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 » Donald Trump: Cognitive decline or TDS?
Sharon Begley, “Trump wasn’t always so linguistically challenged. What could explain the change?“, STAT 5/23/2017: STAT reviewed decades of Trump’s on-air interviews and compared them to Q&A sessions since his inauguration. The differences are striking and unmistakable. Research has shown that changes in speaking style can result from cognitive decline. STAT therefore asked experts in neurolinguistics and cognitive assessment, as … [Link]
languagehat.com » An Obscure Linguistic Item.
Jeremy Adler reviews (TLS, Oct. 16, 2015) a book by “the writer Schuldt, who never uses his first name” that is obvious LH material: The reappearance, after more than thirty years, of one of his finest short works, In Togo, dunkel (In Togo, Dark), at long last coming out from a leading publisher, thus provides cause for celebration. The book … [Link]
Language Log » Chinese emoji, with a twist
Adrienne LaFrance has an eye-opening article about “The Westernization of Emoji” in The Atlantic (5/22/17). Here’s the summary statement at the beginning: The takeout box and the fortune cookie are perceived as emblems of Chinese culture, when they’re actually central to the American experience of it. The Unicode Consortium will be issuing dozens of new emoji as part of its … [Link]
Omniglot blog » Chinese learning tools
This is a guest post by Dimitrios Polychronopoulos When I first started studying Chinese, in Taiwan, back in 1993, I started with the Mandarin phonetic alphabet and traditional characters. Primarily I used bopomofo to learn how to read, in the same way a Taiwanese child learns growing up on the island. Then just more than two years later, I left … [Link]
Omniglot blog » When your gran is your granddad
In a book I’m reading at the moment – Border Country by Raymond Williams – one of the characters calls his grandfather ‘Gran‘, which strikes me as unusally. To me gran could only refer to a grandmother. Does it seem strange to you? I only remember one of my grandparents – my dad’s mum – who I think we called … [Link]
Language Log » Homonyms
Yesterday’s Dumbing of Age: 
In fact Walky is right about homonym. The OED’s overall gloss is “The same name or word used to denote different things”, with the more specific sense “Philol. Applied to words having the same sound, but differing in meaning”. Billie is right about the etymology — for the verb funk “To blow smoke upon (a person); … [Link]
Urban Word of the Day » Resting Murder Face
When your natural resting expression appears so angry that people who do not know you, and even those who do at times, believe you may soon murder someone. Typically for men. Derivative of resting bitch face in women. Girl 1: Why does Bryan look like he's going to kill that kid?Girl 2: Oh he's ok, he just has resting murder … [Link]
Language Log » “Little Man” the eating machine
There’s a curious article by Kathy Chu and Menglin Huang in the Wall Street Journal (5/21/17): “How a Toddler Who Loves Eating Transfixed China: 2½-year-old Xiaoman is an online sensation, bringing fame, a Pampers ad and questions about her weight” https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-a-~ If you have difficulty reading the whole article via the embedded link, try this TinyURL, which should lead you … [Link]
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