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 » Red Star Tales.
Erik at XIX век writes: If you like or are curious about Russian science fiction, you might be interested in supporting this translation project. It’s a collection of stories from the 1890s to the 1980s or 1990s, edited by Yvonne Howell and translated by Howell, Anindita Banerjee, Sibelan Forrester, Muireann Maguire, Kevin Reese, and Liv Bliss. As a longtime fan … [Link]
Language Log » It's hard being loved by jerks
The most tasteful and relevant of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons: 
The title "Mahomet débordé par les intégristes" means "Muhammad overwhelmed by the fundamentalists"; and the speech balloon "C'est dur d'être aimé par des cons" means "It's hard being loved by jerks", a thought that must also occasionally have occurred to Moses, Jesus, Buddha, and others. I believe that this was … [Link]
Wordorigins.org » ADS Word of the Year: #blacklivesmatter
The American Dialect Society has voted on its Word of the Year for 2014, choosing the hashtag #blacklivesmatter, which became the rallying cry on Twitter and other social media outlets for those protesting the failure to obtain indictments against the police officers who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York. It is the … [Link]
Language Log » Why definiteness is decreasing, part 2
In an earlier post on this topic ("Why definiteness is decreasing, part 1"), I suggested that the decrease in definite-article frequency in published English text, over the course of the past century, might be connected with a decrease in formality. Roughly, this means that writing has been becoming more like speech (though speech has also been changing, and writing and … [Link]
Urban Word of the Day » You Done Fucked Up
To mess up extremely past the point of no return. Man: *doing his woman* Oh! Mary! Woman: MARY!? WHO'S MARY! Man: Shit….. Woman: Oh You done fucked up now!!
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World Wide Words: Updates » Updated online: Eellogofusciouhipoppokunurious
'Eellogofusciouhipoppokunurious~ is definitely curious, US student slang of a bygone era. [Link]
World Wide Words: Updates » Updated online: Old fogey
Who or what is an 'old fogey' and why should he have that name? [Link]
languagehat.com » Untranslated World Literature.
Alexander Beecroft has a post at the Verso blog listing five “important works of world literature unavailable in the English language.” Right off the bat he cheats by including Ruan Ji’s “Poems which sing my emotions” (詠懷詩), which has in fact been translated: “a translation by Graham Hartill was published in China in 1988 and reprinted there in 2006, but … [Link]
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