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 » Bumble-puppy.

Thursday 4 February 18:57:22 UTC 2016

I’ve just finished Maugham’s Ashenden stories (see this thread), and in the last one I found a word even better than Tingel-tangel: “Oh, come off it. Templeton isn’t the sort of chap to play bumble-puppy bridge with a girl like that unless he’s getting something out of it, and she knows a thing or two, I bet.” Bumble-puppy bridge! Of … [Link]

Language Log » The year of the Golden Monkey is truly excellent

Thursday 4 February 18:18:09 UTC 2016

Time for Chinese New Year celebrations. This is the year of the Monkey. In this article from the online China Times, the customary couplet (it's more of a singlet in this case) on red paper features an interlingual pun: the characters 金猴 ("golden monkey"), when read in Mandarin, are pronounced jīn hóu, which is a near homophone for the Taiwanese … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » handcestors

Thursday 4 February 8:00:00 UTC 2016

HANDCESTORS, all the ancestors never to be born due to male masturbation. I wiped those handcestors off on a dirty sock. [Link]

Language Log » Escalator smarts

Thursday 4 February 2:51:50 UTC 2016

From my files (sorry that the photograph is not in perfect focus): qǐng wù nìxiàng xíngzǒu 请勿逆向行走 ("please don't walk in the opposite direction") The Chinese on the sign is clear, but neither the English nor the illustration makes much sense. The English, though ungrammatical and unidiomatic, is slightly more intelligible than the prohibition sign, which seems to be telling … [Link]

Language Log » More sound-loan Taiwanese

Thursday 4 February 2:47:02 UTC 2016

Michael Cannings sent in this photograph: (Source) The product for sale at 29 yuan per catty is not gānmā 乾媽 ("godmother" in Mandarin) but rather kam-á 柑仔 ("tangerine" in Taiwanese). They have borrowed the Mandarin near-homophone gānmā 乾媽 ("godmother") to write the Taiwanese kam-á 柑仔 ("tangerine"). Heaven forbid that one should say or think gànmā 幹媽 ("'do' [your] mother") when … [Link]

languagehat.com » Finnegans Wake Is a Hit in China.

Thursday 4 February 1:37:01 UTC 2016

This news is three years old, but I just learned of it, and it’s still of interest; Jonathan Kaiman in the Guardian reports: After spending eight years translating the first third of James Joyce’s famously opaque novel Finnegans Wake into Chinese, Dai Congrong assumed it was a labour of love rather than money. The book’s language is thick with multilingual … [Link]

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