John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons

John Gordon Ross header image 3

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 » Spelling with Chinese character(istic)s

Thursday 16 June 20:39:21 UTC 2016

Michael Meng, China curator at the Yale University Library, discovered several rare books in Yale's Medical Historical Library that provide important evidence for the development of phoneticization of Chinese characters in the transcription of country names and personal names of foreigners. The books are by Thomas Staunton (1781-1859), son of George Staunton (1737-1801), who was George Macartney's (1737-1806) right-hand man … [Link]

languagehat.com » High Tea.

Thursday 16 June 15:21:22 UTC 2016

Syntinen Laulu posted this question at Wordorigins.org: I can’t find that this has been discussed here before: in what sense is high tea ‘high’? This puzzled me when I was a child, and I’ve never heard it convincingly explained. Dave Wilton, who runs the site, gave what is apparently the best answer that can be given: The OED provides no … [Link]

Language Log » Start by logging on to this computer

Thursday 16 June 13:45:04 UTC 2016

Nerdview enthusiasts: My colleague Mits Ota pointed out to me today that the helpful instructions in a recording studio at the University of Edinburgh, which are presented as the wallpaper screen background on the Macintosh computer through which you control the recording equipment, state that the first thing you have to do to get started is to log on to … [Link]

Language Log » "Ask the gays"

Thursday 16 June 10:37:27 UTC 2016

In a speech yesterday, Donald Trump reacted to the Orlando massacre by suggesting that his audience should "ask the gays, and ask the people, ask the gays what they think and what they do": Your browser does not support the audio element. The predictable reaction was a twitter storm of memetic responses, of which this is one of the milder … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » sexual equinox

Thursday 16 June 7:00:00 UTC 2016

It's the point in your life at which your age matches your number of sexual partners Dude I just had an amazing weekend.Why? What happened?I hit my sexual equinox.Bro, that's amazing, especially at 45. [Link]

Archive

No Comments

0 responses so far ↓

  • There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.

You must log in to post a comment.