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 » Nowies

Thursday 18 January 16:50:27 UTC 2018

Does anybody have a name for the current decade? I heard someone calling it the nowies on TV recently. Are there other names for it? Also, did you have a name for the first decade of the 21st century? It was called the naughties / noughties by some. According to a thread on Quora, suggested names for the current decade … [Link]

Language Log » Doubletalk challenge

Thursday 18 January 16:30:07 UTC 2018

Malia Wollan, "How to Speak Gibberish", NYT Magazine 1/5/2018: Strive for linguistic plausibility. In 2014, Sara Maria Forsberg was a recent high-school graduate in Finland when she posted “What Languages Sound Like to Foreigners,” a video of herself speaking gibberish versions of 15 languages and dialects. Incorporate actual phonology to make a realistic-sounding gibberish. “Expose yourself to lots of different … [Link]

Urban Word of the Day » Girther

Thursday 18 January 9:00:00 UTC 2018

Someone who does not believe heath statistics promulgated by the government Look at him chow down, now way he weighs an ounce under 239, Have you read any of the Girther blogs? [Link]

languagehat.com » Notes from Underground.

Thursday 18 January 1:13:19 UTC 2018

I must have read Dostoevsky’s novella Notes from Underground in college (in English), since bits of it seemed familiar as I was reading it in Russian, but I’d essentially forgotten it, and god knows what I might have made of it back then, with my ignorance of Russian literature (not to mention of life itself). I’m sure I was told … [Link]

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