A good-old fashioned blogroll. I have been undergoing the realization, at glacial pace, that excessive news consumption is bad for one’s constitution. Hence, I went back to the roots, to the blogs I used to peruse years ago, to find happily that many still exist, and in splendid isolation from politics (with some exceptions). Language Log is an exception in that I never stopped following it, but it is also an exception in that it is far from politically aloof – in things Chinese, perhaps acceptable; in things Western, unacceptable. The now defunct Faculty of Language, spearheaded by the indefatigable Norbert [Hornstein], deserves honourable mention – it made for unfailingly entertaining reading throughout my Freiburg years.
I have included a representative quotation from each blog. Definitely active blogs (with reasonably regular updates) are marked as such.
Amaravati: Abode of Amritas
Marc Miyake’s blog. A mixture of general language and linguistics, in a broadly East Asian direction, combined with serious theorizing about very specific and arcane subjects (e.g. Khitan script). Incredibly learned but refreshing in that he is constantly drawing attention to facts that he never knew before, in a way that many academics wouldn’t. Active.
What would the Tangut call a battery? I’m guessing they would borrow the Chinese word 電池 ‘lightning pond’ for ‘battery’ (itself a borrowing from Japanese) in one of three ways […]
Chim Việt Cành Nam
[Description placeholder…]
Christopher Culver
I believe I first came across Culver when I noticed how many linguistics books he had reviewed on Amazon, many years ago. A specialist in Altaic, but has written enlighteningly on many other topics. Blog appears to be defunct now but plenty of goodness to read back through.
In spite of being an impressive piece of scholarship and a must-have for any expats in the region, I have rarely seen the Oxford dictionary sold in Kosovo or Albania. The local market for Albanian-English and English-Albanian dictionaries is dominated by one name: Pavli Qesku.
A Clerk of Oxford
Active.
Mary’s grief is unique, but also universal. Hers is a parent’s grief, and every time I hear the strange canard that, because infant mortality was high in the Middle Ages, medieval people didn’t really love their children or grieve for them when they died, I think of these heart-wrenching poems; they are born of, and absolutely depend on, a widespread cultural acceptance that the loss of a child is one of the most devastating experiences a person can imagine.
Consulting Philologist < Memiyawanzi
Active.
I stopped posting about the 365 Papers reading challenge earlier this year partly because it was getting a bit much commenting on all the things I’ve read this year, but also because I was going so slow at finishing reading all the papers in an conference proceedings volume that I was reviewing (which was getting long overdue) and I was afraid the editors might find this blog through Google and see exactly how slow I was being.
Dominic Cummings
[Description placeholder…]
Related to that last link to an article about Hittite beer culture, the Hittite word for beer is šieššar-, which I’ve never actually looked up in the Chicago Hittite Dictionary before. Apparently the entry is six pages long.
History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences
Various contributors. Many interesting and well-thought-through pieces treating lesser-known aspects of the history of linguistics, overlooked innovators, and so on. Active.
Grammar is a Luxus (“luxury”) that we grant ourselves; it emerges from yet another drive, the Formungstrieb (“drive to formation”). This is the desire to shape our speech as we please, according to our whims and fancies, rather than just providing a flat, objective description of the world. The Formungstrieb, argues Gabelentz, is simply part of the more general Spieltrieb (“play-drive”), using Friedrich Schiller’s (1759–1805; 1960[1795]) term for the general aesthetic drive that motivates all artistic efforts.
Jabal al-Lughat
Active.
However, the names of land plants are very often extended to sea plants – for example, Ulva lactuca is “sea lettuce” in English, “laitue de mer” in French, and šḷađ̣a taʕ əlbħəṛ شلاظة تاع البحر in Dellys Arabic – and ḍarīʕ appears to be a case in point. Ibn al-Bayṭār (a 13th century botanist born in Málaga) glosses ḍarīʕ simply as a plant cast up by the salt sea from its bottom, found along the sea coast, not even bothering to mention the Qur’ānic usage of the word. The 13th century lexicographer Ibn Manđ̣ūr, born in Tunis, likewise gives as the primary meaning of ḍarīʕ “a green, stinking, light plant cast up by the sea”.
Language Hat
An old favourite. Written by a non-academic who nevertheless must know more about language and linguistics than many academics by now (it’s been going since 2002). Very diverse language- and linguistics-related topics, plus some literature. Active.
“Boba?” (I thought) — “what the hell is boba?” So I googled and discovered it’s another name for bubble tea, something I have heard of but never seen; it hadn’t been invented yet when I was in Taiwan in the 1970s.
Linguistica Indica
I’m classing this as a blog. I originally came across this site while looking for materials on Khasi. In that regard it was a little underserved, but the cornucopia of posts relating to other aspects of Indian linguistics more than makes up for this. Requires provision of an e-mail address to read. Active.
No-Sword
A long-running blog on Japanese language and literature – though the author’s knowledge appears to stretch far beyond these – which appears to have dried up in 2016. A shame. Plenty of goodness to trawl through in the archives.
Alexander Ricius has a page of various Japanese and Buddhist texts translated into Latin (and, uh, one H. P. Lovecraft story). […] I know what you’re thinking: cur buddica latine? Ricius has an answer for you.
Panchronica
In French. Active.
Rich Data < Brain’s Idea
Richard Kunert’s blog. A thoughtful data / cognitive scientist who came to my attention thanks to his intrepid experimentation testing how the brain might be overtaxed by simultaneous linguistic-syntactic and musical-syntactic processing. Active.
The Riddle Ages
Active.
Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
Andrew Gelman’s well-known blog. A good place to keep up with the state of the art in statistical modeling, interspersed with strong opinions on bad science—though I think Gelman has become more diplomatic as his profile has risen. Active.
Thijs Porck
A blog on Old English and the Anglo-Saxons. Thorough. Jovial. Full of pictures of manuscripts and cultural artefacts. Excellent! Active.
Tim Doling Historic Vietnam
[Description placeholder…]
vājabāz
واژهباز / vājabāz, to give it its full name. As the author puts it, ‘musings on Persianate vocabulary’. Quite new (began in late 2018), but promising. Active.