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
languagehat.com » The Last Bridge.
Working my way through Tsvetaeva’s collected poems, I’ve gotten to 1924 and the astonishing sequence Поэма конца [Poem of the end] she wrote for Konstantin Rodzevich, an unremarkable young man “with strikingly pink cheeks” (according to a fellow émigré). They had three passion-filled months together, then she broke it off — according to her biographer, Viktoria Schweitzer, “so as not … [Link]
Language Log » Those TED audiences expect to be entertained
And tickets are expensive, so they can be brutal if you offend them — "Pope warns powerful to act humbly or risk ruin in TED talk", ABC News, 4/26/2017: 
[h/t Michael Leddy] [Link]
Language Log » Explosive semantics
"New images of MOAB denotation damage", Fox News 4/25/2016: 
The denotation damage has been estimated at nearly 20 kiloreferences. And the connotation damage, though not yet measured, is believed to be larger than from any explosion in recent decades. [h/t Glenn Bingham] [Link]
Omniglot blog » A postcard view
Last night I went to an interesting talk about postcards at the local history society. Various people, including my mum, have collections of postcards of Silverdale and/or sent from Silverdale, and there was a project at Lancaster University to scan, transcribe and study the cards. There is also a book entitled Old Silverdale: The Loveliest Spot on Morecambe Bay which … [Link]
Language Log » "I have gone into my own way"
In a series of recent posts we've explored the fun side of recursive weighted sums and point nonlinearities as a translation algorithm: "What a tangled web they weave", "A long short-term memory of Gertrude Stein", "Electric sheep", "The sphere of the sphere is the sphere of the sphere". But the featured translations have all involved inputs of characters in kana, … [Link]
Urban Word of the Day » hot dog pic
Sexy ass pic you send in a text message. Girrrrrl you look too fresh you need to send your man a hot dog pic.
[Link]
languagehat.com » Reinventing the Canon for Free.
The newly published book Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry: Reinventing the Canon, edited by Katharine Hodgson, Joanne Shelton and Alexandra Smith, is an interesting-looking collection of essays available in paperback for £25.95, in hardback for £36.95, and as a pdf download for free! Just go to the Open Book Publishers book page and click the appropriate link (there’s also a description of … [Link]
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