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

Language Log » Voice recognition for English and Mandarin typing revisited

Tuesday 30 August 19:36:08 UTC 2016

In "Voice recognition for English and Mandarin typing " (8/24/16), we took a brief look at a Stanford-University of Washington-Baidu study that showed, according to an NPR article, that voice recognition finally beat humans at typing. The title of the original study is "Speech Is 3x Faster than Typing for English and Mandarin Text Entry on Mobile Devices", and the … [Link]

Language Log » Clueless Microsoft language processing

Tuesday 30 August 19:29:55 UTC 2016

A rather poetic and imaginative abstract I received in my email this morning (it's about a talk on computational aids for composers), contains the following sentence: We will metaphorically drop in on Wolfgang composing at home in the morning, at an orchestra rehearsal in the afternoon, and find him unwinding in the evening playing a spot of the new game … [Link]

languagehat.com » The Lying Whale.

Tuesday 30 August 14:23:09 UTC 2016

I ran across a reference in a Russian passage to “Тау Кита,” and immediately recognized it as the nearby star Tau Ceti. I thought with amusement “Hey, Кита [kita] is a lot like Ceti!” and then did a classic double-take: of course it is — both the Russian and Latin words are borrowed from Greek κῆτος ‘whale’! (By the time … [Link]

Language Log » "I don't think you cannot deny someone the right"

Tuesday 30 August 11:59:21 UTC 2016

Jamison Hensley, "Ravens' John Harbaugh defends Colin Kaepernick's right to protest anthem", ESPN sports 8/29/2016: Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh said Monday that he respects Colin Kaepernick's right to protest the national anthem and cited a French Enlightenment philosopher in doing so. "Voltaire so eloquently stated, 'I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend it until death … [Link]

Omniglot blog » Could you care less?

Tuesday 30 August 11:29:55 UTC 2016

Which sounds right to you? – I couldn’t care less about sport. – I could care less about sport. To me the first makes sense and sounds right. It also applies to me – I have no real interest in sport. So I couldn’t care any less about it, because I don’t care about it at all. The second one … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » orophilia

Tuesday 30 August 7:09:02 UTC 2016

oral sex. They are vigorously involved in orophilia. [Link]

languagehat.com » Japanese Ship Names.

Tuesday 30 August 0:21:19 UTC 2016

Joel of Far Outliers is posting excerpts from Japanese Destroyer Captain , by Tameichi Hara (Naval Institute Press, 2013 reprint of a 1961 translation), and I thought this discussion of ship names was interesting enough to repost: Names of Japanese ships must sound strange to foreign readers. Many Westerners during the Pacific War called a Japanese ship “Maru.” It must be … [Link]

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