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
Language Log » Moar Verbs
A couple of days ago, Geoff Pullum noted that William Zinsser's On Writing Well echoes the Strunkish advice that "Most adverbs are unnecessary" and "Most adjectives are also unnecessary" ("Awful book, so I bought it", 3/21/2015). I share Geoff's skepticism about this anti-modifier animus, and indeed about all writing advice based on parts of speech. But it occurred to me … [Link]
Language Log » xie死
In "A Sino-English grammatical construction", I wrote about "笑CRY", which consists of a Chinese character and an English word. Today I'll write about xie死, which consists of a Chinese morpheme spelled with Roman letters and a Chinese character, sǐ 死 ("die"). For the moment, from the contexts in which I've seen and heard it, about all that I can surmise … [Link]
Omniglot blog » Sun dribbles
While walking along by estuary of the River Dwyryd at Portmeirion yesterday, the Czech friend I was with asked me the name of the patterns in the sand and mud made by water. I wasn’t sure and suggested ripples or sand ripples. She misheard the latter and thought I said sun dribbles, which I really like the sound of. I … [Link]
Language Log » Your tension has been exterminated
BBC Research and Development offers a discussion of the analogue ring modulator used to create the Dalek voice effect, along with an explanation of how a digital version was programmed in the great new WebAudio API. Note that the 30-Hz modulation frequency is right in the flutter-fusion boundary region discussed here. [h/t David Donnell] [Link]
Urban Word of the Day » God Damn Motherfucking Shitty Fucking Shit Fuckers
expression indicating extreme anger and/or pain. see motherfucker jayquan: yo nice kicks shawn: thanx jayquan: watch out for that pile of nasty shit!!…… shawn: what? aw, god damn motherfucking shitty fucking shit fuckers! i just bought these!!
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