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

languagehat.com » Language and Identity.

Sunday 17 April 14:13:04 UTC 2016

Rebecca Tan’s “Accent Adaptation” (“On sincerity, spontaneity, and the distance between Singlish and English”) is an interesting account by a college student of her struggle with adapting her Singaporean style of speech to American norms: Every international student will surely find this idea of performance familiar. The most difficult thing about speaking in a foreign country isn’t adopting a new … [Link]

Language Log » Trump® brand insults

Sunday 17 April 13:41:28 UTC 2016

The first two panels of today's Doonesbury: Previous coverage of this issue: "The Trump Insult Haiku", 2/29/2016; "Trump reviews", 3/17/2016. [Link]

Language Log » I'unno

Sunday 17 April 13:06:52 UTC 2016

Today's Dumbing of Age: I recognize the pronunciation represented by "I'unno", I think — it involves lenition of the intervocalic /d/ to the point where there's no actual tongue-to-palate contact, though (at least in my productions) I think there's still a desultory wave of the tongue in the general direction of a consonant. I'unno if there's an appropriate IPA symbol… … [Link]

Language Log » Ask Language Log: German restaurant-name zum?

Sunday 17 April 12:53:35 UTC 2016

From Aaron Powell: I woke last night with a minor bout of food poisoning and spent some time catching up on Language Log to distract myself ,and it occurred to me that you might be able to explain a German linguistic phenomenon that I don’t understand. I have recently moved from the USA to Vienna, Austria and I’ve noticed several … [Link]

Language Log » More about UM/UH on the Autism Spectrum

Sunday 17 April 11:15:48 UTC 2016

At a workshop in June, a group of us will be presenting a report that includes this graph: The x axis is the relative frequency of "filled pauses" UM and UH, from 0% to 8%, and the y axis is the proportion of filled pauses that are UM, from 0% to 100%. The individual plotting characters represent values from transcripts … [Link]

Omniglot blog » Language quiz

Sunday 17 April 10:17:59 UTC 2016

Here’s a recording in a mystery language. Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken? [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » Baby sauce

Sunday 17 April 7:00:00 UTC 2016

Cum, semen whatever you call it when you nut This girl I'm messing with wanted some uggs. I told her before that happened she had to swallow all the baby sauce [Link]

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