John Gordon Ross

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 » Tempest in a cuppa

Monday 6 July 21:23:32 UTC 2015

Olivia Rudgard, "Why you put on an American accent when you sing", The Telegraph : Even while singing that most British of songs, her own country's national anthem, it seems Hertfordshire-born Alesha Dixon couldn't resist the temptation to slip into an American accent. The pop star was ridiculed after performing God Save the Queen at the British Grand Prix on … [Link]

Language Log » Joe Chen Buns

Monday 6 July 20:01:44 UTC 2015

From Wei comes this photograph of a sign on a deli that they took the other day in Guangzhou: The Chinese on the sign reads: Qiáo Chén cūliáng fāng 乔晨粗粮坊 ("Qiao Chen's [> Joe Chen's] coarse grain [> whole food / grains] place / shop[pe]") We at Language Log are familiar with the usage of cūliáng 粗粮 ("coarse grain[s]") among … [Link]

Language Log » The stock market warrior-desperado's last-ditch fight

Monday 6 July 19:58:56 UTC 2015

Chǎogǔ 炒股 (lit., "stir-fry stock") means playing with stocks and bonds (stock market speculation). This is probably THE hottest term in the PRC vocabulary today. The term itself is not in the following widely circulating cartoon, but the spirit of the term is very much present: Complete translation: rén zài zhèndì zài 人在阵地在 (lit., "people [rén 人] exist, i.e. I/we … [Link]

Language Log » Another passive-hating Orwell wannabe

Monday 6 July 19:39:10 UTC 2015

I'm grateful to Peter Howard and S. P. O'Grady, who within an hour or so both mailed me a link to this extraordinarily dumb article by James Gingell in The Guardian. As Howard and O'Grady pointed out, Gingell's wildly overstated rant illustrates a point I have made on Language Log many times before: that when language is the topic you can … [Link]

languagehat.com » Stalin’s Languages.

Monday 6 July 19:38:07 UTC 2015

I’ve started reading Kotkin’s Stalin (thanks, jamessal!), and was struck by this passage on his linguistic accomplishments as a youth: At the same time, Georgia was a diverse land and the future Stalin picked up colloquial Armenian. He also dabbled in Esperanto (the constructed internationalist language), studied but never mastered German (the native tongue of the left), and tackled Plato … [Link]

Language Log » "Salacious but iffy?"

Monday 6 July 11:28:08 UTC 2015

In the Washington Post recently, Michael Miller covered the life and death of James Jeffrey Bradstreet, a doctor with controversial ideas about causes and treatments of autism ("Anti-vaccine doctor behind ‘dangerous’ autism therapy found dead. Family cries foul.". 6/29/2015). The treatments Bradstreet favored included intravenous secretin, "intravenous immunogloblin" [sic], chelation therapy, hyperbaric oxygen chambers, and stem cell therapy. The reader … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » you don't pour my cereal

Monday 6 July 7:30:00 UTC 2015

You don't know me, you don't know what I do, you haven't lived my life, you don't know my struggles nor trials and tribulations Random THOT: You got me fucked up, bitch you don't pour my cereal! James: How'd you know I'd do that? Erin: I know you, I pour yo cereal!!! [Link]

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