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 » I (don't) doubt that the letter is fake
Somebody just sent me a note that begins, "I don’t doubt that the letter is fake…". From the context, I'm sure that the person who wrote the message to me is of the opinion that the letter is NOT fake. Perhaps he is using the word "doubt" in the sense of "suspect". Chinese do that all the time when they … [Link]
Language Log » A long short-term memory of Gertrude Stein
As just observed ("What a tangled web they weave"), successive repetitions of short sequences of Japanese, Korean, Thai (and perhaps other types of) characters cause Google's Neural Machine Translation system to generate surprisingly varied and poetic English equivalents. Thus if we repeat 1 through 25 times the two-character Thai sequence ไๅ |ไ| 0x0E44 "THAI CHARACTER SARA AI MAIMALAI" |ๅ| 0x0E45 … [Link]
Language Log » How not to learn Chinese
In "Sinological suffering" (3/31/17), "Aphantasia — absence of the mind's eye" (3/24/17), and other recent posts, we examined the difficulty, for some the near impossibility, of mastering how to write hundreds and thousands of Chinese characters. Yet, if one wishes to become literate in Chinese, one simply must do it. Until the 21st century, there was basically only one way: … [Link]
languagehat.com » DECEARING EGG!
Mark Liberman’s latest Log post features an amazing aspect of Google Translate; watch the brief video and enjoy the comments exploring it. As commenter كتشف said, “I think this rabbit hole goes on forever.” [Link]
Wordorigins.org » fiscal, procurator-fiscal
I have been watching Shetland lately, a police procedural set, obviously, on the Shetland Islands. One of the words that keeps popping up is fiscal. The detectives talk of referring matters to the fiscal or someone has to fly to Aberdeen to meet with the fiscal office. At first I thought it was just a reference to monetary matters—after all … [Link]
Wordorigins.org » procurator-fiscal, fiscal
See fiscal [Link]
Omniglot blog » Multilingual hospital
The staff and patients in the hospital are from many different places and speak a variety of languages. Yesterday I overheard a consultation involving a man from Afghanistan who spoke no English, so his relatives were interpreting. I couldn’t tell if he was speaking Dari or Pashto or another language, as I’m not familiar with languages from that region. When … [Link]
Omniglot blog » Language quiz
Here’s a recording of part of a song in a mystery language. Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken? [Link]
Urban Word of the Day » rabbit fuck
during intercourse, to hump as fast as you can, like it's a race to bust a nut.. as if you don't care about the other person, you're just here for you. guy 1: "HAHAH YOU HAD SEX WITH JESSICA? EWWW!" guy 2: "shut up dude, rabbit fuck" guy 1: "oh."
[Link]
Language Log » What a tangled web they weave
…when neural nets are recursive: Some other recursively induced hallucinations — ュース repeated gives successively: Juice News Auspicious Hooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Yooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Yu Susui Suu Suu Su Yu Susui Suu Suu Suu Su Susui Suu Suu Suu Suu Su Susui Suu Suu Suu Suu Suu Su Susui Suu Suu Suu Suu Suu Suu Su Susuue with the airport It is a good … [Link]
languagehat.com » Kerry Accent Again.
I know we just recently enjoyed the distinctive Kerry accent, but I can’t resist bringing you this RTE News story about farmer Mikey Joe O’Shea, who is upset about the theft of some of his sheep. (Don’t bother making “Ewe-ro” jokes; Twitter is way ahead of you.) Thanks, Trevor! [Link]
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