John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons

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Language Stuff

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 Linguistic Atlas of French Polynesia.

Monday 16 March 18:17:55 UTC 2015

Alex François (A linguist in Melanesia/Un linguiste en Mélanésie) has collaborated on Atlas Linguistique de Polynésie Française/Linguistic Atlas of French Polynesia (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter & Papeete: Université de la Polynésie Française, 2015) and put it online for all to freely access or download: Maeva ‘outou ! Welcome to the homepage of the Linguistic Atlas of French Polynesia. The result … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » fauxgiene

Monday 16 March 7:30:00 UTC 2015

Combination of "faux" and "hygiene" meaning when you half-heartedly wash your hands in a restroom. Your motivation is not actual hygiene but rather the social pressure to appear as if you actually do care. I rinsed my hands with water and didn't use any soap: That's fauxgiene for you. [Link]

Language Log » Hong Kong-specific characters and shorthand

Monday 16 March 4:35:07 UTC 2015

Joel Martinsen found this photograph on the microblog of Wáng Dàyǔ 王大禹: It's an itemized receipt for a meal at a traditional Cantonese restaurant in Central Hong Kong. In Cantonese, the heading reads: Mak6 An1 wan4tan1 min6 sai3gaa1 麥奀雲吞麵世家 Simplified characters: 麦奀云吞面世家 The MSM pronunciation would be: Mài Ēn yúntūn miàn shìjiā English: Mak Ngan's Family Style Wonton Noodles Mak6 … [Link]

Language Log » Correctly English

Monday 16 March 4:20:18 UTC 2015

Ben Zimmer called my attention to this book cover, via David Adger's Twitter account: You can read for yourself what the English says. Let's see how well it matches the Chinese: biāozhǔn 標準 standard Yīngwén shāngyè huìhuà bǎirì tōng 英文 商業會話 百日通 English commercial conversation; expert in a hundred days fù Zhōngwén dúyīn jiěshì 附中文讀音解釋 with pronunciation and explanation in … [Link]

languagehat.com » The Land of Columbus.

Monday 16 March 0:31:01 UTC 2015

Boris Dralyuk, a longtime LH favorite (see, e.g., this post), has written a marvelous piece for the Los Angeles Review of Books about vanished or vanishing LA bookstores (“By the time I was coming up in LA, the era of the legendary bookmen was over. Gone was Jake Zeitlin’s Big Red Barn on La Cienega, gone was Pickwick on Hollywood…), … [Link]

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