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 » Constructing languages

Friday 5 January 20:37:16 UTC 2018

A few years ago I went to the 6th Language Creation Conference in Horsham, near London. I am in the second row, second from the right (next to David J. Peterson) At the time I had created a few alphabets but didn’t plan to create any languages. However, since the conference I have been dabbling with ideas for a conlang. … [Link]

Language Log » Skin motion

Friday 5 January 20:31:15 UTC 2018

Nia Wesley, "Girl's tattoo of late grandma's voicemail can be played with iPhone": A Chicago singer honored her late grandmother in a unique way. Sakyrah Morris held on to a voicemail her grandmother sent her just a month before she passed away. She got a tattoo of the voicemail's exact sound waves. Through technology with a company called Skin Motion, … [Link]

Language Log » Quotes and endings

Friday 5 January 17:56:30 UTC 2018

Following up on "Proportion of dialogue in novels" (12/29/2017), I've taken a look at the same numbers for Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer novels (which as before Yves Schabes and I have been analyzing for reasons irrelevant to this post). Here are the proportions: DATE NOVEL QuotePercent 1949 The Moving Target 46.28% 1950 The Drowning Pool 41.87% 1951 The Way Some … [Link]

languagehat.com » Kaliarda.

Friday 5 January 14:39:36 UTC 2018

Back in mid-November, Nick Nicholas of Ἡλληνιστεύκοντος began a fascinating series of posts about Kaliarda (καλιαρντά): I’ve namechecked Kaliarda, the gay Greek cant, several times on this blog. There is still a dearth of English-language information on Kaliarda; and since this blog is about making Greek linguistics more googlable in English, I’m going to attempt to remedy that. In this … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » nuclear button

Friday 5 January 8:26:20 UTC 2018

a micropenis Donald Trump tweeted about the size of his nuclear button [Link]

languagehat.com » Hakka Now an Official Language of Taiwan.

Friday 5 January 1:13:07 UTC 2018

Of course I support recognition of minority languages in general, but this Taipei Times report by Cheng Hung-ta and Jake Chung makes my heart especially warm, because I lived in Taiwan forty years ago and got to know something about its linguistic situation personally: Hakka has been made an official national language after the Legislative Yuan yesterday passed amendments to … [Link]

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