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 » Eliot Weinberger on Chinese Poetry.

Monday 19 December 22:31:13 UTC 2016

Perry Link has an excellent NYRB review of two books by Eliot Weinberger, 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei (with More Ways) and The Ghosts of Birds . The first presents a four-line poem by Wang Wei in Chinese characters, in a transliteration into modern Mandarin, in a character-by-character literal translation, and in thirty-four ways translators have tried to put … [Link]

Language Log » Adjective foods

Monday 19 December 17:33:44 UTC 2016

Today's xkcd: Mouseover title: "Contains 100% of your recommended daily allowance!" See "Modification as social anxiety", 5/16/2004. And also [Link]

Language Log » Central European incomprehensibility

Monday 19 December 16:14:31 UTC 2016

From Nikola Gotovac: Today I was introduced to the web page "The directed graph of stereotypical incomprehensibility". There is one quite common misconception about Croatian language on that graph (and similar languages – Slovenian, Serbian, and Bosnian). To be more precise, the expression "it is all spanish village to me" is actually mis-translated to english, since the saying is "to … [Link]

Language Log » Straight man cancer

Monday 19 December 10:45:39 UTC 2016

In "Last new term of the year in China" (12/16/16), we encountered a very recent neologism in Chinese: hánzhàoliàng 含赵量 ("Zhaoness") (220,000 ghits). The expression we examine in this post — zhínán ái 直男癌 ("straight man cancer") — has been around a bit longer, for at least a couple of years, and circulates even more widely, with 1,830,000 ghits. The … [Link]

languagehat.com » Stepun.

Monday 19 December 0:48:41 UTC 2016

I was browsing my Russian edition (Русские фамилии, Moscow: Progress, 1995) of Unbegaun’s Russian Surnames , looking at the section of Russian names of German origin, when I hit a passage that listed particularly opaque ones: Багговут [Baggovút] (Baggehufwudt, ultimately of Swedish origin) Дервиз [Dérviz] (von der Wiese) Поганков [Pogánkov] (Pagenkampf) Сиверсов [Síversov] (Sievers) Фамендин [Faméndin] (von Mengden) Фонвизин [Fonvízin] (von … [Link]

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