I’m very excited about a student linguist’s blog that I just found. It’s very cleverly called Tenser, said the Tensor. It reminded me of my favourite phrase—Never say never. I’ve always found the irony and circularity of that phrase to have a metaphysical echo. It’s an ordinary enough phrase, and quite forgettable, almost a cliché even. But its post-modernity, its meta-critique reminds me of the ouroboros, and of Hindustani classical music—variations on a repetitive cycle that gather and delight the reader or listener as they re-wind themselves.

Another blog I’ve come to like very much is called Language Hat. The author is deeply interested in Russian languages and, it would seem, all things linguistically obscure or amusing. It’s more than clever; it’s intelligent, informed, jaggedly funny and highly arcane. Makes for hours of great reading.