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

languagehat.com » History of the Maltese Language.

Saturday 31 October 19:24:20 UTC 2015

Bruce Ware Allen (whose book The Great Siege of Malta is coming out next week!) found and passed on to me this lengthy webpage about Maltese at Joe Arevalo’s Wunderkammer (“an assortment of compelling old and new items I have discovered and find interesting”); like Bruce, I don’t know enough about Maltese to judge its accuracy, but I know some … [Link]

Wordorigins.org » David Peterson on Invented Languages

Saturday 31 October 13:23:00 UTC 2015

David Peterson is the inventor of a number of languages used in various movies and TV shows, perhaps most famously Dothraki, the language of the nomadic horse people in Game of Thrones. This video is of a recent talk he gave at Google on how he, and others, create fictional languages. The depth of linguistic knowledge required in this craft … [Link]

Language Log » Replicability vs. reproducibility — or is it the other way around?

Saturday 31 October 12:30:31 UTC 2015

The term reproducible research, in its current sense, was coined about 1990 by the geophysicist Jon Claerbout. Thus Jon Claerbout & Martin Karrenbach, "Electronic Documents Give Reproducible Research a New Meaning", Society of Exploration Geophysics 1992 [emphasis added, here and throughout]: A revolution in education and technology transfer follows from the marriage of word processing and software command scripts. In … [Link]

Omniglot blog » Wysinnwyg

Saturday 31 October 11:44:21 UTC 2015

The other day I listened to a programme on BBC Radio 4 with an unusual title – Wysinnwyg. When I first saw the title of immediately thought it was a Welsh word, although not one I’d come across before, and I tried to work out what it might mean. I couldn’t find it in any Welsh dictionary, so assumed it … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » Free-farting

Saturday 31 October 7:30:00 UTC 2015

Passing gas with blatant disregard for one's surroundings, environment or company. Free-farting is so natural that often the subject isn't even aware of doing so. I had no idea I had been free-farting until I realized that the whole classroom was looking at me in disgust. freefartingfartembarrass [Link]

Language Log » Push-to-talk

Saturday 31 October 5:41:13 UTC 2015

Here's another eye-opening article from Quartz: "Stop texting right now and learn from the Chinese: there’s a better way to message" (7/02/15) by Josh Horwitz. I missed the article when it came out back in July, and even now wouldn't have known about this new fad that is sweeping China if Kyle Wilcox hadn't called it to my attention. What … [Link]

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