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 » No such thing
A Reuters article of March 30, 2017 has the title " China says 'no such thing' as man-made islands in South China Sea". Upon reading this headline, the world asked, "Have the Chinese gone completely out of their mind?" For the last couple of years, we have watched China building these bases at a feverish pace, and they have been … [Link]
Language Log » "I leaked nothing to nobody"
From Susan Rice's interview today with Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC, an interesting example of emphatic multiple negation: Your browser does not support the audio element. I leaked nothing to nobody, and never have and never would. Filling in the verb-phrase ellipsis might give us "I never have leaked nothing to nobody" — though maybe not, since the elided material is … [Link]
Omniglot blog » Abounding in fish
I spent the weekend in Devon with my brother and his family. It was my nephew’s first birthday yesterday and I was there mainly to celebrate that. My journey, a long and meadering one, took me through some places with interesting names, such as Exeter, Teignmouth, Dawlish and Paignton. As well as admiring the scenery, I started wondering about the … [Link]
Language Log » Blasphemous
From Senator Maria Cantwell's Facebook wall: Any attempt to say that Judge Gorsuch is not anything but overly qualified for this job is blasphemous. Misnegation, or not? The layered uses of any make the calculation harder. According to my calculations, Kim is anything but happy → Kim is unhappy. Kim is not anything but happy → Kim is happy. Any … [Link]
Language Log » Hell of slow
From today's Scary Go Round: 
So is "hell of" a British re-/mis- interpretation of hella? Or an older, independent usage? Or even hella's secret source? The OED's earliest citation for hella as an intensifier of adjectives is from 1991: 1991 E. Currie Dope & Trouble ii. vii. 162 There's a lot of people out there that are hella smart, they … [Link]
Wordorigins.org » CMOS and the Singular They
The Chicago Manual of Style, one of the major academic style guides in the US, is inching their way toward acceptance of the singular they, that is the use of they to refer to a singular antecedent when the gender of the antecedent is unknown, generic, or non-binary. The University of Chicago Press is publishing the seventeenth edition of their … [Link]
Urban Word of the Day » Street Creep
1. A new perjorative term for Wall Street executives who raked in huge bonuses while plunging the world into economic chaos. 2. A financial advisor who sells Wall Street products on commission. Did you see the news? Those Street Creeps are taking a private jet to Aruba using our bailout money.
[Link]
languagehat.com » Johann Kaspar Zeuss and Grammatica Celtica.
Charles Dillon, editor of the Foclóir Stairiúil Gaeilge [Historical Dictionary of Irish], writes (for the Royal Irish Academy’s library blog) about Johann Kaspar Zeuss (1806-1856), whose magnum opus Grammatica Celtica (1853) “established incontrovertibly through the study of Old Irish sources the relationship of the Celtic languages to the Indo-European family”: This was the age of ‘Celtomania’, a phenomenon which for … [Link]
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