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 » Ecology and phonology
Ian Maddieson and Christophe Coupé, "Human spoken language diversity and the acoustic adaptation hyothesis", ASA 2015 Bioacousticians have argued that ecological feedback mechanisms contribute to shaping the acoustic signals of a variety of species and anthropogenic changes in soundscapes have been shown to generate modifications to the spectral envelope of bird songs. Several studies posit that part of the variation … [Link]
languagehat.com » On Hebrew and Living in Gendered Language.
An interesting piece by Ilana Masad on the difficulty of being a feminist, or transgender, in a Hebrew-speaking environment: Many people may be familiar with languages like Spanish or French in which nouns are gendered. The main difference between Hebrew and these other languages, however, is that one cannot speak in first or second person in Hebrew without indicating gender. … [Link]
Language Log » Kieran Snyder on CNN
The website for textio.com, now just about one year old, is worth a look. Kieran's LLOG guest posts: "Men interrupt more than women", 7/14/2015 "Want to get ahead as a woman in tech? Learn to interrupt.", 7/17/2014 And a test of those ideas on a dataset of meeting transcripts: "More on speech overlaps in meetings", 7/16/2014 For those of you … [Link]
Language Log » Shooting dead as NP?
Mark Mandel was surprised to see "shooting dead" apparently used as a noun phrase in a Guardian headline: "Two officers arrested over shooting dead of six-year-old Louisiana boy",11/7/2015. The obligatory screenshot: 
My first thought was that this is a typo for "shooting death", not an example of syntactic variation — because it's the Grauniad and all. But a quick web … [Link]
Language Log » "Lobsters": a perplexing stop motion film
Matt Anderson called my attention to a short (15:49), enigmatic 1959 Chinese film: My initial reactions to this film were mostly in the form of puzzles and mysteries: 1. If this is a Chinese film, why are all the actors portrayed as Caucasian, but still speaking Mandarin? 2. In the film there is some writing that starts out as foreign … [Link]
Language Log » Mere wrongness
From China Miéville's Embassytown, the start of the relationship between Avice and Scile: He’d finished the bulk of his research. It was a comparative study of a particular set of phonemes, in several different languages— and not all of one species, or one world, which made little sense to me. “What are you looking for?” I said. “Oh, secrets,” he … [Link]
Omniglot blog » Multilingual musicians
A Sardinian friend of mine, Elena Piras, knows six languages (Sardinian, Italian, English, Scottish Gaelic, French and Spanish) and sings in most of them, plus a few others, including Scots, Bulgarian and Georgian. Here’s a recording of a performance from earlier this year in which she sings in Sardinian, Scots, English, Scottish Gaelic and Bulgarian. Elena aims to sing each … [Link]
World Wide Words: Updates » New online: Bob's-a-dying
A once-common idiom, 'Bob's-a-dying', is traced to its origins. [Link]
World Wide Words: Updates » New online: Binge-watching
'Binge-watching' is a newish term which Collins made its word of the year 2015. [Link]
World Wide Words: Updates » New online: Methinks
'Methinks' is archaic but too many people don't know it. [Link]
World Wide Words: Updates » New online: Bill of goods
Why does 'bill of goods' mean you're being cheated? [Link]
Urban Word of the Day » hulu and commitment
A play on the standard hookup phrase "Netflix and chill," this update is for those looking to binge watch tv shows with another person while in a relationship. Person A: hey, you wanna Netflix and chill? Person B: I think we might be ready for Hulu and commitment 😉
[Link]
Language Log » An orgy of code-switching
From David Moser: I attended an all-day series of talks today at an academic institution. Some of the panels were in Chinese, some in English. One that I found particularly interesting was an afternoon panel with the CEOs of several Chinese companies. The panel was supposed to be in Chinese, but I found it hilarious that all of these participants, … [Link]
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