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 » Niubi ("awesome") revisited
In recent years, this has been one of the most common modifiers and exclamations in Chinese. You can say just "niu" by itself, where "niu" actually means niú 牛 ("cow"), but that's an elision of "niuB" or "niubi", which in turn means "cow pussy". Although "niu(B/bi)" is used so frequently, in mixed company, on packaging, and so forth that it … [Link]
Omniglot blog » Jenga
In the Bangor Community Choir last night we started learning a new song entitled Jenga by Juliet Russell. We were told that the song uses made-up words that don’t mean anything in particular, and it has no connection to the game of Jenga. One of my friends thought the word jenga might mean something like ‘to build’ in Swahili, so … [Link]
Urban Word of the Day » scativism
Shitting on peoples property as a form of protest. I met a guy who regularly shat in the 3. hole on the local golf course as as a sign of his discontent with the burgois. He called it scativism.
[Link]
languagehat.com » Juglandine Linguistics.
Brian Wallheimer reports for Phys.org on what I must consider a dubious hypothesis: Purdue University research shows that ancient languages match up with the genetic codes found in Persian walnut (Juglans regia) forests, suggesting that the stands of trees seen today may be remnants of the first planned afforestation known in the world. In a paper published in the journal … [Link]
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