John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons

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Language Stuff

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 » baseball

Tuesday 7 March 13:48:01 UTC 2017

When examining the origins of a word one must be careful to distinguish between the word and the thing itself. The origin of the word is often quite different from the origin of the thing that it represents. Such is the case with baseball. In this case the word is much older than the game we today know by that … [Link]

Language Log » A stick with which to beat other women with

Tuesday 7 March 12:04:31 UTC 2017

There have been dozens of articles in the news recently about Emma Watson's Vanity Fair photo shoot, the reaction to it, and her reaction to the reaction. For example, Cherry Wilson, "Is Emma Watson anti-feminist for exposing her breasts?", BBC News 3/6/2017; or Jessica Samakow, "26 Tweets Prove #WhatFeministsWear Is ‘Anything They F*cking Want’", Huffington Post 3/6/2017; or Travis Andrews, … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » reality challenged

Tuesday 7 March 8:00:00 UTC 2017

(adj.) being in a state in which one is utterly and completely unable to distinguish fact from fiction, and is thus obviously and undeniably full of shit. Most politicians are reality challenged. So are a number of attorneys, as well as most people living in Hollywood. To use it in a sentence: "That guy is SO reality challenged… that he … [Link]

languagehat.com » Patrick Findler in Siberia.

Tuesday 7 March 0:17:45 UTC 2017

I imagine there are few LH readers who remember the posts from the early days in which I linked to the wonderful travel blog the mysterious pf kept during his wanderings in Russia (a blog, alas, which has long disappeared from human ken — I mourn it frequently). Well, pf has come out into the open as Patrick Findler, an … [Link]

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