John Gordon Ross

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 » Writing Systems of the World Comparison Chart

Thursday 1 June 15:51:45 UTC 2017

Today we have a guest post by Matt Baker I remember the day when, as a child, I first discovered a writing system other than English. I was flipping through an encylopedia (this was the 1980’s, pre-Google) and noticed that, at the beginning of the “A” section, there was a little chart that showed the English letter equivalent in both … [Link]

Language Log » Trends in presidential speaking rate

Thursday 1 June 9:41:58 UTC 2017

In a comment on “Political Sound and Silence II“, 5/30/2017, and referencing “Trends in presidential pitch II“, 5/21/2017, unekdoud asked Are there are any trends over the Weekly Addresses for these measures? In particular, is speech duration or speech % correlated with median pitch? There’s certainly a relationship (r=0.55) between speaking rate (words per minute counting speech regions only) and … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » Covfefe

Thursday 1 June 7:00:00 UTC 2017

(n.) When you want to say "coverage" but your hands are too small to hit all the letters on your keyboard. Despite constant negative press covfefe. [Link]

languagehat.com » Cré na Cille, Translated Twice.

Thursday 1 June 0:50:00 UTC 2017

For ages I’ve been saving this American Scholar link, in which Stephanie Bastek compares two versions of the same passage from “Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s modernist masterpiece, Cré na Cille,” Liam Mac Con Iomaire and Tim Robinson’s translation, called Graveyard Clay, and Alan Titley’s, called The Dirty Dust. The first begins “. . . Nóra Filthy-Feet standing for election! Good God … [Link]

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