Victor Mair is a well-known American sinologist and professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania. He writes regularly about Chinese on Language Log, His articles deal with a wide variety of topics, including observations about the Chinese language as it's used online and in the real world, plus what's being said in various kinds of media.

Victor Mair on Language Log

This is not the place to go for beginner lessons in Chinese, but it's an interesting column to follow if you're interested in Chinese language and culture in general, not just for your own learning.


To show you why I have subscribed to his articles for many years now, let's look at a few interesting articles:

• Chineasy? Not - This is thorough discussion of why Chineasy, which has received a lot of attention for quite some time now, isn't much more than hot air (or pretty pictures). Later, Mair continued the discussion in this article. You can also read what I have to say about all this here.
  
• Names of the chemical elements in Chinese - The periodic table is full of unique Chinese characters created to represent only that element. However, this also means that most elements are single-syllable words, which is sometimes problematic. Learn more about the chemical elements in this very interesting post.
  
• Chinese Telegraph Code (CTC) - Ever wondered how Chinese characters were communicated before the internet came around and made it all easy? In this article, Mair talks about how characters are first converted to numbers, telegraphed and then converted back to characters again. Fascinating!
  

• 7,530,000 mainlanders petition Taiwan actress to change her name - Many of the posts on language logs are about recent news related to language in some way. In this case, the debate is about an unusual character in an actress' name and a petition for her to change the name to something which is easier to type.
  
• Chinglish/Engrish - Victor Mair also posts and shares a fair number of observations about odd translations (in both directions). In difference to what you get on most social media channels, he usually discusses why this is interesting, making it funny and interesting at the same time. Here are some examples: 1, 2, 3.
  

Naturally, there's more than this to Language Log, but I think this is enough to show you roughly what kind of articles you will find there!