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 » 10 Books That Wouldn’t Exist Without Flann O’Brien.
If this were 10 Books That Wouldn’t Exist Without Shakespeare or Cervantes or some other obvious candidate, I would have yawned and moved on. But I couldn’t resist Flann O’Brien, who (as ever) needs all the publicity he can get; I learned some interesting stuff (“Borges reviewed At Swim-Two-Birds in 1939, claiming that it was a more complex ‘verbal labyrinth’ … [Link]
Language Log » Grading political comments
A dozen people have sent me links to this blog post — "Presidential Debate Grammar Power Rankings", Grammarly Blog 10/6/2015 — or to various commentaries on it, e.g. Justin Moyer, "Trump supporters have the worst Facebook grammar, study finds", WaPo 10/7/2015; Emily Atkin, "New Analysis Ranks Presidential Candidates By Their Supporters’ Grammar", ThinkProgress 10/6/2015; Paul Singer, "Democrats crush Republicans in … [Link]
Omniglot blog » Irish and Ndebele
Yesterday I went to Global Café, a group for international students which I’ve been going to on and off since I was a student myself. I use it as a chance to meet people and practise my languages, and I got to speak quite a few different languages last night, including Welsh, French, Irish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese and German. There … [Link]
Language Log » Anticipatory confirmation
Claire Landsbaum, "Research Confirms Using Periods in Texts Makes You Seem Pissed Off", ComPlex 10/3/2015: Before texts, every sentence ended with a period. But with the advent of impersonal electronic communication, line breaks became a quicker and easier way to express the end of a thought. "The default is to end just by stopping, with no punctuation mark at all," … [Link]
Urban Word of the Day » Hate-like
When you like something on a social network site (such as Facebook) in a sarcastic way. Generally something you don't like at all and the other person has no idea. CP: "Hanging out with my best friend Heather at the mall"Ugh, Heather is such a bitch. Definitely going to hate-like that status.
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Language Log » Gender bending
There's a guy with brown hair who has worked as a checkout person at a store I go to regularly. He's been there for about five years. Of the 20 or so checkout persons at the store, all of the others except one are female, mostly between 18 and 25. Over the course of the last year or so, I … [Link]
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