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 » Egypt in Italy.

Wednesday 29 November 19:28:07 UTC 2017

I’m reading Peter Thonemann’s TLS review of what sounds like a delightful (if ridiculously expensive) book, Molly Swetnam-Burland’s Egypt in Italy: Visions of Egypt in Roman Imperial Culture , and I had to pass on this section for obvious reasons: A nice example of creative Roman adaptation of Egyptian material culture comes from the south Italian city of Beneventum. Here, in … [Link]

Language Log » Le Sud Food

Wednesday 29 November 19:16:14 UTC 2017

In Paris for this workshop, I'm glad to see that cultural diffusion is alive and well on l'Avenue des Gobelins: Update — Here's a snapshot of the storefront on Rue Véronèse: So kebab, chicken, tacos, pizza, crepe — and the right-hand awning, not really legible in the photo, says "Sandwicherie". [Link]

Language Log » Ask Language Log: Looking up hanzi for ignoramuses

Wednesday 29 November 18:19:43 UTC 2017

From Mark Meckes: I'm a regular Language Log reader, completely ignorant of Chinese languages. I was just wondering whether there exist worthwhile online tools to help someone like me figure out the meaning of something written only in hanzi. (The question is occasioned by my looking at a package of tea given to me by a Chinese student; the writing … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » Digging you heavy

Wednesday 29 November 8:24:09 UTC 2017

Interested in you a great amount. I'm digging you heavy young lady. [Link]

languagehat.com » Speech Recognition for Newly Documented Languages.

Wednesday 29 November 1:17:06 UTC 2017

Alexis Michaud writes for HimalCo (Himalayan Corpora, which “proposes to build parallel corpora for three sub-groups of the Sino-Tibetan family, covering a total of 8 little-described oral languages”): Automatic speech recognition tools have strong potential for facilitating language documentation. This blog note reports on highly encouraging tests using automatic transcription in the documentation of Yongning Na, a Sino-Tibetan language of … [Link]

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