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 » Khevenhüller.

Wednesday 22 February 22:02:40 UTC 2017

I’m on the home stretch of Rieber’s The Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands (see this post), and in the course of reading up on the Great Eastern Crisis of 1875 and its consequences (which ultimately included the First World War and the entire last century’s worth of awfulness) I’ve run across items that satisfy my addiction to both long-forgotten, short-lived … [Link]

Language Log » New Yorker copy editors (probably) moving adverbs around

Wednesday 22 February 18:13:56 UTC 2017

In an article called "The increasingly lonely hope of Barack Obama," the The New Yorker showed that it belongs to the increasingly lonely class of educated people who still imagine that if they ever allowed an adjunct to separate infinitival to from the plain-form verb of the infinitival complement that it introduces, demons would break through the walls and floor … [Link]

Omniglot blog » Getting Past the Intermediate Plateau

Wednesday 22 February 13:51:13 UTC 2017

Today we have a guest post by Olly Richards of IWillTeachYouALanguage.com Behind The Scenes at the Fluent Spanish Academy If you’re starting to learn a new language, the internet is awash with advice and resources geared towards beginners. But as you make progress with your new language, and hit the dreaded intermediate plateau, it becomes more difficult to know exactly … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » Alt-Reich

Wednesday 22 February 8:30:00 UTC 2017

Alt-Reich: An Intentional play on the word "Altreich". which is an actual German word meaning Old Empire and can refer to Germany's pre-WWI territories or even it's territories as the Holy Roman Empire, i.e. the countries Hitler tried to take back. The Alt-Right's current message and tone very much resembles Hitler's infamous 3rd Reich, and thus in slang terms could … [Link]

languagehat.com » Ryukyu.

Wednesday 22 February 2:28:58 UTC 2017

In his Фрегат “Паллада” [The Frigate Pallada], Goncharov uses Ликейские острова for what are now called острова Рюкю, the Ryukyu Islands. I found the old name curious, and when Goncharov goes on to say “Что это такое Ликейские острова, или, как писали у нас в старых географиях, Лиеу-Киеу, или, как иностранцы называют их, Лю-чу (Loo-Choo), а по выговору жителей ‘Ду-чу”‘?” … [Link]

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