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

Omniglot blog » Language quiz

Sunday 5 March 12:49:57 UTC 2017

Here’s a recording in a mystery language. Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken? [Link]

Language Log » The shape of a LibriVox phrase

Sunday 5 March 10:53:09 UTC 2017

Here's what you get if you align 11 million words of English-language audiobooks with the associated texts, divide it all into phrases by breaking at silent pauses greater than 150 milliseconds, and average the word durations by position in phrases of lengths from one word to fifteen words: The audiobook sample in this case comes from LibriSpeech (see Vassil Panayotov … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » crumplesack

Sunday 5 March 8:00:00 UTC 2017

An individual who performs less than satisfactorily to the chagrin and sometimes amusement of his or her associates, crew, or squadron. The preflight crew forgot to leave water bottles on the jet for us? What a bunch of crumplesacks! [Link]

Language Log » Difficult languages and easy languages

Sunday 5 March 2:41:10 UTC 2017

People often ask me questions like these: What's the easiest / hardest language you ever learned? Isn't Chinese really difficult? Which is harder, Chinese or Japanese? Sanskrit or German? Without a moment's hesitation, I always reply that Mandarin is the easiest spoken language I have learned and that Chinese is the most difficult written language I have learned. I learned … [Link]

languagehat.com » So Pitted!

Sunday 5 March 2:06:45 UTC 2017

Brendan Leonard’s “The Unlikely Origins of Outdoor Slang” is not only a fun read, it’s based on actual evidence, which is refreshing in any piece on language in a popular periodical (in this case Outside). Leonard is up on recent discoveries, correctly pointing out in his opening paragraph that “dude” “started with, believe it or not, Yankee Doodle Dandy, then … [Link]

Archive