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 » Thou Shalt.
I imagine a lot of Hatters already know about the “Wicked Bible” of 1631, which (unfortunately for the printer) included the commandment “Thou shalt commit adultery.” But it’s still worth reading this Priceonomics account, which is lively and full of interesting details; my favorite is this timeless rant by the Archbishop of Canterbury, “who’d been disgraced and criticized as a … [Link]
Wordorigins.org » ADS Word of the Year for 2015
Meeting in Austin, Texas this week, the American Dialect Society gave the nod to the singular they as its Word of the Year for 2015. The group, which has its members those who study how English is used in North America, also dubbed the singular they as the Most Useful word for the past year. [Link]
Language Log » Correlated lexicometrical decay
This is a brief progress report on "The case of the disappearing determiners", which I've continue to poke at in my spare time. As the red line in the plot below shows, the proportion of nouns immediately preceded by THE decreased over the course of the 20th century, from an average of 18.9% for books published in 1900-1910 to 13.5% … [Link]
World Wide Words: Updates » New online: Peradventure
An unusual word, 'peradventure' has nothing to do with adventures. [Link]
World Wide Words: Updates » New online: Sconce
'Sconce' has many meanings, of strange and puzzling origins. [Link]
World Wide Words: Updates » New online: Orchidelirium
'Orchidelirium' or orchid mania is said to be nineteenth-century; it isn't. [Link]
World Wide Words: Updates » New online: Words of the Year 2015
Various organisations choose their words of 2015. [Link]
Urban Word of the Day » bitchplosion
an explosion of bitchiness when someone/something pushes you so far that you just bitchplode "Dude… I was just joking and then she just had a massiv bitchplosion"
[Link]
Language Log » ADS Word of the Year is singular "they"
At the American Dialect Society annual meeting in Washington, D.C. (held in conjunction with the Linguistic Society of America), the 2015 Word of the Year selection has been made. The winner is they used as a gender-neutral singular pronoun. They was recognized by the society particularly for its emerging use as a pronoun to refer to a known person, often … [Link]
languagehat.com » Unau.
I ran across this word in my New Great Russian-English Dictionary, where I happened to notice (near the bottom of p. 2912) this entry: уна́у m indecl zool unau, two-towed sloth (Choloepus didactylus). First, of course, I was amused by the “two-towed”; then I wondered about the word. The OED entry is from 1921: Pronunciation: Brit. /ˈjuːnɔː/ , U.S. /ˈjʊˌnaʊ/ … [Link]
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