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 » Kibitz.
Stan Carey has a post on one of the most successful Yiddish exports to English, kibitz: Kibitz is a handy word that means to watch someone do something (normally a game, often cards) and offer unwelcome advice. It can also simply mean to chat or joke around. The word entered English almost a century ago via multiple languages, thieves’ cant, … [Link]
Language Log » Foundation and jihad
Did Osama bin Laden name Al Qaeda after Isaac Asimov's Foundation series? Meeting Dmitri Gusev here at Text By The Bay ("Rising sun", 4/25/2015) reminded me that I'd seen his name before. The context was a 2002 article in the Guardian, "What is the origin of the name al-Qaida?" (picked up on LLOG in "Copy-editing terrorism", 7/28/2005): In October last … [Link]
Language Log » A proliferation of hyphens
In comments to "Suffer the consequences " (4/19/15), Jongseong Park and Bob Ramsey bemoaned what they considered to be the overuse of hyphens in the transliteration of Hangeul. In a later comment, I explained that the hyphens between virtually all syllables in the transliterations were due to the Hangeul converter we've been using, which automatically inserts them. In the future, … [Link]
Urban Word of the Day » post fartum depression
The sense of let down after your cat, dog, or spouse does not recognize your fart with as much enthusiasm as you were feeling it deserved. I was suffering from post fartum depression when Whiskers only lazily looked up and closed her eyes.
[Link]
Omniglot blog » Language quiz
Here’s a recording in a mystery language. Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken? [Link]
languagehat.com » As Such.
Anne Curzan has a piece at Lingua Franca that pushes my buttons so that they produce a loud, harsh, buzzing noise in my head. She begins: I am being a stick-in-the-mud about the phrase as such, and I have decided I need to change my ways. As the graduate students whose dissertations I have been reading over the past few … [Link]
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