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 » Word Monkey
I spent the past few days with my sister and her family. Her son is just over 2 and a half years old and is speaking a lot more than the last time I saw him at Easter this year. He has trouble pronouncing certain sounds, such as r and consonant clusters like st, but at long as you listen … [Link]
Wordorigins.org » food desert, food swamp
A food desert is an area, often an urban one, with poor access to food, especially nutritious food and fresh fruits and vegetables. The Oxford English Dictionary has a citation from a 1988 Australian newspaper: New Caledonia, surely more of a food desert than anything outside five kilometres from the centre of Melbourne. This citation may be something of an … [Link]
Urban Word of the Day » Fazed
1.) When your drunk 2.) When your high Dude we got so fazed last nightMan I'm so fazed!
[Link]
Language Log » Proportion of dialogue in novels
For reasons not strictly relevant to what follows, Yves Schabes and I have been analyzing the novels of Agatha Christie. (For the not-strictly-relevant background, see Xuan Le et al., "Longitudinal detection of dementia through lexical and syntactic changes in writing: a case study of three British novelists", Literary and Linguistic Computing 2011, and Graeme Hirst & Vanessa Feng, "Changes in … [Link]
Language Log » Chinese pentaglot rap
A Shanghainese friend of a friend just sent him a link to a curious video, and he forwarded it to me. It looks like a Nike-sponsored rap song with five different fāngyán 方言 ("topolects") and lots of English. My friend asked, "I wonder to what degree the Hànzì 汉字 ("Chinese characters") in the subtitles match the actual lyrics." The video … [Link]
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