John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons

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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 » Dangerfield.

Friday 18 November 18:40:03 UTC 2016

As a distant and occasional fan of the UConn Huskies‎ women’s basketball team since the ’80s (I am otherwise not a basketball fan, and I don’t actually watch their games, but I take pleasure in their successes), I noticed the name of a freshman on their current team, Crystal Dangerfield, who scored 19 points last night. The only other association … [Link]

Omniglot blog » A Piece of Theatre

Friday 18 November 16:52:38 UTC 2016

An photo from the Ballet Lorent production of Snow White, which I saw in Bangor last week In French the word for play, as in a theatrical production, is pièce or pièce de théâtre. Pièce also means: – a room – a part (of a mechanism or machine) – a coin – a patch (on clothes) – a document – a piece, as in a one-piece swimsuit or a twelve-piece dinner service. The word pièce comes from … [Link]

Language Log » "Thank you for your contribution"

Friday 18 November 16:28:08 UTC 2016

Yesterday evening I wound up spending several hours in the Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires, and the result was a brilliant idea. Or maybe an idle fantasy — you decide. I found a comfortable place to sit, and was struggling with a large Excel spreadsheet that resisted being recast into a form accessible to more civilized programming, due to embedded … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » manmansplaining

Friday 18 November 9:11:26 UTC 2016

When a man mansplains what "mansplaining" means. And, I was, like, O.M.G., you're totally manmansplaining the meaning of mansplaining to me. [Link]

languagehat.com » The First Great Arabic Novel.

Friday 18 November 1:49:08 UTC 2016

Unfortunately, Robyn Creswell’s NYRB review (from October of last year) of Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq’s Leg Over Leg is available in full only to subscribers, but I’ll quote a few salient bits here: Published in Paris in 1855, Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq’s Leg Over Leg is often called the first novel written in Arabic. […] Born to a Christian family in an … [Link]

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