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

Language Log » The Universal Apocrypha of Linguistics and Verbal Ordnance

Wednesday 10 February 22:30:56 UTC 2016

The first panel from today's Girl Genius refers to Traubhünd's Universal Apocrypha of Linguistics and Verbal Ordnance: …better known these days as the Oxford English Dictionary… [Link]

languagehat.com » Winnie-the-Pooh in Caucasian Languages.

Wednesday 10 February 21:04:08 UTC 2016

This YouTube video (four and a half minutes) has Winnie-the-Pooh’s song (Russian lyrics here) in Avar, Ossetian, Darghin, Kumyk, Lak, Lezghin, and Tatar (and at the end, for good measure, English, German, and Russian). Fun! (Via Steven Lubman’s Facebook post.) Update. And here‘s a four-minute clip of Winnie in Chechen! [Link]

Omniglot blog » A not entirely uninteresting post

Wednesday 10 February 16:52:09 UTC 2016

The title of this post is perhaps an example of litotes [laɪˈtəʊ.tiːz], a figure of speech that uses understatement, particularly double negatives, to make a positive statement [source]. Other examples include: – I didn’t do too badly in the test – It’s a bit chilly – He’s not a bad guitarist Litotes comes from the Ancient Greek λιτότης ‎(litótēs), from … [Link]

languagehat.com » Doublet Compound Name Request.

Wednesday 10 February 14:01:51 UTC 2016

A reader writes: I’d like to know whether there is a linguistics term for a compound made up of two doublets. I suspect the phenomenon is so rare – the only unforced example I can think of in English is “head chef” – that no-one’s ever seen the need for a term. But I’d love to have this confirmed. (I’ve … [Link]

Language Log » Pussy and pusillanimous

Wednesday 10 February 9:12:40 UTC 2016

Email yesterday from P.O.: Professor Liberman, we need you. You're no doubt aware of Trump's recent comment, quoting a supporter. But now TPM has gone and printed a reader email linking 'pussy' to pusillanimous'. I had never heard this before, and I'm fairly well-read. I did some google-sleuthing, and found that it has clearly been claimed in the past to … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » fake it for the gram

Wednesday 10 February 8:00:00 UTC 2016

When you fake a picture to get likes on Instagram I saw a dope Ferrari so I took a picture and had to fake it for the gram. [Link]

languagehat.com » OCS and Old Irish Online.

Wednesday 10 February 1:06:24 UTC 2016

I hope I haven’t posted this before, but it’s good enough it deserves a repeat if I have: the Linguistics Research Center at the University of Texas has “thousands of web pages, most of them devoted to ancient Indo-European languages and cultures”; Paul sent me their links for Old Church Slavonic and Old Irish, and they’re just terrific — if … [Link]

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