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 » Still waiting
My operation didn’t take place yesterday, but it might just happen today. I’ve been through the pre-op checklist and talked to the surgeon and anesthetist. They said they will try to fit me in today, but cannot guarantee it. I’m feeling very tired, hungry and thirsty as I didn’t sleep well last night, and haven’t had anything to eat or … [Link]
Language Log » Electric sheep
A couple of recent LLOG posts ("What a tangled web they weave", "A long short-term memory of Gertrude Stein") have illustrated the strange and amusing results that Google's current machine translation system can produce when fed variable numbers of repetitions of meaningless letter sequences in non-Latin orthographic systems. Geoff Pullum has urged me to explain how and why this sort … [Link]
Urban Word of the Day » ghost beer
When you inadvertently reach for a beer that does not exist.Usually seen when sitting in your favorite chair while watching your favorite sport or tv show. "Did you see that, I totally reached for my ghost beer""man, I need another round…I can't stop ghost beering"
[Link]
Language Log » Jesus is good, beef noodles are good, and so is money
From a Twitter account: 
The four big characters say: yǒu qián zhēn hǎo 有錢真好 It's really good to have money Above the large, red characters is a list of dishes served by the establishment. They are mostly one or another kind of beef noodles. The notice under the DIY inside the red star asks customers to clean up themselves after … [Link]
languagehat.com » Dipping into Fallon.
Everybody knows (I hope) about the great Hobson-Jobson; R Devraj has posted at Dick & Garlick about another “great glossary of the colonial era,” S. W. Fallon’s A New Hindustani-English Dictionary (1879): Fallon took up the language of north India in the late 19th century as his field of study, the common colloquial speech which was then being thrust out … [Link]
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.
You must log in to post a comment.