John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons

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Language Stuff

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 » No Language Is the Mother Tongue.

Monday 30 November 22:27:21 UTC 2015

Another quote from Elizabeth Klosty Beaujour’s Alien Tongues (see this post), this time from the section on Marina Tsvetaeva: In 1926, she wrote in German to Rainer Maria Rilke: Goethe says somewhere that one can never achieve anything of significance in a foreign language — and that has always rung false to me. . . . Writing poetry is in … [Link]

Language Log » Why the Khitan / Liao ruler Abaoji refused to speak Sinitic with his fellow tribesmen

Monday 30 November 17:58:57 UTC 2015

The mighty Liao Dynasty (907-1125) of the Khitans ruled over a vast empire in Northeast Asia and Inner Asia that included Mongolia, Manchuria, parts of the Russian Far East, northern Korea, and northern China. They spoke a language that is held to be Proto-Mongolic and had two writing systems, known as the large script and the small script. The two … [Link]

Language Log » Annals of singular 'they': another case with known sex

Monday 30 November 15:28:51 UTC 2015

Karen Thomson, a Sanskritist and antiquarian bookseller living in Oxford, wrote to me to point out the following very significant example of singular they in a Financial Times interview with TV writer and director Jill Soloway: People will recognise that just because somebody is masculine, it doesn't mean they have a penis. Just because somebody's feminine, it doesn't mean they … [Link]

Language Log » Quinoa: way more than one way to pronounce it

Monday 30 November 10:21:31 UTC 2015

From a colleague: A question about quinoa. Linguistic, not gustatory or political-economic. How do / would you normally say it? kee-NO-ah? kwee-NO-ah? KEE-no-ah? KWEE-no-ah? KEEN-wah? KWEEN-wah? keen-WAH? kween-WAH? (or? ) And apart from your own production of it, what pronunciations can you semi-statistically report from the mouths of others, grouped according to nationality or any other category? Do not feel … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » angel's touch

Monday 30 November 8:00:00 UTC 2015

When you are peeing or shitting and your dick touches the urinal / toilet where other dicks probably have been. I was shitting comfortably when suddenly my dick feels cold like an angel's touch. [Link]

languagehat.com » Repast.

Monday 30 November 1:07:30 UTC 2015

As a tribute to the great actress Setsuko Hara, who recently died after decades of seclusion, my brother watched her in the 1951 movie Repast (めし) and sent me this piece about it by Catherine Munroe Hotes; it has a linguistically interesting section which I’ll share here: If I were a teacher of Japanese, I could imagine using Naruse’s Meshi … [Link]

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