since to Thai speakers, … [Link]

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