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 » From Chickenman to Eagleton.

Friday 13 May 21:04:17 UTC 2016

I’ve barely begun reading Michael S. Gorham’s 2003 Speaking in Soviet Tongues: Language Culture and the Politics of Voice in Revolutionary Russia (which incorporates his article “Mastering the Perverse: State Building and Language ‘Purification’ in Early Soviet Russia,” discussed in this 2008 post), and I’m already hooked — it’s one of those dense books whose every page provides material to … [Link]

Language Log » Ted Chiang uninvents Chinese characters

Friday 13 May 17:00:40 UTC 2016

Yesterday morning on the commute to Penn, I was intrigued by a series of six articles in the latest New Yorker (5/16/16) that appeared under the rubric "Uninvent this": Mary Karr on high heels, Charlie Brooker on dancing, Carrie Brownstein on conference calls, Lee Child on fiction, Alexandra Kleeman on mirrors…. When I reached the sixth and last one, I … [Link]

Language Log » Xy McXface

Friday 13 May 13:47:50 UTC 2016

Yesterday Google announced the open-source release of SyntaxNet, an open-source neural network framework implemented in TensorFlow that provides a foundation for Natural Language Understanding (NLU) systems. Our release includes all the code needed to train new SyntaxNet models on your own data, as well as Parsey McParseface, an English parser that we have trained for you and that you can … [Link]

Language Log » The shape of things to come?

Friday 13 May 12:37:55 UTC 2016

Writing about Donald Trump's language, Ben MacIntyre ("Trump’s cleverest trick is sounding stupid", The Times 5/13/2016) brings in the usual suspects: Basic English, Flesch-Kincaid readability, "bigly". He starts this way: In 1930, the English linguist CK Ogden invented a pared down, simplified form of language as a tool for teaching English as a second tongue. His “Basic English” included a … [Link]

Language Log » Democracy is not chicken nuggets

Friday 13 May 11:53:42 UTC 2016

Kyle Gorman stumbled upon something strange happening to the Wikipedia article on "List of blacklisted keywords in China". The first item under "General concepts" is mínzhǔ 民主 , which means "democracy". However, what Kyle saw there as the definition yesterday was "chicken nuggets". After he told me about it, I went there and saw the same thing: "chicken nuggets". I … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » Refriend

Friday 13 May 7:00:00 UTC 2016

To pass your old hoe to one of your friends. No bro don't unfriend her, just refriend her to me, so I can smash. [Link]

Language Log » New Singaporean and Hong Kong terms in the OED

Friday 13 May 0:12:34 UTC 2016

"The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) added 19 Singaporean terms and 13 Hong Kong terms in its latest update." So reports BBC News in "Singapore terms join Oxford English Dictionary" (5/12/16) Here are the lists: Singapore: ang moh blur char siu chilli crab Chinese helicopter hawker centre HDB killer litter lepak, n. lepak, v. lepaking shiok sabo, n. sabo, v. sabo … [Link]

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