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

Language Log » Totally Word Mapper

Friday 29 January 19:55:36 UTC 2016

Jack Grieve Twitter-based Word Mapper (see "Geolexicography", 1/27/2016) is now available as a web app — like totally: Or in terms of local frequency: I mean, literally: You know, like What does it mean? Um… …it's obvious, right? Two small criticisms — First, it seems that the underlying wordlist is somewhat prescriptive as to spelling, so that things like "betcha" … [Link]

Omniglot blog » Awakening forgotten languages

Friday 29 January 17:30:53 UTC 2016

Last night at ukulele club there was a new member from Spain, and I talked a bit with her in Spanish. It’s a long time since I’ve studied any Spanish, and I rarely use it these days, so I thought I’d forgotten most of it, but I found that I can still have a basic conversation, even if I make … [Link]

Language Log » Strong language

Friday 29 January 16:41:03 UTC 2016

I have no context for this photo, but the character on the car and sign behind make the situation pretty obvious. Courtesy of Josh Ellis on Facebook, via Michael Cannings on Twitter: The vertical sign on the door in the background reads: sīrén tǔdì qǐng wù tíngchē 私人土地請勿停車 ("private land; please do not park") The single large character spray painted … [Link]

languagehat.com » Butterfly Redux.

Friday 29 January 14:57:28 UTC 2016

Back in 2003 I posted about the many and varied words for ‘butterfly’ in the world’s languages; I’m pleased to see the subject has come up again in Victor Mair’s latest Log post. Mair starts off by mentioning an absurd attempt to make butterfly equal “butter” + “shit” (as I started off with an absurd account of “cognate borrowing” by … [Link]

Language Log » N Cultures

Friday 29 January 10:35:26 UTC 2016

From Jason Eisner, a diagram of "The Three Cultures of Machine Learning": Jason cites Leo Breiman, "Statistical Modeling: The Two Cultures", Statistical Science 2001, and also mentions the "three competing philosophies" in Bradley Efron, "R. A. Fisher in the 21st century", Statistical Science 1998. But the idea of distinguishing small integer numbers of cultures in some intellectual domain seems to … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » Icicle Fingers

Friday 29 January 8:00:00 UTC 2016

When your fingers are so cold texting is almost impossible. Guy: Hyey hoe are yiu doing? Guy 2: What? Guy: Sorry man I got icicle fingers [Link]

languagehat.com » Arabic Listening Resources In All Dialects.

Friday 29 January 1:23:27 UTC 2016

Donovan Nagel posts at Mezzoguild: I often say that the hardest part about learning a language like Arabic is not the speaking. Speaking can be picked up pretty quickly believe it or not (made even easier by amazing sites like italki that connect you with Arabic speakers). The hardest part about Arabic is actually learning to listen – training your … [Link]

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