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

Omniglot blog » Súilíní

Tuesday 28 July 18:01:46 UTC 2015

I discovered an interesting word in Irish yesterday – súilíní [ˈsˠuːl̪ʲiːn̪ʲiː] – which is a diminutive form of súil [sˠuːl̪ʲ] (eye) and means literally “small eyes”, and actually means eyelets, an aperture-sight, or bubbles. For example, uisce gan súilíní is still water (“water without bubbles”) [source]. More common Irish words for bubbles are bolgán and boilgeog. The word súilíní is … [Link]

languagehat.com » Familiae Rossicae.

Tuesday 28 July 15:39:25 UTC 2015

I was looking up something else in my Russian edition (Русские фамилии, Moscow: Progress, 1995) of Unbegaun’s Russian Surnames when I found myself getting lost in Boris Uspensky‘s essay “Социальная жизнь русских фамилий” [The social life of Russian family names], appended to Unbegaun’s text. I was first struck by a passage on the history of the name Zinoviev (my translation): … [Link]

Language Log » The great creak-off of 1969

Tuesday 28 July 12:13:59 UTC 2015

In a comment on yesterday's post about Noam Chomsky's use of creaky voice ("And we have a winner…", 7/26/2015), Tara wrote At the risk of sounding like I missed the joke: creakiness in a speaker Chomsky's age is much more likely to be physiological in origin than stylistic. I checked older footage of Chomsky, and he does seem to have … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » Planicking

Tuesday 28 July 7:12:17 UTC 2015

Verb: The act of last minute screaming planning action that does not divert panic she began planicking as the blue line edged across her pregnancy test. [Link]

Language Log » And we have a winner…

Tuesday 28 July 0:33:17 UTC 2015

Back in February, Arika Okrent asked "What is vocal fry?", in her column at Mental Floss. And she pointed out that People’s voices naturally drop in pitch at the end of phrases, and in many speakers, it will drop into the fry zone at that point. The evidence that it’s a female thing is also anecdotal. Plenty of men fall … [Link]

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