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 » Tombac.

Saturday 12 August 22:08:09 UTC 2017

I ran across the Russian word томпак [tompak], looked it up, and discovered it was defined as “tombac.” Just this once, the Oxford dictionary took pity on the ignorant user and added the parenthetical “(copper and zinc alloy),” so I knew what it meant, but of course I wanted to know the derivation. Vasmer told me it was from French … [Link]

Language Log » Too cool to care

Saturday 12 August 9:45:27 UTC 2017

Today's xkcd: Mouseover title: "It's hard to train deep learning algorithms when most of the positive feedback they get is sarcastic." See also Geoff Pullum, "Robots gossiping in a secret language?", Lingua Franca 8/7/2017. In fact, I suspect that Microsoft Research might be making some progress on the "too cool to care" algorithm. Thursday and Friday were the closing-day presentations … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » sleepwait

Saturday 12 August 7:00:00 UTC 2017

The act of lying down and drifting in and out of sleep while you wait for something or some one. 1) I gotta go. John is sleepwaiting for me in the other room.2) Jane alway makes me sleepwait. How long does it take to get ready for bed?3) John: wyd?Jane: sleepwaiting til my bf gets here [Link]

languagehat.com » The Lesser Prince of the Night.

Saturday 12 August 3:10:16 UTC 2017

I recently came across the Polish word księżyc ‘moon’ and thought “That’s odd — the other Slavic languages have reflexes of either Proto-Slavic *luna (like Russian) or *měsęcь (like Serbo-Croatian and Czech). Where did this come from? It turns out (and this is a great etymology) that it’s originally a diminutive of książę ‘prince’; to quote Buck’s Dictionary of Selected … [Link]

Archive