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 » Cantonese and Mandarin are two different languages

Friday 25 September 21:01:07 UTC 2015

From Mengnan Zhang: I found this very interesting image on Facebook. The three columns stand for how to write various terms in Cantonese, their pronunciation, and the meaning of the words listed. As a native speaker of Mandarin, I have no idea what these words are talking about even after reading the meaning of each. Linked back to what our … [Link]

languagehat.com » Poplavsky’s Choice.

Friday 25 September 16:41:04 UTC 2015

I’m finally getting around to Elizabeth Klosty Beaujour’s Alien Tongues: Bilingual Russian Writers of the “First” Emigration , which I was excited about getting and couldn’t wait to read… a decade ago (sigh), and was struck by this passage about the largely forgotten émigré poet Boris Poplavsky (only Russian Wikipedia has an article on him): It is illuminating to compare briefly … [Link]

languagehat.com » Mair Snaw.

Friday 25 September 0:22:28 UTC 2015

A few years ago, I quoted “one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets, Hugh MacDiarmid,” titling the post with the last line of the poem, “It’s juist mair snaw!” Now, courtesy of BBC News, we learn there’s even mair snaw — 421 words for it, to be precise: Academics have officially logged 421 terms – including … [Link]

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