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 » Pavilion.

Tuesday 20 December 22:00:14 UTC 2016

I’m in the middle of Norman Rush’s novel Mating , which jamessal gave me a couple years ago, and am enjoying the unreliable narrator and her unreliable higher education (to which she desperately clings, tossing in the occasional “id est” or French word just to show she’s nobody’s fool). I got a particular chuckle from her talking about “the neighbor pharisee … [Link]

Language Log » He comfortable! He quickly dry!

Tuesday 20 December 21:59:58 UTC 2016

A neighbor of mine, a respectable woman retired from medical practice, set a number of friends of hers a one-question quiz this week. The puzzle was to identify an item she recently purchased, based solely on what was stated on the tag attached to it. The tag said this (I reproduce it carefully, preserving the strange punctuation, line breaks, capitalization, … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » rectoral college

Tuesday 20 December 8:00:00 UTC 2016

Body of assholes who assemble every four years to confirm chief executive asshole. The rectoral college was totally wiped out after a marathon session. [Link]

Language Log » The hippo bottom of us

Tuesday 20 December 4:32:53 UTC 2016

One of the most successful weekly essays I wrote in an early sixties college class on modern English poetry was about T. S. Eliot's "The Hippopotamus", the first two (out of nine) stanzas of which read thus: THE BROAD-BACKED hippopotamus Rests on his belly in the mud; Although he seems so firm to us He is merely flesh and blood. … [Link]

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