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

languagehat.com » Evliya Çelebi.

Tuesday 9 August 21:39:26 UTC 2016

A couple days ago it was J. D. Åkerblad, now it’s another of those multilingual, multifaceted travelers I occasionally encounter and can’t resist posting about: Edward White’s “Boon Companion” (at the Paris Review Daily) tells the tale of Evliya Çelebi and his Seyahatname. It begins: According to his own recollection, Evliya Çelebi, the seventeenth-century Turkish writer and traveler, experienced a … [Link]

Omniglot blog » When is a blog not a blog?

Tuesday 9 August 14:16:51 UTC 2016

When I meet people who are familiar with my website, some of them say how much they like my blog. When I ask them what they like about it, they mention things that are on my website, rather than on this blog, so I soon realise that they’re using the word blog to refer to my website, and possibly this … [Link]

Language Log » Roman-letter Mandarin pronoun of indeterminate gender

Tuesday 9 August 12:48:39 UTC 2016

From B JS: Some interesting uses of the Roman letter third person pronoun “TA” to sidestep genders associated with the characters tā 他 ("he") and tā 她 ("she"); it seems useful enough to perhaps become a permanent fixture in the language, in contrast to more faddish-seeming things like “duang” (see here and here). I kind of wish you could do … [Link]

Language Log » Shoots flaming balls with reports

Tuesday 9 August 10:06:51 UTC 2016

From Bill Benzon: "Flaming balls" and "reports" may very well be the standard technical terminology for the visual and auditory design features of roman candles. None of the rest of the visible text shows signs of translation problems. But still… [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » texas driver

Tuesday 9 August 9:01:15 UTC 2016

a driver that is all over your rear bumper if you drive the speed limit. Damn I'm driving the speed limit and that texas driver behind me is all over my rear bumper! [Link]

languagehat.com » Movies Featuring Linguists, Linguistics and Languages.

Tuesday 9 August 0:24:07 UTC 2016

At Language Crawler (“Crawling the Internet for news, books, videos & resources about languages & linguistics for linguaphiles, polyglots, and language lovers”): 25 Must-See Movies Featuring Linguists, Linguistics and Languages. “Must-See” is, of course, clickbaitese (as I dimly recall, Stargate is barely worth seeing at all), but it’s certainly an interesting list, and I highly recommend Ball of Fire, featuring … [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.