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

Language Log » Beyond fluff

Sunday 19 March 22:24:42 UTC 2017

Video from this article by Anthony Kuhn on the NPR Parallels blog: "For Years, I've Been A Correspondent In China. This Month, I Became A Viral Star" (3/18/17) https://ondemand.npr.org/npr-mp4/np~ Also available on Weibo here. After speaking in Mandarin, Kuhn at first hands the microphone over to a Chinese interpreter who was going to translate his remarks into English, but then … [Link]

Omniglot blog » Language quiz

Sunday 19 March 9:00:43 UTC 2017

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

Urban Word of the Day » presidential comb over

Sunday 19 March 7:00:00 UTC 2017

When the president deals with a problem by sweeping it under the rug. Trump is dealing with the problem of his ties to Russia by giving it a presidential comb over. [Link]

Language Log » Court fight over Oxford commas and asyndetic lists

Sunday 19 March 5:28:20 UTC 2017

Language Log often weighs in when courts try to nail down the meaning of a statute. Laws are written in natural language—though one might long, by formalization, to end the thousand natural ambiguities that text is heir to—and thus judges are forced to play linguist. Happily, this week's "case in the news" is one where the lawyers managed to identify … [Link]

languagehat.com » Dictionary of Canadianisms Online.

Sunday 19 March 1:00:42 UTC 2017

A decade ago I posted about the project to revise the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, whose first edition appeared in 1967. The revised second edition is now online here, free for anyone to access. As Dave Wilton says at Wordorigins.org (where I learned about it): The new edition not only includes words that have appeared since 1967, the … [Link]

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