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 » IKEA Names II.
Back in 2003 I posted about a site “explaining a few of the basic rules of IKEA’s often bizarre-sounding product names”; now that the internet has grown and matured, I can point you to a much more comprehensive site, The IKEA Dictionary by Lars Petrus: Part of what makes IKEA unique is their product names. Each name means something, often … [Link]
Language Log » Freedom and flexibility
Muriel Spark's memoir Curriculum Vitae antedates discourse-particle like to the early 1920s. And J.L. Austin, in his posthumous work Sense and Sensibilia, defends like as "the great adjuster-word, or, alternatively put, the main flexibility-device by whose aid, in spite of the limited scope of our vocabulary, we can always avoid being left completely speechless." Muriel Spark describes her reactions, in her … [Link]
Language Log » Ways to say "China" that can circumvent the censors
China's netizens are endlessly resourceful in coming up with clever terms to refer to almost anything that can evade the omnipresent censors — at least for awhile. We're all familiar with the "Grass Mud Horse" and the "Franco-Croatian Squid". Strange as it may seem (!), they sometimes feel the need to say something critical about China, but to do so … [Link]
Urban Word of the Day » And then i fucked her up the ass
What you say when you're in the middle of a story and realize no one's listening. I'm sitting at the dinner table, telling my girlfriends family about how we met. As I'm getting to the funny part, i realize no one's listening, so i abruptly finish with "and then i fucked her up the ass!"
[Link]
languagehat.com » Seejiq Abstract.
The Seejiq (called Seediq in Wikipedia) are a Taiwanese aboriginal people who speak an Austronesian language; I learned about them from Scott Simon’s article “Real People, Real Dogs, and Pigs for the Ancestors: The Moral Universe of ‘Domestication’ in Indigenous Taiwan,” forthcoming in American Anthropologist — or rather from the abstract, which is at the link. Why am I mentioning … [Link]
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