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

languagehat.com » Rivers and Stones.

Thursday 13 July 20:58:39 UTC 2017

Still reading Weinberger’s The Ghosts of Birds ; I’m on the essay “A Calendar of Stones,” section 14 of which begins: Pseudo-Plutarch is the author of works attributed to Plutarch that are not by Plutarch; he may be one or more writers. His essay “On Rivers” is a minimalist compendium of nomenclature, violence, illicit sex, botany, and geology. In it, he … [Link]

Language Log » Tao and Taoism

Thursday 13 July 13:29:04 UTC 2017

Yesterday's NYT has an article by Javier C. Hernández titled "China’s Religious Revival Fuels Environmental Activism" (7/12/17). It's a long article, filled with a lot of New Age, ecological phraseology that is uncharacteristic of the usual political, military, and economic discourse of the antireligious PRC. I was drifting along, not paying too much attention to the details of what it … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » Unload the groceries

Thursday 13 July 7:30:00 UTC 2017

Deceptive way of saying you are taking a shit. I'll be online in a few minutes after I unload the groceries. [Link]

languagehat.com » Agop Dilaçar.

Thursday 13 July 1:42:32 UTC 2017

Uzay Bulut has an interesting account of a surprising participant in Turkey’s language reform (for which see this 2012 post): Hagop Martayan, or Agop Dilaçar, was the first Secretary General and head specialist of the state-funded Turkish Language Institution (Türk Dil Kurumu, TDK) founded in 1932 in Ankara. He worked as a professor of Turkish at Ankara University between 1936 … [Link]

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