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 » Mabuchi vs. Kanji.
Kamo no Mabuchi, an eighteenth-century Japanese poet and philologist, had some striking ideas about the use of Chinese characters, as reported by Victor Mair at the Log quoting Peter Flueckiger’s translation in “Reflections on the Meaning of Our Country: Kamo no Mabuchi’s Kokuikō” (JSTOR), pp. 247-8: [An interlocutor said,] “This country, though, has no writing of its own. Instead, we … [Link]
Wordorigins.org » Review: Curzan’s The Secret Life of Words
I’ve been a bit leery of The Great Courses , a line of products that offers downloadable lectures by university professors. The idea combines two things that I have problems with: the whole massive open online course (MOOC) idea and paying for internet content. MOOCs, or at least the way they’ve been touted as the savior of higher education, are … [Link]
Language Log » An Eighteenth-Century Japanese Language Reformer
In his "Reflections on the Meaning of Our Country: Kamo no Mabuchi's Kokuikô," Monumenta Nipponica, 63.2 (2008), 211-263, Peter Flueckiger presents "a utopian vision of ancient Japan as a society governed in accordance with nature, which was then corrupted by the introduction of foreign philosophies, especially Confucianism." Mabuchi (1697-1769) looks at a wide range of social, political, and cultural manifestations, … [Link]
Urban Word of the Day » Sansplants
A lack of breast implants. Real boobs. Titties with no silicone or saline. I swear I am the only chick in this entire gym with sansplants. Whatever. I'm rolling with it.
[Link]
languagehat.com » He Touched His Dictionary and Died.
Nora-Ide McAuliffe describes for the Irish Times “how ‘Lane’s English-Irish Dictionary’ was born”; it’s quite a story: It was in Paris in the 1880s that he began work on his dictionary. Dictionaries had been produced in the 18th and 19th centuries, but O’Neill Lane found them to be lacking. His aim was to produce something that would better inform students … [Link]
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