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

Wordorigins.org » American Dialect Society Word of the Year (ADS WOTY)

Saturday 7 January 15:21:00 UTC 2017

The American Dialect Society (ADS) has decided upon its Word of the Year for 2016 and that word is dumpster fire, meaning “an exceedingly disastrous or chaotic situation.” The term was commonly heard in reference to last year’s presidential election. It won in a run-off vote against woke, an African-American slang term that has been making its way into white … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » Tweetplomacy

Saturday 7 January 8:07:32 UTC 2017

Noun. Using social media sites such as Twitter to manage foreign relations and conduct diplomatic discussions publicly. The new President's tweetplomacy may be transparent domestically, but it could also ruffle feathers abroad. [Link]

Language Log » Abandoning one's mother tongue

Saturday 7 January 3:53:28 UTC 2017

It's one thing to lose your first language when you move as a child to another country where a second language is spoken, but it's quite a different matter when you go to another country as an adult and make a conscious choice to give up your native tongue and adopt the language of the place you have chosen to … [Link]

languagehat.com » Automatic Speech Recognition for Low-Resource Languages.

Saturday 7 January 1:16:42 UTC 2017

Maeve Reilly writes about an interesting initiative: For those who speak English, or another language that is prevalent in First World nations, Siri or other voice recognition programs do a pretty good job of providing the information wanted. However, for people who speak a “low-resource” language—one of more than 99 percent of the world’s languages—automatic speech recognition (ASR) programs aren’t … [Link]

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