Examiner.comDirector Michael Bay goes boom for big battle bots meleeExaminer.com has been surrounded with two of the Autobots Mudflap (voiced by Reno Wilson) and Skids (voiced by Tom Kenny) because of their linguistics, mannerism, and more »
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Google News: Linguistics
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Director Michael Bay goes boom for big battle bots melee - Examiner.com
3 Jul 2009 | 2:05 pm -
Dear Garry. I've decided to end it all: The full stop that trapped ... - Daily Mail
2 Jul 2009 | 4:01 pmDaily MailDear Garry. I've decided to end it all: The full stop that trapped Daily MailTogether with other evidence, this helped win a pardon for Derek Bentley in 1998, adding to the growing credibility of forensic linguistics. and more » -
Just a phrase I'm going through - The Oxford Times
1 Jul 2009 | 7:45 amJust a phrase I'm going throughThe Oxford TimesAnd 'Master of Words' would be the perfect description for David Crystal, whose love of words and passion for linguistics has been with him since the cradle and more » -
KT the Magnificent: An Interview with Kathleen T. Horning - School Library Journal
1 Jul 2009 | 6:25 amSchool Library JournalKT the Magnificent: An Interview with Kathleen T. HorningSchool Library JournalAs an undergrad, you majored in linguistics. How did you wind up becoming a librarian? I really love linguistics, but I began to realize when I was and more » -
Prof quit over Ulster-Scot fears - BBC News
1 Jul 2009 | 4:01 amBBC NewsProf quit over Ulster-Scot fearsBBC NewsAlison Henry, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Ulster, made the comments to the Department of Culture. She was a member of the Ulster-Scots £7m for 'non-existent academy'BBC Newsall 2 news articles »
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ScienceDaily: Language Acquisition
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Children With Autism Need To Be Taught In Smaller Groups, Experts Argue
4 Jul 2009 | 2:00 amSince the 1970s, there has been much debate surrounding the fact that individuals with autism have difficulty in understanding speech in situations where there is background speech or noise. Neuroscientists argue in favor of smaller class sizes for children with autism. -
Physics Education Improves When Students Make Their Own Computer Models
2 Jul 2009 | 5:00 amA current trend in secondary science education is for students to learn by discovering for themselves how things work. Computer modeling is a teaching method that fits in nicely with this trend and also with new learning objectives such as scientific literacy, inquiry-based learning and active involvement. Researchers have demonstrated that computer modeling is particularly useful for learning complex structures but less effective for learning simple facts. -
Subliminal Messages Motivate People To Actually Do Things They Already Wanted To Do
1 Jul 2009 | 2:00 pmHow is it possible that you were not planning on going shopping, but that you still end up going and even return home with four new shirts? Apparently you really did want to go shopping but were not consciously aware of it. Researchers have demonstrated that you can motivate people with subliminal messaging: quickly flashing words onto a screen without their noticing. This is only successful, however, if the subliminal message matches a biological need and if the behavior is associated with a positive effect. -
Brain Section Multitasks, Handling Phonetics And Decision-making
1 Jul 2009 | 8:00 amScientists have found that a portion of the brain that handles decision-making also helps decipher different sounds. -
Conversing Helps Language Development More Than Reading Alone
28 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pmA new study shows adult-child conversations have a more significant impact on language development than exposing children to language through monologic reading alone.
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Lingformant
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Evolutionary Origins of Your Right and Left Brain
25 Jun 2009 | 5:57 amThe division of labor by the two cerebral hemispheres—once thought to be uniquely human—predates us by half a billion years. Speech, right-handedness, facial recognition and the processing of spatial relations can be traced to brain asymmetries in early vertebrates. Full article: Scientific American -
Study Contradicts Conventional Wisdom that Perceptual Abilities Improve as We Grow
25 Jun 2009 | 5:56 amA study of Spanish- and English- learning infants provides evidence that our perceptual abilities do not improve as we get older, and that younger infants may actually be better at integrating facial speech gestures and vocalizations than older infants. The developmental decline in this ability may be due to increasing specialization for native-language phonology as infants learn their own speech and language. Full article: Newswise -
Language may be key to theory of mind
25 Jun 2009 | 5:50 amHow blind and deaf people approach a cognitive test regarded as a milestone in human development has provided clues to how we deduce what others are thinking. Full article: New Scientist -
Right ear is ‘best for hearing’
24 Jun 2009 | 4:23 amIf you want to get someone to do something, ask them in their right ear, say scientists. Italian researchers found people were better at processing information when requests were made on that side in three separate tests. Full article: BBC News -
Language use decreases in young children and caregivers when television is on, study finds
13 Jun 2009 | 12:47 pmIn a new study, young children and their adult caregivers uttered fewer vocalizations, used fewer words and engaged in fewer conversations when in the presence of audible television. Full article: EurekAlert
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Google News: Language News
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Budget cuts mean more students stacked in Bay Area classrooms - San Jose Mercury News
4 Jul 2009 | 12:15 pmBudget cuts mean more students stacked in Bay Area classroomsSan Jose Mercury NewsShe juggles assisting the flood of English Language Learners in her classroom while challenging the children who need more rigor. Her four decades in front and more » -
Language that America can do without - New Haven Register (subscription)
4 Jul 2009 | 12:44 amLanguage that America can do withoutNew Haven Register (subscription)That cliche comes from the hip-hop world, which has done more to ruin the English language than Paris Hilton. But the rappers have won this battle. and more » -
The Penitent Rely On Language of Religion - Washington Post
3 Jul 2009 | 10:46 pmThe Penitent Rely On Language of ReligionWashington PostThis week's question: Why do so many American politicians -- from Bill Clinton to Mark Sanford -- use religious language when they make public confessions and more » -
Russian Language Immersion Program readies students to study in Russia - Daily Sundial
3 Jul 2009 | 10:27 pmRussian Language Immersion Program readies students to study in RussiaDaily SundialPhoto by Shant Kazandjian The Russian Language Immersion Program at CSUN is a component of the federally funded Southern California Consortium of California It's all Chinese for These KidsIn & Out of Anthemall 2 news articles » -
Study Finds Gaps in Aid for Non-English Speakers in State Civil Courts - New York Times
3 Jul 2009 | 8:38 pmNew York TimesStudy Finds Gaps in Aid for Non-English Speakers in State Civil CourtsNew York TimesIn family law cases, which deal with issues like divorce, child custody and abuse, the lack of language help “can mean the difference between justice and and more »
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English Experts
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Novo design do English Experts
2 Jul 2009 | 5:35 amQuem acompanha o EE desde o começo sabe que além do esforço em publicar conteúdo de boa qualidade, nós também buscamos a cada dia melhorar os serviços e o design do site. Foram diversas fases, começamos utilizando o blogger e depois migramos para um gestor de conteúdo melhor (wordpress) e domínio próprio. Se você é novo por aqui confira cada uma das fases do blog. A evolução sempre teve como objetivo principal tornar a leitura dos textos o mais agradável possível, afinal de contas ler em tela de computador não é nada fácil. Falando nisso, você sabia que é possível… -
Frases de músicas de Michael Jackson (Biz)
1 Jul 2009 | 7:15 pmO primeiro artigo com trechos de músicas de Michael Jackson foi um sucesso, choveu comentários de leitores pedindo biz. Como aqui no English Experts é você quem manda, eu preparei uma nova seleção de frases inesquecíveis do Rei do Pop. Confira abaixo: 1. Whatever happens, don´t let go of my hand: Aconteça o que acontecer, não solte minha mão. Música: Whatever happens 2. Everything will be all right: Vai dar tudo certo, tudo vai ficar bem Música: Whatever happens 3. What do you want from me?: O que você quer de mim? Música: 2 bad 4. It´s tough for you to get by: É difícil… -
Frases de músicas de Michael Jackson
29 Jun 2009 | 6:36 pmHoje vamos ver treze frases com termos e expressões retiradas das letras das músicas de Michael Jackson, confiram: 1. This is just imagination: É coisa da sua cabeça, imaginação. Música: Thriller 2. You´re outta time: Você está sem tempo, não tem tempo. Música: Thriller 3. Hold you tight: Te abraçar bem forte Música: Thriller 4. She caused a scene: Ela causou um alvoroço Música: Billie Jean 5. The law was on her side: A lei estava do lado dela Música: Billie Jean 6. Watch your mouth: Cuidado com o que diz Música: Bad 7. Beat it!: Cai fora! Música: Beat it 8. It´s time to… -
#25 Boletim do Fórum de Inglês
28 Jun 2009 | 4:21 pmCaros leitores! Passei o final de semana fazendo alguns ajustes no blog, quem visitar o site vai perceber que o layout é o mesmo, porém com algumas melhorias. Percebi que alguns leitores ficavam perdidos com tantos artigos e dicas. Se você tiver alguma sugestão para melhorar a cara do EE envie nos comentários deste post, o redesign está a todo vapor. Por enquanto ficamos com os últimos tópicos respondidos do fórum. Seção: Como eu digo isso em inglês? - Como digo VOCÊ NÃO VALE NADA em inglês? - Como digo MAL NECESSÁRIO em inglês? - Como digo FAZER O BEM, SEM OLHAR A QUEM em… -
Expressões curtas em inglês
23 Jun 2009 | 6:33 pmOlá Pessoal, hoje vamos ver treze expressões curtas em inglês que podem muitas vezes abreviar e facilitar a comunicação. Confiram: 1. You shouldn´t have!: Não precisava! (Usa-se principalmente quando se recebe algo de presente.) 2. Go for it!: Vai nessa! (Usado quando se quer encorajar alguém a fazer algo.) 3. It´s just as well!: Ainda bem! (Quando algo meio que inesperado acontece para melhor.) 4. That was close!: Esta foi por pouco! (Quando escapamos de algo ruim por pouco.) 5. Spit it out!: Desembucha! (Quando alguém demora a falar algo que já praticamente começou a dizer.) 6.
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The English Blog
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Video: Swine flu 'cannot be contained'
3 Jul 2009 | 10:56 pmThe rising number of swine flu cases means trying to contain the virus is no longer an option, the government says. Ministers said the emergency response would now move to a new "treatment" phase across the UK as there may soon be 100,000 new cases a day. BBC's Branwen Jeffreys reports. COMMENTS I'll be going to England in a couple of weeks for 10 days or so. What are my chances of catching swine flu, I wonder. -
Words in the News: Beat It
3 Jul 2009 | 10:05 pmLoyal British Michael Jackson fans have been left out from his public memorial by the organisers, the Daily Mirror reports. Full story >>VOCABULARYBeat It is the title of one of Michael Jackson's most popular songs. If you tell someone to beat it, you want them to go away. • Beat it or I'll call the cops. -
Independence Day
3 Jul 2009 | 9:00 pmToday, July 4th, is Independence Day in the USA. Independence Day honors the birthday of the United States of America and the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. It's a day of picnics and patriotic parades, a night of concerts and fireworks, and a reason to fly the American flag.Here are some Independence Day resources:• USA.gov (the official government site has a great collection of links)• History.com (video gallery, history, maps)• Independence Day Lesson Ideas (from Education World)• Independence Day Cartoons FOOTNOTEE pluribus unum, Latin for… -
Video: Brit Starts 'Best Job In The World'
3 Jul 2009 | 7:36 amBritish man Ben Southall has started work on "the best job in the world" – a six-month contract as caretaker of the islands on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. COMMENTSIt seems Ben got off to a shaky start when he misspelled the name of Hayman Island on his Twitter blog, referring to it as Hayward Island. You can follow Ben's regular blog here. -
Naked Friday
3 Jul 2009 | 3:00 amYou're probably familiar with the concept of "Casual Friday" (aka "Dress-Down Friday"), but some office workers in the north of England have taken things a step further, the Daily Mail reports.A group of office staff have discovered they work better together when they are NAKED.Workers at design and marketing company onebestway in Newcastle upon Tyne stripped off at the encouragement of their boss, who thought the move would boost business. The ailing company had seen six redundancies since the start of the credit crunch when business psychologist David Taylor was…
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Mission to Learn
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Learn to Tweet, Tweet to Learn
2 Jul 2009 | 5:10 amI’ve become increasingly fond of Twitter as a tool in my learning mix. I use it as one way of making notes on my travels across the Web and sharing them with others. I also use the hashtag functionality as one of the ways to track various topics of interest or to “channel” topics or issues I am finding into a single stream. For example, I have created #learningmonitor to tag items that I am considering for the monthly Learning Monitor newsletter. Not sure what a hashtag is, or for that matter, how to send out a “tweet”? Check out the excellent presentation below… -
Skype: A Visual Explanation
1 Jul 2009 | 6:00 amA while back I highlighted a visual explanation of the global financial crisis created by Say It Visually! The company has recently released a “visual explanation” of Skype, the popular Internet telephony application, that also seems worth highlighting. Here it is. (Click through to the post if you don’t see it.) Jeff Cobb Mission to Learn P.S. If you enjoy what you read here on Mission to Learn, I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed or use the e-mail subscription form at the top right side of this page. -
5 Free Web Tools for Learning a Language Collaboratively
30 Jun 2009 | 3:46 amThis is a guest post by Caitlin Smith Learning a language on your own can be done, but it’s much more fun and potentially easier to learn through communicating with others. The Web provides a great forum for this, with tools of all kinds that let language learners talk to one another and learn from direct, immersive communication. Here are a few collaborative language learning tools you may want to try: LiveMocha: LiveMocha offers a wide ranfe of self-paced language lessons, but the real power of the site is in its focus on social language learning. The site features real-time text and… -
What’s Useful for Learning?
23 Jun 2009 | 4:30 pmI sent out a tweet on this one, but Clark Aldrich’s brief post on Four Intellectual Traps for Understanding Learning merits a blog post as well, IMHO. In it, Clark calls out the following as not (wholly) useful for learning: 1. School 2. Books, magazines, and movies 3. Professional (or other highly structured) sports 4. Computer games I refer you to the post itself for more detail - and the promise of more to come. Jeff Cobb Mission to Learn -
A Lifelong Learning Guide Post
18 Jun 2009 | 5:09 amAs I have time, I am continuing to reflect upon two years of Mission to Learn, and part of that reflection is to spend some time going back through old posts to try to understand how the site has evolved, and what I may have learned along the way. It occurred to me in doing this that I should pull together a post that reflects some of the major themes and resources. So, here it is. I’ll keep coming back and revising and adding to this one as I think it will serve as a good guide for new visitors to Mission to Learn. A Definition of Learning This is a very recent post and one that was…
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Language Log
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No word for bribery
3 Jul 2009 | 3:42 pmIn today's Doonesbury, Zonker riffs on the "no word for X" meme: -
A Fourth of July Cipher
3 Jul 2009 | 8:36 amNear the end of 1801, his first year as president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson got a letter from Robert Patterson, professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, containing a page encrypted according to a new method. Patterson described his cryptosystem in detail, and boasted that without the key — which he didn't provide — decryption of his message would "defy the united ingenuity of the whole human race". After more than 200 years, the code was finally broken by Dr. Lawren Smithline, a mathematician at the Center for Communications Research in Princeton,… -
NLTK Book on Sale Now
2 Jul 2009 | 5:09 pmThe NLTK book, Natural Language Processing with Python, went on sale yesterday: "This book is here to help you get your job done." I love that line (from the preface). It captures the spirit of the book. Right from the start, readers/users get to do advanced things with large corpora, including information-rich visualizations and sophisticated theory implementation. If you've started to see that your research would benefit from some computational power, but you have limited (or no) programming experience, don't despair — install NLTK and its data sets (it's a snap), then work… -
The colleagues down the hall
2 Jul 2009 | 10:50 amThis is a long-overdue follow-up to my post (from April 26), announcing the availability of the film The Linguists on Babelgum.com. A couple things that I failed to point out in that post: first, the version of the film on Babelgum is the DVD version, not the slightly shorter cut that has aired on PBS; second, there are several additional clips that you can watch separately on Babelgum that are on the DVD. Search for "the linguists" on Babelgum and you'll find links to the trailer, the film, and the additional clips. These are all available for some unspecified limited period, so watch 'em… -
The sociolinguistics of English middle names
2 Jul 2009 | 7:55 amA note from Bob Ladd: I just picked up and put away a book I'd bought in a second-hand bookstore before going to Romania in 1978, called "The Balkans in our Time", by Robert Lee Wolff, a mid-century Harvard historian. I realized that he's yet another example of a generalization that must somehow tell us something about how language works: Anglo-elite American academic historians often use their full middle name. Samuel Eliot Morrison and Henry Steele Commager come readily to mind, but Robert Lee Wolff fits the pattern, as does another more recent writer, Walter Russell Mead. And Andrew…
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GoodWord from alphadictionary.com
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7/4/09 - Yankee
3 Jul 2009 | 9:00 pmA term for natives of the American Colonies, dating from the 17th century. It gained wider usage during the War of Independence (1775-1783) and continues today. -
7/3/09 - Ouija
2 Jul 2009 | 9:00 pmA parlor game played on a board printed with the alphabet over which a 'planchette' or other movable pointer roams, ostensibly selecting letters of its own will. Participants touch the planchette lightly with their fingers and solemnly promise not to apply any pressure to it. They then watch in amazement as the planchette moves across the board, selecting one letter after another until it spells a message relevant to some previously selected theme. The assumption is that the message comes from the spiritual world- without the normal cost of a medium. -
7/2/09 - petrichor
1 Jul 2009 | 9:00 pmThat distinctively pleasant fragrance of rain falling on dry ground. It is produced by oily, yellow-gold globules, rather like perfume, that either come from certain plants or the air itself. -
7/1/09 - stupendous
30 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm1. Enormous, huge, humongous. 2. Outstanding, marvelous, stunningly wonderful. -
6/30/09 - tergiversate
29 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm1. To equivocate, to be ambivalent or indecisive. 2. To reverse position, to apostatize, to go over to the other side.
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Paleoglot
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More about egg symbols in Etruria and the rest of the classical world
2 Jul 2009 | 11:00 pmThere seems to be a constant resistance towards my previous articles on eggs and Etruscans. I've been getting a fair amount of 'egg-symbolism denial' - a kind of stubborn resistance to a historical fact that eggs were being used as an important religious symbol of the sun, cosmos and the immortal soul in classical times. Even a certain member of the online forum Aegeanet when I had joined months -
Sinat - Graphics revised and computer algorithm enhanced
26 Jun 2009 | 1:39 pmI've recently updated the graphics of my Egyptian game Sínat to look more 3D. I got tired of the flat, spartan look of the Flash game and decided to fiddle around with a 3D modeler called Swift3D to see what better things I could come up with.Also, I've updated the strategy of the computer which I believe may be better than what I have so far. My new algorithm, which I call Seth (named after the -
Oddly formed locatives with inessive postclitic in Etruscan
25 Jun 2009 | 7:01 pmI may as well put my latest response to a comment in a new blog entry rather than hiding it in the commentbox of What are Etruscans doing with those eggs?: "I had another thought I should share. It might clarify things about *e-less locatives when a postclitic is applied.In the context of the Liber Linteus where the word luθti is found, we also find another curious inessive locative haθrθi. Since -
Contradictions with authors' accounts of Etruscan word Rasna
15 Jun 2009 | 7:00 pmFirst off, I apologize once again for pressing "Enter" in just such a way that Blogger mindlessly publishes my unfinished post. I've wrote about this bug in their interface, aeons ago, but alas, Blogger programmers don't fix it with a programmatically simple-to-execute, user-friendly warning of "Are you sure?". Anways...I was going to write initially about Dionysius of Halicarnassus and his gloss -
Sproutbuilder ate my Flash game
11 Jun 2009 | 4:35 pmWarning: The following will be a scary tech rant about how peeved I am at my recently disappearing Sinat boardgame on my blog and this business about what I call "Flashphobia". If you're not a Star Trek-loving geek like me, you may get bored with this post.Anyways, it's looking now like Sprout Builder decided to go to a "paid model" and in the process destroyed any content links I or anyone else
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Fritinancy
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O Beautiful for Magazines
3 Jul 2009 | 7:14 amAn Independence Day appreciation: Window #1, Issues magazine shop, Oakland (my favorite neighborhood store) Terrible photo; glorious tapestry of titles. Of course they all have websites, but it's so much more enthralling to gaze at all their covers this way. Some of my favorites:Yaldah, A Magazine for Jewish Girls, by Jewish Girls. (Yaldah is Hebrew for "girl.")Women & Guns, The World's First Firearms Publication for Women.Skirmish, "the world's leading multi-period historical re-enactment and living history magazine."*American Cheerleader (is there… -
The Shady Side of the Tweet
1 Jul 2009 | 2:03 pmTechCrunch reported this morning about an email conversation between Twitter and a third-party developer that had created a service very similar to Twitter's. One phrase raised TC's eyebrows—and mine: Twitter, Inc is uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) [...]I wasn't the only one who hadn't known that Twitter had trademarked "Tweet," but sure enough, a visit to the USPTO website reveals that Twitter, Inc., filed for protection of "Tweet" on April 16, 2009. (I can't link because the search will have expired; if you care to… -
Don't Bogart the Dip
30 Jun 2009 | 11:05 amGot munchies? Full of crunchy hempen goodness and ... uhhh ... I forget.Hippie Chips are manufactured by Rock-n-Roll Gourmet ("For the Rocker in You!"), which was started by musicians Dean and Jan Ehrlich. Besides Sea of Love Salt, they're available in Haight AshBerry Jalapeño, Memphis Blue Barbeque, Lime Is on My Side Cracked Pepper, White Room Cheddar, Woodstock Ranch, and Chive-Talkin' Sour Cream.Spotted at Berkeley Bowl Marketplace. -
Guest Post at Duets Blog
30 Jun 2009 | 10:18 amI'm the guest blogger today at Duets Bloga very fine collaborative blog that bridges the gap between brands and trademark, creativity and the law. Naturally, my subject is naming—specifically, the role a name plays as the title of a brand's story. Check out my post, and while you're there spend some time reading the many other interesting posts on topics as wide ranging as Michael Jackson ("The King of Pop's Most Recognizable Trademark?") and the trend toward single-letter naming in the hotel industry.Thanks, Duets Blog, for the opportunity to share my thoughts… -
Eggcorns Caught in Love Nest!
29 Jun 2009 | 2:10 pmBesides being a very naughty governor, South Carolina's Mark Sanford turns out to have a penchant for purple prose, as evidenced by his email correspondence with his Argentine inamorata. Here, from July 10, 2008, is one of the juicy bits:I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificently gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curves of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of night’s light — but hey, that would be going into the sexual details we spoke of at the…
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Language Geek
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Language Juggling
24 Jun 2009 | 10:31 amI’m going to have to change my methods a bit, specifically in how I approach dealing with all of my target languages. For the record, currently I’m studying: German French Russian Spanish Dutch German is still more or less a task of vocabulary learning. The others, however, still involve a lot more, and trying to balance them all out is proving to be more difficult than I expected it to be. When I first threw Dutch onto the pile, I figured I could just do a bit with each language each day. But even if I only put in 30 minutes a day with each one – which I wouldn’t be… -
First Steps with Dutch
7 Jun 2009 | 6:51 pmI’ve been working with Assimil’s Dutch with Ease course the past week and a half or so, and I’m now up to lesson 21. I’ve usually been able to do a few lessons each day instead of the recommended 1 per day, due to how similar Dutch is to German. My knowledge of German, coupled with my native English, is making Dutch seem extremely easy. It almost looks like someone took German, removed almost all of the tricky grammar, and then mixed it with English; the result was Dutch. Often when listening to the lessons, it sounds like someone speaking a mix of German and English… -
My Prisma Dutch-English Dictionary – Oops
26 May 2009 | 11:53 amThe two Dutch language learning books I ordered arrived today; one’s a success, the other, not so much. The success is Assimil’s Dutch with Ease; I’ve little to say about it at this point, other than it looks as good as all of the other Assimil stuff I’ve used or am using currently. The not-so-great success – okay, I’ll be honest, the failure – is a Prisma Nederlands-Engels dictionary. It’s for speakers of Dutch, but I figured as long as it gave the Dutch words with English translations, I’d be okay; I primarily wanted it to do word lists. -
Global Understanding Vs. Individual Words
18 May 2009 | 5:19 amIn his detailed video on shadowing, Dr. Arguelles uses an Assimil course as his example. He says that at a certain point in one’s studies, using his shadowing technique, one will find that they have a global understanding of what’s being said – an understanding of each sentence as a whole, but not necessarily what each individual part of that sentence is doing. While I didn’t shadow Assimil’s French with Ease very much, I find the idea of global understanding, as opposed to understanding each individual word, intriguing. Why? Because after hearing him talk about… -
Still here
11 May 2009 | 12:25 pmI just wanted to write a quick post and let all of you know that languagegeek.net hasn’t been abandoned, by any means. I just finished up with the end of a semester at university, and was understandably swamped with things to do. I now have some breathing room, and will be back to posting here regularly. A few things in the works: Some free lessons at edufire.com for Language Geek readers. I have 3 coupon codes worth $30 to give out. I’m not sure how I’m going to do it; I’ve considered a contest, but I’m not sure what kind of contest. Ideas certainly welcome; if…
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languagehat.com
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FANCY THE IRKISHNESS.
3 Jul 2009 | 1:53 pmJust a few bits of George Herriman's unique brand of linguistic revelry from Krazy & Ignatz 1939-1940: "A Brick Stuffed with Moom-bins"; all these are taken from the strip of January 15, 1939: [Ignatz:] I'm sure in delight that I'm not a "door mouse" — fancy the irkishness of packing a "door" around. [Offissa Pupp:] Whistling, evil is awing. [I.e., "a-wing," on the wing —LH] [Ignatz's wife, making a rare appearance:] A door — a door of all things — me and the children hungry and ragged, and you buying a door — y-y-you pilgarlic! -
BOOKS AND THE LOST PAST.
2 Jul 2009 | 9:22 amLuan Starova (Луан Старова) is a Macedonian author and diplomat whose best-known work is "the autobiographical cycle Balkan Saga, of which ten volumes have been published so far. My Father's Books is the first work in the cycle. His books have appeared in more than fifteen languages, but the segment featured in Words without Borders is the first to be featured in English." The excerpt tells a sad story (which I hope is at least to some extent fictionalized) and contains a passage that reminds me of the role of books in my own… -
BIRTHDAY LOOT.
1 Jul 2009 | 7:48 pmIt's been a long day, starting with the roofers showing up at 7 AM and banging away and ending with a delicious birthday dinner followed by lemon meringue pie and the opening of presents, so before I toddle off to bed I will just list books I was given and trust that the LH readership can guess why each of them is particularly appropriate to the recipient. I will doubtless be posting about most of them individually as I make my way through them. Lost for Words: The Hidden History of the Oxford English Dictionary, by Dr. Lynda Mugglestone Krazy & Ignatz 1939-1940: "A Brick Stuffed with… -
IT DOESN'T EAT BREAD.
30 Jun 2009 | 3:41 pmChocolate & Zucchini, according to the About page, "is a blog written by Clotilde Dusoulier, a 29-year-old Parisian woman who lives in Montmartre and shares her passion for all things food-related -- thoughts, recipes, musings, cookbook acquisitions, quirky ingredients, nifty tools, restaurant experiences, ideas, and inspirations." It shows up here because of Clotilde's penchant for explaining food-related French idioms; those posts are conveniently listed here. I am unfamiliar with most of them, so it's a good resource for me; I liked, for instance, "Ça ne mange pas de pain":Literally… -
TIP OF YOUR TONGUE.
28 Jun 2009 | 6:49 amChirag Mehta has come up with a nifty word-search tool at Tip of My Tongue ("Find that word that you've been thinking about all day but just can't seem to remember"). You can enter letters you think are or aren't part of the missing word, as well as elements of the meaning, and you get a list of words with definitions (some of them hitherto unknown to me: "scrimshank British military language: avoid work," "Bawson A badger"). I'm puzzled, though, by his insistence on spelling blog with an initial apostrophe (see his About page). Yes, it's shortened from weblog; I'm guessing, though, that he…
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A Way With Words
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Tweet, Tweet! Polly Wanna Cracker! (full episode)
4 Jul 2009 | 8:42 amTwittering, tweeting, twirting—it’s rare to see a whole new body of language appear right before your eyes. But that’s what’s happening with Twitter. We discuss the snappy new shorthand of the twitterati. Also, why do people feel compelled to say “Polly wanna cracker?” whenever they see a parrot? And is it ever okay to end a sentence with a preposition? This episode originally aired February 28 , 2009. Listen here: Download audio file (090302-AWWW-tweet-tweet-polly-wanna-cracker.mp3) Download the MP3 here (23.5 MB). To be automatically notified when audio… -
A Snarl of Serial Commas (minicast)
24 Jun 2009 | 3:23 amAre serial commas always necessary? An English teacher says she was surprised to learn that she and her husband, who’s also an English teacher, are giving their students conflicting advice. Download audio file (090624-AWWW-a-snarl-of-serial-commas.mp3) Download the MP3 here (4.5 MB). To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter. -
That’s What “Friend” is For? (minicast)
21 Jun 2009 | 6:11 pmHow can the word friend possibly describe both the people you went to school with and the people to whom you are connected through Facebook and MySpace? Are friends on the social sites really friends? Is there a better word to describe someone who follows you on Twitter? A caller thinks the English language could use some new words to differentiate among varying levels and types of friendship. Download audio file (090618-AWWW-thats-what-friend-is-for.mp3) Download the MP3 here (2.1 MB). To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another… -
L-U-R-V-E, Love (full episode)
20 Jun 2009 | 8:05 amThis week: Favorite online reading. If the subjunctive mood were to disappear from English, would anybody care? And just in time for this romantic weekend, a caller discovers the meaning of…lurve. That’s L-U-R-V-E. This episode first aired February 14, 2009. Listen here: Download audio file (090216-AWWW-l-u-r-v-e-love.mp3) Download the MP3 here (23.5 MB). To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter. Martha and Grant share a couple of favorite online sources for reading about… -
Great Googly Moogly (minicast)
17 Jun 2009 | 6:42 pm“Great Googly Moogly!” A caller wonders where that exclamation comes from. Download audio file (090617-AWWW-great-googly-moogly-minicast.mp3) Download the MP3 here (3.5 MB). To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter. Here’s the Snickers commercial that includes the phrase. Discuss this in the forum. - (5) Posts
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The Linguist
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Learning a different writing system.
4 Jul 2009 | 1:38 pmI am often asked about learning to write Chinese characters. When I learned them there were no computers and no word processors. I got a hold of 1,000 flash cards, the most common 1,000. I started with 10 a day and worked up to 30. I wrote or studied characters every, I mean every, day., until I had these 1,000 characters.The flash cards showed the stroke order. I wrote them out on squared paper, down the first column 10 or so times. Then I put the English or pronunciation (Wade Giles in those days) over three columns to the right and picked up the next card, and kept going. Soon I would hit… -
A brief description of LingQ
1 Jul 2009 | 11:29 pmI was just playing around with trying to explain LingQ, what it represents. Here is some doodling. I would appreciate any comments.For most of human history, people have learned each other's languages without going to school, as people from one small tribe interacted with people from another small tribe. To learn languages people mostly listened to each other and imitated each other. This went on for over one hundred thousand years. Our brains kind of got used to hearing words and phrases, noticing certain patterns, and figuring out what it all meant. That is how we learned languages. Things… -
Learning to read better. Is there a difference between native and non-native speakers?
1 Jul 2009 | 9:31 pmTo me the best way to learn to read better is to read more. Listening to what you are going to read can help. An efficient method for learning vocabulary can help. But mostly learners need to read more, whether native speakers or not. I really do not see much of a difference in terms of what needs to be done. Just read more!!! But this is not a majority view among teachers. Here is an exchange from the teachers forum where I sometimes comment just to annoy the others. My comments in italics.from a teacher:I rarely teach ESL reading literacy (RL) because of my students needing (and wanting) to… -
Rosetta sure is pulling in the awards.
24 Jun 2009 | 5:30 pmIt’s been a big week for Rosetta Stone. Earlier this week, the language-learning software company’s CEO, Tom Adams, was named Executive of the Year at the 7th Annual American Business Awards. Adams has been with the company since 2003. The company went public in April, raising $112.5 million during its IPO. In addition, the company has announced that its Classroom Version 3 won an American Educational Publisher’s Distinguished Achievement Award. It won the award for its English as a Second Language (ESL)/ English Language Learner (ELL) curriculum for high school students. “It is a… -
Any kinesthetic language learners out there?
24 Jun 2009 | 3:43 pmDoes this apply to language learning? THE KINESTHETIC LEARNER LEARNS BEST BY DOING. Study in short blocks of time rather than extended periods. Take frequent breaks when studying. Change locations each time you take a break to help stretch your legs and give you a chance to move about when studying. Have as many experimental learning opportunities as possible, such as lab and studio courses, as opposed to straight lecture classes - if you have a choice. Consider building models or giving demonstrations to the class as opposed to more traditional written reports or term projects. When…
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Sinosplice
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Chinese-English Bilingual Ambigrams
30 Jun 2009 | 7:06 amThese have been around a while on Dr. David Moser’s website, Cognitive China. Just in case you haven’t seen them, though, be sure to check out these Chinese-English bilingual ambigrams. Two samples: Good stuff. See the rest on Cognitive China. -
Michael Jackson Matters to China
28 Jun 2009 | 6:23 amI wasn’t planning on writing anything about Michael Jackson’s passing, but when it came up again and again and again in my conversations with Chinese friends, I was forced to acknowledge something: although the average American pop star goes largely unknown in China, Michael Jackson really mattered to China. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting the reaction which his death provoked — the text messages, the email tribute forwards, the many conversations. What made this pop star so important in China’s eyes? Michael Jackson () rose to stardom as a solo artist around the… -
How to Pronounce nciku
21 Jun 2009 | 5:05 pmThe online Chinese dictionary everyone is using these days is nciku. Newbies and veterans alike all seem to dig it. The quality of the dictionary entries is a refreshing change from the deluge of unimpressive CEDICT clones. One common difficulty among nciku users of all levels, however, is that they can’t figure out how the hell to pronounce the name! Is it N-C-I-K-U, each letter pronounced like its name, or maybe N-C-I-koo, or something like In-see-koo? Just how do you really pronounce nciku, anyway?? By clicking on (or ) in the footer to switch to the Chinese version of the site, you… -
10 Vegetables China Taught Me to Love
15 Jun 2009 | 7:52 pmI’ve always been good about eating my vegetables, but coming to China was a total game-changer for me, vegetable-wise. Here were veggies I’d long since written off as “nasty,” forcing me to reevaluate them in their new oriental guise. And reevaluate I did! In the end, I found myself growing to love the Chinese version of many of the vegetables I thought I didn’t like. (It’s probably more than just the effect of MSG.) Of course, then there are also the ones I’d never heard of or seen before coming to China. One of them even made it all the way to #1 on… -
Asian Poses is Hilarious
10 Jun 2009 | 9:03 pmIt might make you nauseous, but it’s also hilarious: Asian Poses. Via Adam Schokora (via Twitter).
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babelhut.com
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The Winner of a Free Copy of ‘601 Spanish Verbs’
29 Jun 2009 | 6:48 pmI’m sure the question on your mind right now is: So, who won the free copy of 601 Spanish Verbs? Was it me? Well if you are mrcneff, then the answer is yes, you won! I will be contacting you for delivery information shortly. For everybody else, I’m sorry. Maybe you will win next time. You could always purchase a copy for yourself. ¡Felicidades, mrcneff! -
Review of 601 Spanish Verbs + a Giveaway
19 Jun 2009 | 2:18 pmUpdate: The deadline for entering the drawing has been extended, see details at the bottom of this post. A couple of months ago I received a copy of 601 Spanish Verbs for me to review. I incorporated this book into my Spanish studies to see how well it fared. Read on to find out what I think of it and how you can win a free copy for yourself! The Verb Guide The Verb Guide section at the beginning of this book is pure gold. I’ve had trouble with the more advanced tenses in Spanish until I read this section. The descriptions of each tense are the clearest and most easily understood of any… -
Update: Barra de Español version 1.1 has been released
7 Jun 2009 | 2:38 pmI’ve just released an update to Barra de Español, version 1.1. The new version has some new features that I believe make it a necessary upgrade for those of you currently using version 1.0. You can get the new version from https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/12029. Here is what’s new in this version: Wrapped “loose” variables and function in a javascript object to meet addons.mozilla.org’s standards. Added http://www.cinetube.es/ to video sites Fixed unicode text in search history being stored incorrectly. This change may cause you to lose your previous… -
False friends: decepcionar
25 May 2009 | 4:24 amEvery once in a while, we all run into a word that deceives us about its meaning. Often it is because the word looks similar to a word in your native language, which happened to me today on twitter. I had just discovered an excellent blog called ReVerbSpanish and I had tweeted about it. The author of that blog, Eleena, sent me this tweet: @peterjcarroll ¡Muchas gracias por tu voto de confianza! Espero que no te decepcione. Decepcione? I read that and thought to myself, “Why would she hope to not deceive me?” It was clearly dictionary time. It turns out that the verb decepcionar… -
Barra de Español: A new Firefox toolbar for Spanish students
22 May 2009 | 7:39 amLadies and gentlemen, Spanish students across the globe, I’d like to introduce you to my latest creation! It’s a Firefox add-on called Barra de Español. It lets find word translations and definitions using wordreference.com by typing the word in the toolbar, or by highlighting the word and right-clicking on it. It helps insert the special characters that Spanish uses that may not be on your keyboard. It provides links to native Spanish web sites which can help you in your study of the language, including news, reference, and video sites. But the best part is that it’s…
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Slang O The Day
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Slang O’ The Day Needs Your Input
3 Jul 2009 | 10:01 pm... Get the definition to today's term at Slang O' The Day. -
dime piece
3 Jul 2009 | 10:00 pm... Get the definition to today's term at Slang O' The Day. -
fashi
2 Jul 2009 | 10:00 pm... Get the definition to today's term at Slang O' The Day. -
later gator
1 Jul 2009 | 10:00 pm... Get the definition to today's term at Slang O' The Day. -
blinker
30 Jun 2009 | 10:00 pm... Get the definition to today's term at Slang O' The Day.
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All Japanese All The Time
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Motivation For Cynical People
23 Jun 2009 | 11:00 amIf you’re like me…I don’t know whether you actually are, but…you know, if you are, then you came from a country and a culture that largely frowns upon overt displays of emotion. Especially overt displays of positive emotion. Forget displays — simply having a positive mental attitude might be social suicide where you’re from. As time goes on, you might have outgrown wanting to be cool in the high school sense. You might have decided that your society sucked enough that you no longer cared if you became dead to it. But you still might carry some residual… -
QRG: Your Suggestions Wanted! I Mean, Humbly Requested!
9 Jun 2009 | 7:30 amHey everyone. All this consulting and FAQing and emailing and commenting have taught me a thing or two. A lot of people have a lot of questions, particularly fine, detailed, low-level questions. My personal preference up until now has been to write at a more abstract level, both in order to stay more universal and also in order to not bog people down with minutiae. Moreover, I hate being told what to do, and a lot of AJATT comes down to “just go out there by yourself and play”. However, those action-level techniques do have a place and do have value. And, as you might expect,… -
If Immersion Works So Well, Then Why Can People Live In a Country For Double-Digit Years And Never Learn The Language?
5 Jun 2009 | 8:01 amThe other day, a young man named M.A.I. sent me this email: Hi Khatz! I’ve been reading your blog for a few months now, and I love it! I try to follow your method as much as possible, but I am not 100% immersed in Spanish (yeah, I am learning Spanish instead of Japanese) as I am kind of undisciplined. But your method is still helping me a lot! I was wondering about what you think about a phenomenon I “discovered” lately. Here in Germany, there are a whole bunch of American people I know who speak German very little or with an extremly heavy accent. Alright, maybe the problem… -
On The Very Serious Subject Of How To Have Fun All The Time
31 May 2009 | 7:59 amAnother day, another email pregnant with possibilities for insight to help us all. Her name is B-star. And this is her story, in her own words. Heavily, heavily edited for spelling : I’ve been studying Japanese for a looong time. Like most people, I sucked at it until i chanced upon your method. It works much better and I suck less. Here is the dilemma: I’ve stopped. I have to urge myself to even watch a Japanese cartoon WITH SUBS, much less a raw cartoon. This has been a problem throughout my life. I’m what u call a chronic procrastinator. A normal procrastinator puts… -
Unrealistic Expectations That You Need To Stop Having
24 May 2009 | 8:01 amI get it all the time now. “Hey Khatsumodo! Love teh method! Your righting iz rully motuvashonul! I’ve been running my Japanese OS for 4 hours now, but i don’t feel much change! Hehe. Lolz!” “Hey! I really love all your talk about immersion! I don’t know kanji yet but I picked up a Japanese dictionary today but I couldn’t understand anything!!! Is this normal??? It’s too hard! Maybe I’m just not good at languages!!! Do I have to do Heisig? But how will I learn readings and grammar?” I’ve been working with your method for almost six…
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Dons Innovations
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Someone is walking over my grave
2 Jul 2009 | 1:31 pmMeaning A response to a sudden unexplained shudder or shivering. Origin ‘Someone is walking over my grave’ seems a rather odd thing for a living person to say when experiencing a sudden shudder, so why is it said? The 18th saying derives from an earlier folk legend that a sudden cold sensation was caused by someone walking over the place that one’s grave was eventually going to be. This belief is in line with the workings of people’s minds in England in the Middle Ages, in which the distinction between life and death was much less clear than we see it now. There was… -
Cotton-picking
28 Jun 2009 | 1:22 pmMeaning A general term of disapproval, of something that is troublesome or a nuisance. Origin It can come as as little surprise that the term ‘cotton-picking’ originated in the southern states of the USA, where it is usually pronounced cotton-pickin’. It began life in the late 1700s and differs from the 19th century Dixie term, ‘cottonpicker’, in that the latter was derogatory and racist, whereas ‘cotton-picking’ referred directly to the difficulty and harshness of gathering the crop. Of course, ‘cotton-picking’ must have been in use as an… -
Heard it through the grapevine
26 Jun 2009 | 1:20 pmMeaning An indication that a piece of information was obtained via an informal contact. Origin The first practical public demonstration of the telegraph was given in 1844, when Samuel Morse sent a message from Washington to Baltimore. The invention was widely welcomed as a means of rapidly communicating news. It soon became clear though that close communities already had effective word-of-mouth communications. Soon after the telegraph was invented the term ‘grapevine telegraph’ was coined – first recorded in a US dictionary in 1852. This distinguished the new direct… -
A stitch in time saves nine
24 Jun 2009 | 1:14 pmMeaning A timely effort will prevent more work later. Origin This is nothing to do with rips in the fabric of the space-time continuum, as some have ingeniously suggested. The question usually asked is “saves nine what”? The stitch in time is simply the sewing up of a small hole in a piece of material and so saving the need for more stitching at a later date, when the hole has become larger, Clearly, the first users of this expression were referring to saving nine stitches. The Anglo Saxon work ethic is being called on here. Many English proverbs encourage immediate effort as… -
For ever and a day
22 Jun 2009 | 1:12 pmMeaning Indefinitely. Origin Of course, for ever and a day is an dramatic construct with no literal meaning – for ever is for ever, we can’t add days to it. This form of dramatic emphasis has been used many times, a recent example being The Beatles’ song ‘Eight Days a Week’. Shakespeare coined this and used it in The Taming of the Shrew, 1596: BIONDELLO I cannot tell; expect they are busied about a counterfeit assurance: take you assurance of her, ‘cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum:’ to the church; take the priest, clerk, and some sufficient…
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Speaking English Podcast
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Episode #117 - decay vs. decade
30 Jun 2009 | 11:33 amFind more episodes at www.speakingenglishpodcast.com and follow us on twitter at @speakingenglish. -
Episode #116 - thread vs. threat
5 Jun 2009 | 2:11 amFind more episodes at www.speakingenglishpodcast.com. -
Episode #115 - booze vs. booth vs. boost
21 May 2009 | 12:50 pmFind more episodes at www.speakingenglishpodcast.com and follow us on twitter at @speakingenglish. -
Episode #114 - miscellaneous
21 May 2009 | 12:00 pmFind more episodes at www.speakingenglishpodcast.com and follow us on twitter at @speakingenglish. -
Episode #113 - tear vs. tear
5 May 2009 | 1:54 pmFind extensive archives and more information at www.speakingenglishpodcast.com and follow us at twitter.com/speakingenglish
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separated by a common language
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pet, stroke and limerick winner
30 Jun 2009 | 12:26 pmOne of my newer internet addictions is Ross Horsley's My First Dictionary, which is wicked in every sense of the word. One must (if one is me) pause here to note that the 'excellent' sense of wicked is originally AmE. Several of my UK students have assumed that they'd have to explain this trendy BrE slang to me, but I was saying wicked pissa cool with my Bostonian university mates before my current students were even born. (I had a Master's degree by the time my youngest students were born. Who is going to cure me of this senescence?) MFD makes me feel incredibly uneasy and extremely amused… -
over-the-counter observations
29 Jun 2009 | 12:08 pmAs I write this (which is actually a few days before I post it--connection problems at home), I am enjoying two British (or at least not-American) things about which I often ask: How did I ever live without this? Crumpets and Syndol. I’ve written about crumpets before back here, and as usual I’m eating them in a very non-British way—this time, with peanut butter and (AmE) jelly/(BrE) jam. (My other favo(u)rite and very non-British ways are with butter and maple syrup or with melted Cheddar and lots of A1 Sauce. Eating those messy concoctions requires a knife and fork.) Syndol is heaven… -
Win a copy of Britannia in Brief!
16 Jun 2009 | 4:20 pmWelcome to the first SbaCL book review--one of many to come, I hope. Thanks to the folks at Tandem Literary and Ballantine Books, we can celebrate this first review with a chance to win the book. Read further for details.Today's book is Britannia in Brief: The Scoop on All Things British by Leslie Banker and William Mullins (Ballantine, 2009), an American wife and British husband team. In other words, here's the book that Better Half and I could have written if we'd thought of it first and weren't so gloriously behind schedule with everything else in our lives--like the laundry. Especially… -
like-less predicates
6 Jun 2009 | 3:22 pmBen Zimmer, the man responsible for my blogging about shit, has sent me a number of BrE sentences over the past few months. Each of these did not contain the word like where an American like Ben might've expected it. And, really, that was the point of the scatological post that Ben inspired too. He'd noted that BrE speakers are more likely to sayI feel shitwhereas AmE speakers would have to say I feel like shit. My response then was to say that shit can act as an adjective in BrE--and that is true. After all, one can (if one is BrE-speaking) say something like What a shit film.But it's also… -
sarcasm and irony
30 May 2009 | 11:54 amI’m very happy to welcome my first guest blogger, a student who’s finished the work for her Sussex degree in English Language and Film Studies, which included a dissertation comparing British irony and sarcasm to American—the latter of which has seen more academic attention. Rather than twiddling her thumbs while awaiting her result, she has graciously allowed us some insight into her work. Gentlepeople, I give you SoloAs I’m sure you’re aware, the British are very fond of saying that ‘Americans don’t get irony’ and expressing over-inflated national pride in our astounding…
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Mr. Verb
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Blogal: The language blog world has gotten big
4 Jul 2009 | 9:53 amJust learned that we've been nominated for Lexiophiles "Top 100 Language Blogs 2009" competition — by Leonard Bloomfield, no less. We all appreciate Professor Bloomfield coming back from the dead to help us out here, and are happy to be in the mix.But what really got me about this competition was the thought that just how many language blogs there are these days. Lexiophiles has split things into four categories:Language LearningLanguage TeachingLanguage Technology Language Professionals.By the way, we're in "Language Teaching" ... maybe we should step up the pedagogy.PS: Yes, I'm thinking… -
Scholarly communication: Listservs, blogs and who knows what all
30 Jun 2009 | 5:05 amOver at the Chronicle of Higher Education, Jeffrey Young has a nice piece called:COLLEGE 2.0Change or Die: Scholarly E-Mail Lists, Once Vibrant, Fight for RelevanceIt's behind a paywall (click here if you have access), so here's the opening paragraph:Once they were hosts to lively discussions about academic style and substance, but the time of scholarly e-mail lists has passed, meaningful posts slowing to a trickle as professors migrate to blogs, wikis, Twitter, and social networks like Facebook.Let's start from the history. Now, I know all you young kids have only heard the stories of such… -
The Peevologist Idiocracy?
29 Jun 2009 | 1:41 amOne of the most stunningly stupid popular narratives about language is that it's declining steadily. You know the lines: English is being destroyed by young people not using 'whom' or by them using 'like' (as in 'she was all like ...). This clearly parallels the general Decline of Civilization narrative. xkcd has this beautiful piece playing off of that by way of Idiocracy. Just look at panels 3 and 4 and substitute 'language', 'grammar', etc. for 'religious', 'moral', 'society', etc. -
RezWorld: A new tool for language learning
25 Jun 2009 | 4:26 amMr. V's last post took us back to literally the earliest known Cherokee text written in Sequoyah's syllabary. I passed that link on to some folks, and was rewarded with a link to what's probably the newest tool for Native language learning — RezWorld. It's described "the first fully-immersive 3-D Video Game that teaches Native languages." Check out the video.The prototype shown in the video is, as it happens, in Cherokee, and the idea is that it can be adapted not only to any language, but also the appropriate community and cultural context. It's got a nice feel to it, low-key and with… -
Really exciting philology: Cherokee alphabet
24 Jun 2009 | 5:07 amThe NYT's Science Times can go weeks without anything very interesting for linguists and then have a few pieces at once. I was happy to see the piece yesterday on human audition, with some attention to the role that hearing may have played in the evolution of language. It's actually far more important for linguistics, as the comments from Shihab Shamma reflect. (Yes, you need to read the piece.)But I was pleased to see a big piece on the history of the Cherokee alphabet, by John Noble Wilford. The story has been out for a while (if not in the big media that I know of) about the discovery of…
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Learning the Language
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Walter Lara Gets a Postponement on His Deportation
2 Jul 2009 | 12:27 pmWalter Lara, 23, a graduate of Miami Dade College, gets a postponement on his deportation, which was scheduled for July 6. -
Next Step in Horne v. Flores: Is Arizona's Program for ELLs Working?
2 Jul 2009 | 11:19 amThe U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Horne v. Flores, a case concerning English-language learners in Arizona, touches on a lot of the big questions that educators of these students have been discussing for decades. (Find my EdWeek article about the... -
Wisconsin Provides In-State Tuition Rates to Undocumented Students
1 Jul 2009 | 11:44 amWisconsin becomes the 11th state to permit undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates at state universities. -
The Aftermath of the Storm in Storm Lake
1 Jul 2009 | 7:43 amThe Storm Lake school district in Iowa reviewed and revised its policies on English-language learners after a student of Lao descent refused to take and English-language-proficiency test because she believed she was fluent in English. -
Away from Blogging Until July 1
28 Jun 2009 | 7:11 pmI'm out of the office on a reporting assignment. Look for posts again on this blog on July 1....
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Blogging Translator
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Translation tips from the ITI ‘Style Matters’ translation workshop, Perth
24 Jun 2009 | 8:27 amLast weekend I attended a translation workshop organised by ITI Scotland and led by Ros Schwartz and Chris Durban. This was a great opportunity to get top writing tips from some of the best in the business, and the event was very well attended (despite the considerable distance for those of us travelling from southern England!). The event was particularly useful for translators working on creative texts, such as marketing copy, but most of the tips provided can be universally applied to other specialist fields. Here are my take-aways from the event: Top tips: Remember that as a translator… -
Pick of the week
19 Jun 2009 | 9:18 amMy June diary is turning out to be unusually heavy on the continuing professional development front. For someone like me who gets giddy at the prospect of just one course, this is like all my birthdays have come at once. First up was ‘EU Terminology and other EU Reference Material‘, jointly organised by the ITI office and Fiona Harris from the DGT. I attended this course yesterday afternoon at the European Commission Representation office near St. James’s Park. On the agenda were presentations by Professor Margaret Rogers of Surrey University, a well known terminology… -
ITI Sustainability in Translation Conference - my experience: day 2
29 May 2009 | 7:34 amAfter a delightful evening meal at the library of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (the main conference venue), we reconvened early the next morning for another day of presentations, chat and lots of coffee. I felt that there was a perceptible shift on the second day towards the more practical, day-to-day aspects of translation and interpreting, with the emphasis on technology, work-life balance and professional development. The day started with yours truly - co-presenting with Sarah Dillon. We’d done a lot (and I mean A LOT - see Sarah’s write-up) of preparation and… -
ITI Sustainability in Translation conference - my experience: day 1
20 May 2009 | 2:55 pmHaving now recovered from last weekend’s ITI Conference ‘Sustainability in Translation’, at which I co-presented with Sarah Dillon, I’d like to share some of the key points I took away from it. At the conference I attended last November, I decided to ‘live tweet’ from the event. But this time somehow the mood just didn’t take me, and I also knew that a few other delegates, particularly @nickrosenthal and @serenadorey would be tweeting updates, so I knew it would be well covered. Not to mention the fact that I was cripplingly nervous about my Sunday… -
Do men and women use language, tone and voice differently?
13 May 2009 | 6:12 amThis is a bit of a rhetorical question, as I think most people would probably agree that we do! More probing questions you may wish to consider are: Have women’s voices got deeper in recent years? Do women find it hard to carry authority in their voices? Do women talk more than men? Do men use language to put women down? What is the ‘ideal’ female voice from an advertiser’s viewpoint? Are there really big differences between men and women’s brains in terms of how they process language? These were all questions discussed in this morning’s Woman’s Hour…
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Learn French with Daily Podcast
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696 – Un avion solaire (Solar plane)
3 Jul 2009 | 9:13 pmLearning Guide | PDF Transcript L’aventurier suisse Bertrand Piccard a dévoilé un prototype d’avion solaire qu’il espère voir faire le tour du monde… Learn French now ! Listen to today’s lesson : -
695 – Un instrument de musique (Musical instrument)
3 Jul 2009 | 8:16 pmLearning Guide | PDF Transcript Des flutes datant de l’époque durant laquelle les hommes modernes ont commencé à coloniser l’Europe laissent penser… Learn French now ! Listen to today’s lesson : -
694 - Real Life French: une visite inattendue
1 Jul 2009 | 9:10 pmReal life French Guide Welcome to your lesson of Real Life French. Each lesson we take a simple situation you may encounter in everyday life in France. Learn French now ! Listen to today’s lesson : -
693 – Le projet de loi Amazonie (Amazon bill)
30 Jun 2009 | 8:01 pmLearning Guide | PDF Transcript Le président brésilien Lula a approuvé un projet de loi controversé autorisant des fermiers d’Amazonie à acquérir des… Learn French now ! Listen to today’s lesson : -
692 – Des kangourous défoncés (Stoned wallabies)
28 Jun 2009 | 6:45 pmLearning Guide | PDF Transcript Des kangourous australiens mangent du pavot et créent des cercles dans les champs (crop circles) en sautant très… Learn French now ! Listen to today’s lesson :
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Learn Languages Now
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Learning To Speak Spanish Software - What Works And Why
3 Jul 2009 | 3:35 amby Adrian Fletcher It is generally agreed that immersion Spanish (living in a Spanish speaking country) is the best way to acquire Spanish language skills quickly and effectively. Primarily because you have a strong motivation to learn the language and daily opportunities to use and reinforce your learning. This is not always possible in your native country and can demoralize people as they see no benefits or progress with their learning. With this said, it is not possible for many people to up sticks and move to a Spanish speaking country. So what are the alternatives ? A good alternative is… -
Spanish Classes in Boston
28 Jun 2009 | 4:03 amby Sheri Park With over 350 million people speaking Spanish worldwide, it is a great time to decide to take Spanish classes in Boston. Spanish is spoken natively by one out of ten people. If you have a goal of learning to communicate in Spanish, now it the right time to invest in taking Spanish classes in Boston. At HablEspana, we teach only Spanish and you will notice the unique Latin culture the moment you enter our offices to sign up for your Spanish classes in our centrally located Boston office. Before you know it, you’ll be speaking clearly in our language as your classes have… -
The Type Of People Who Learn Chinese
27 Jun 2009 | 1:26 amby Yvonne Chia Different people have diverse reasons why they need to study Chinese. However, in this article you will find the characteristics of people who study the Chinese language. People who study the Chinese language are adventurous. Why? Because adventurous people are those who are not afraid to try on things that are different. They are those who go for excitement and something new and perhaps complicated. The Chinese language can look very complicated and hard to learn. But adventurous people are not afraid to learn new things. They are even determined to go further and leave their… -
The Best Way To Learn Italian
25 Jun 2009 | 2:49 amby Adrian Fletcher Depending on where you live in the world, your reasons to learn Italian may differ. In the United States, for example, there are many people that have Italian family and heritage that can motivate them to learn to speak Italian. Being bilingual can improve your career prospects and is a skill that few others will have. In Europe, speaking Italian is useful for tourists that want to get off the beaten track. Indeed, many retired people often decide to settle in remote but idyllic parts of Italy, meaning a grasp of the language is necessary and would make it easier to settle… -
Can I Honestly Learn Spanish Quickly? Absolutely!
24 Jun 2009 | 12:37 amby Lynn Halladay If you’re looking for a few simple ways to make learning Spanish a lot easier, these tips will help you. Of course, you’ll need to have a good Spanish class, text, or online learning program to make full use of them. However, they can do a lot to speed up your ability to master the Spanish language. Subtitles Watch English-language movies with the Spanish subtitles on. You’ll slowly absorb the Spanish words and their meaning while watching your favorite films! This is an inexpensive and fun multi-media technique. Kids’ Books You can pick up a lot of…
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Brave New Words
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Translating Poetry
2 Jul 2009 | 4:05 pmI find this quote interesting:Poetry, indeed, cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographerI think Samuel Johnson was a bit off here. Who in the world could realistically learn all the languages she or he wants to, all in order to read poetry in its original… -
Watercooler for Translators
27 Jun 2009 | 4:03 pmFellow Swedish-to-English translator Andy Bell has started a sort of joint blog, which he terms "watercooler," for translators. You have to sign in, but it's free and there's some good information and networking possibilities there. -
New Translators' Association
22 Jun 2009 | 4:04 pmI received the following email about a new association for translators. The organization seems to be free, but I don't know enough about it to be able to comment on it. If anyone has more information, I'd be interested. Here is the message:I’m pleased to present the new translator organisation “Global Internet Translators Association (GITA)”, founded at the beginning of 2009.GITA (http://www.gita-online.org) aims to incorporate modern media into the translation industry and has set itself the target of building an optimal framework for translation to be carried out online.GITA advocates… -
A Round-Up
17 Jun 2009 | 4:09 pmHere's another round-up of blog posts and articles for your reading pleasure.Here is an article, unfortunately only in Swedish, on the need for new translations. It's an interesting topic. Do translated books need to be updated? How often? Why?Here is a blog post on protolanguage. The rest of the blog is good reading, too.On to a guest post by me on crime fiction.Next is a guest post by me, based on a post I had here on BNW.And finally, another guest post, this one on the nice new Macmillian dictionary blog. The new Macmillian dictionary website is also worth spending time on. -
Translation Book Launch
12 Jun 2009 | 4:27 pmIn case you are near Swansea (in southern Wales) and are free on Monday, feel free to come to this event. There will be food, wine, and, best of all, translated books and books on translation! See the following information:You are warmly invited to a Swansea University translation studies book launch and showcase, with light refreshments, to be hosted by Waterstone’s and the School of Arts on campus next Monday (15 June) from 1.00. Last year a very successful Nordic Translation Conference was organised by PhD student BJ Epstein at the Institute for Germanic and Romance Studies in London. BJ…
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Learn a Language
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Learn a language with Lord of the rings
25 Jun 2009 | 11:01 pmLearn a language with Lord of the rings I am an American living in Poland and I have learned Polish on my own. One of the things I am considering doing to improve my Polish is listening to the audio book version of Lord of the rings. That is, Elves, and Hobbits and language learning. I think its about 100 hours of well recorded Polish, for about 10 dollars if you go to a Kiosk or about 30 from Empik. Just listening to a language is a great way to learn. How do you learn a language? Listen. This is how children learn, they listen for about two years before they try to form real… -
Krakow Real Estate
22 Jun 2009 | 6:37 amKrakow Real Estate The real estate builders in Krakow are the greediest people I know. Their typical net profit margin is over 100%. Even in this downturn they are not lowering prices much. Do you want to work your whole life for some guys fat profit in the Cracow real estate market. I do not. And what I write here about Cracow I guess this could be said about the Polish real estate market in general. Real estate price equilibrium The price of a flat per meter in most countries in Europe and state in the US equals the salary per month. So if Krakowians are making 2,300 pln a month… -
How a baby learns a language
14 Jun 2009 | 12:38 amBabies learn a language by listening Babies listen to a language for about a year. They are actively listening before they even speak their first real word. One year. If you also listened to your target language you are trying to learn, actively for a year, you would be surprised how fast and how well you would speak that language. Listening is the most important skill in learning a language Yes babies learn a language slightly different, but listening is the most important skill. I tell my students to listen. Listen to audio books, listen to radio online, not just short clips of… -
Euro currency in Poland | Slovakians shopping in Poland
11 Jun 2009 | 10:10 pmThe Euro currency in Slovakia and Poland Poland has dragged its feat regarding the Euro currency. Poland is an EU country that has a strong economy and is very western, but it does not have the Euro currency. Even tiny Slovakia has the Euro. It was championed there as the currency that would prevent the crisis in Slovakia. However, just as many Poles suspected it has made Slovakia a very expensive place. Everyday thousands of Slovaks cross the boarder to Poland to go shopping (Slovaks do not need to learn Polish as the language is so close). In May alone 1/4 million Slovaks went… -
Mind mapping in learning a language
3 Jun 2009 | 9:38 pmMind mapping in learning a language One of the things I do while teaching English in my classes is after we study an idea in depth, I make my students create a mind map. The mind maps must be colorful and animated. By using non traditional techniques in learning a language I think it makes it not only more fun, but easier to learn. So if you want to try to learn a language, try making a mind map. Only when making this map, do one idea at a time with not too broad a focus, such as the topic ‘articles in English’, that is “a, an or the”. Eventually your goal will…
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Fun English Lessons
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121 - China232 Story
14 Jun 2009 | 4:19 amThis ESL podcast is about China232 changing business models. Learn English for daily conversation and learn about us. -
120 - MBA
10 May 2009 | 7:20 pmThis ESL Podcast is about going back to school and getting your MBA. Also, we discuss the new VIP section at china232.com -
119 - E-Commerce
13 Apr 2009 | 9:28 amThis ESL Podcast is about E-commerce. Learn English and learn about E-commerce. -
118 - Getting Laid Off
13 Apr 2009 | 9:10 amThis ESL Podcast is about losing your job. Learn English and listen up so you don't lose yours! -
117 - Skype
1 Mar 2009 | 12:40 pmThis ESL Podcast is about Skype and talking to people over the internet.
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Naked Translations
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Geordie
23 Jun 2009 | 2:47 amMy discovery of the North of England took me to Newcastle this weekend. The people in this part of the North-East are called “Geordies” and I was surprised that no-one around me could tell me why. It turns out that... -
Beyond the pale
17 Jun 2009 | 8:22 amHere, "pale" isn’t the adjective derived from O.Fr. paile, from L. pallidus "pale, pallid", but the noun that comes from L. palus "stake," related to pangere "to fix or fasten". The Phrase Finder explains that Catherine the Great created a... -
Margaret Gelling
4 Jun 2009 | 8:31 amWe spent last Saturday walking in Swaledale, in the Yorkshire Dales, starting from Gunnerside. Our walk book pointed out that this name comes from Norse “Gunner’s saetr”, meaning “Gunner’s slope”, which reminded me of the recent death of Margaret Gelling,... -
Austral
13 May 2009 | 2:33 amI’m currently working on a document about security in Africa, and particularly in Southern Africa, which is translated as Afrique australe in French. Austral dates back to 1372 and comes from Auster, which, in Roman mythology, is the name... -
Pandemic, epidemic and endemic
30 Apr 2009 | 2:48 amEndemic Relating to a disease or pathogen that is found in or confined to a particular location, region, or people. Malaria, for example, is endemic to tropical regions. 1662, from Gk. endemos "native," from en- "in" + demos "people,...
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Cognition and Language Lab
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All Italians Smoke
25 Jun 2009 | 5:40 amAlthough most behavior experiments are conducted in the lab, it's nice to be reminded occasionally that it's possible to conduct experiments in the human's natural environment...such as a nightclub. Italian scientists studied responses to requests for a cigarette at three nightclubs in central Italy.That scientists would study Italian's smoking behaviors comes as no surprise to anyone who has been reading semantics recently. It seems that half the example sentences in the papers I read involve some variation on "all Italians smoke."Read the blog: http://coglanglab.blogspot.com Do the… -
Calling all 12 year olds
24 Jun 2009 | 8:54 amI've been analyzing data from the Memory Test. The response to that experiment has been fantastic, so I'm able to look at performance based on age, from about 14 years old to about 84 years old. Interestingly, by 14 years old, people are performing at adult levels. I have a few kids in the 10-13 range, but not quite enough. It would be nice to know at what age people hit adult competency.So...if you or someone you know is in that age range, I'd like a few more participants in the near future. I should actually be able to put up a description of the results relatively quickly in this case,… -
The Value of Experiments
2 Jun 2009 | 12:55 pmI have been reading Heim & Kratzer's Semantics in Generative Grammar, which is an excellent introduction to formal semantics. On the whole, I've really liked the book, until I got to an example sentence in the 8th chapter:(1) Every man placed a screen in front of him.The authors claimed that this sentence was synonymous with(2) Every man placed a screen in front of himself.I though this was absurd, because to me the first sentence must mean that there is some man (let's call him 'Jim,') and all the other men put a screen in front of Jim. It just can't have the meaning of (2). I have a… -
A Counter-Productive Pet Peeve of Mine
19 May 2009 | 9:44 pmRead the blog: http://coglanglab.blogspot.com Do the research: http://coglanglab.org -
Ant Navigation SNL-style
12 May 2009 | 9:46 amIf you appreciated Saturday Night Live's Mother Lover, then this ode to ant navigation should be right up your alley, produced by student in Dave Barner's Developmental Psychology course at UCSD.OK, the videos have nothing to do with each other, but both are worth watching.Read the blog: http://coglanglab.blogspot.com Do the research: http://coglanglab.org
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Ryan's Linguistics Blog
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Garden path sentences
4 Jul 2009 | 12:35 pmI came across a headline recently that momentarily stumped me: "Judge accused of sex crimes impeached". This was because I automatically parsed this as "a certain judge has been accused of sex crimes", but then I came across "impeached" and had to fit it in somewhere". This happened because I initially interpreted "accused of sex crimes" as a verb phrase, whereas semantically it functions as a relative clause modifying "judge". These types of sentences, where we assign an initial interpretation and then have to revise it when we get to the end, are often referred to as "garden path"… -
Onsets
27 Jun 2009 | 10:38 pmBetsy Lowe emailed me an interesting observation last week, noting that in the song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", the lyrics go "He drew his bow across the strings and it made a evil hiss" (not an evil hiss). She commented that she commonly hears this a-before-a-vowel pattern in native Southerners, and thought "that was incredibly unusual because Italian and the other Romance languages I've dabbled in, and now Hungarian, go to great lengths to PREVENT two vowel sounds from running into each other. E.g.: not 'e una altra cosa,' but 'ed un'altra cosa,' in Italian. In Hungarian, 'a' is 'the'… -
More syntactic constituents
20 Jun 2009 | 9:44 amI've talked about syntactic constituents before (here), and recently another difficult regarding them came to my attention via the Famous Dave's web site. On their site you are prompted to "enter either a zip code or select a state". If this were proper VPE (Verb Phrase Ellipsis), I would be expected to (i) enter a zip code or (ii) enter select a state. Since (ii) is ungrammatical, clearly something has gone wrong here. My guess is that this phrasing resulted from a blend of (a) "enter either a zip code or a state" and (b) "either enter a zip code or select a state". Note that with (a) we get… -
Different to
13 Jun 2009 | 10:49 amI've noticed that the narrator of the Discovery show "Mythbusters" uses quite a few idiosyncratic phrases. By idiosyncratic I really just mean different from what I perceive as the standard and common way of saying things; I could be wrong. One of these I noticed the other day was "different to" something. I think in pretty much all cases I would say that one thing is "different from" another, though I might could use "different than" as well. Google gives the following results:different from: 128Mdifferent than: 47.5Mdifferent to: 10.9MSo apparently I'm not crazy in my ranking of different… -
Syntactic constituents
6 Jun 2009 | 9:56 amI recently saw a KFC ad that gave me pause: Mix it in your bucket. Why is "mix" highlighted? My guess is that their ad campaign consists of a number of similar slogans, with the initial verb highlighted. Okay, so why did this strike me as odd? Because "it in your bucket" isn't a constituent. A syntactic constituent is, narrowly, a group of words which is entirely and exhaustively dominated by a single node, i.e., there is some syntactic node which dominates all of and only that group of words. More practically the domination doesn't have to be exhaustive: we could certainly say that "mix it"…
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Free Language
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Korean-Flashcards.com Free Korean Course with Loop Flash Card System, Sentence Manager, Dictionary, Vocabulary Drills, RSS Feeds
3 Jul 2009 | 6:51 pmSummary Korean-Flashcards.com is a fast-loading, useful site for Korean learners to manage and practice vocabulary lists (words and sentences). There are many existing word and sentence lists created by other users that you can snag and use right away. You can also create your own lists and sentences on-the-fly and test yourself until you know them all. As a result, this resource works for Korean students of all levels, beginner to advanced. The self-testing is done via built-in flashcard software that you control. The website has an integrated dictionary that gives explanations of terms and… -
Free Michel Thomas Spanish Intro CDs for Brits who Buy Guardian on July 4th and Observer on July 5th, plus Holiday Phrasebooks
3 Jul 2009 | 9:14 amIn Britain: Get Michel Thomas Spanish Intro CDs Free If you buy The Guardian on Saturday, July 4th, 2009, and The Observer on Sunday, you will receive two free Michel Thomas Introductory Spanish CDs (~£15). If you aren't in Britain, but are interested in Michel Thomas, view our deal finder links at the bottom of this entry. It's not free, but certainly cheaper than full price. From Guardian.co.uk Improve your Spanish with our 2 free CDs on Saturday 4 and Sunday 5 July, plus 5 handy phrasebooks to collect from Monday 6 July. For those lucky enough to be packing their bags and heading south… -
Learn Oromo Language Basics Online Free, aka Afaan Oromoo or Oromiffa(a), an African Tongue Spoken in Ethiopia and Kenya
2 Jul 2009 | 6:06 pmLearn the Oromo Language (Afaan Oromoo) Online Recently we received an email from someone interested in learning the Oromo language online, free of course! Oromo is a minority language spoken in Ethiopia and Kenya. Well... we looked around for a while and found four resources that, together, give an introductory self-guided course in this African tongue. This is nothing profound, but will provide the very basics about the language, some useful phrases for travel, a humble dictionary and some other useful goodies. We thought we'd share this here for everyone, all on one neat page, so you don't… -
Thai-Flashcards.com Free Thai Course with Loop Flash Card System, Sentence Manager, Dictionary, Vocabulary Drills, RSS Feeds
2 Jul 2009 | 5:36 pmSummary Thai-Flashcards.com is a fast-loading, useful site for Thai learners to manage and practice vocabulary lists (words and sentences). There are many existing word and sentence lists created by other users that you can snag and use right away. You can also create your own lists and sentences on-the-fly and test yourself until you know them all. As a result, this resource works for Thai students of all levels, beginner to advanced. The self-testing is done via built-in flashcard software that you control. The website has an integrated dictionary that gives explanations of terms and… -
Swedish-Flashcards.com Free Swedish Course with Loop Flash Card System, Sentence Manager, Dictionary, RSS Feeds
1 Jul 2009 | 7:16 pmSummary Swedish-Flashcards.com is a fast-loading, useful site for Swedish learners to manage and practice vocabulary lists (words and sentences). There are many existing word and sentence lists created by other users that you can snag and use right away. You can also create your own lists and sentences on-the-fly and test yourself until you know them all. As a result, this resource works for Swedish students of all levels, beginner to advanced. The self-testing is done via built-in flashcard software that you control. The website has an integrated dictionary that gives explanations of terms…
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English, Jack
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Subjects and predicates for eight-year olds
1 Jul 2009 | 11:57 amMy eight-year old son goes to Japanese school every Saturday morning during the school year, and over the summer, he has some homework to do. The other day he showed me a question that he didn't understand:「次の文の主語とじゅつ語をかきましょう。」(i.e., Write the subject and the predicate of the following sentence.)This gave us an opportunity to talk about how to identify a subject in English and in Japanese, during which, he told me they'd been learning about verbs and adverbs at "English school" (the local elementary school).I wasn't sure how far to go with these… -
Nominated for top 100 language blogs
30 Jun 2009 | 7:19 amEnglish, Jack has been nominated in the category of Language Professionals for the Top 100 Language Blogs 2009. Of course, there are many excellent language blogs, so you need to get reading if you're going to vote. Voting will start on July 8 and close on July 27, and the winners will be announced on July 30.For more information on the 2009 competition and what it is all about visit lexiophiles.com. -
Choosing useful collocations
30 Jun 2009 | 6:30 amI'm not very keen on making collocations a focus of my teaching, but I do like authentic example sentences, and slipping in common collocates strikes me as a useful thing to do.I've been collecting useful examples for years over on the Simple English Wiktionary, and you are free to go there and take what you will. Unfortunately, there are also quite a few rather unnatural examples mixed in, so if you don't find what you're looking for, hie yourself over to the COCA and do a search like this one for help. Generally speaking, an MI score of 3.0 or more is generally considered to show a genuine… -
Dropping 'to'
9 Jun 2009 | 4:47 amContinuing on with our critique of this quarter's "Grammatically Speaking", the second query says, in part,"One way that I focused on was the use of to alone without its verb and accompanying clause in a sentence like He can leave work early today if he has to..."But as they so often do, a student came up with a counter example."They don't need to be here precisely at nine o'clock. They can come a little later if they like."Firsten basically throws up his hands. "It's because of that old problem we have in English concerning exceptions to some rules." We'll ignore the special status he… -
Firsten's fictions
6 Jun 2009 | 5:02 amThis time, in his "Grammatically Speaking" column in TESOL's Essential Teacher magazine, Richard Firsten, who has a track record for mis-explaining grammar, appears to have taken to just making stuff up. His correspondent asks,"My friend said, "I'm going to get a sundae," and then she asked me, "How about you?" After telling her what I wanted, it suddenly dawned on me that it wouldn't sound right if my friend had said, "What about you?" Now I'm confused. Are both questions still interchangeable or not?"Instead of simply saying, "you're deluded" or something kinder like, "either would be…
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Becomng a Better EFL Teacher
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How to Become an Accidental Linguist, in Three Strange Lessons
29 Jun 2009 | 10:15 pmHow to Become an Accidental Linguist, in Three Strange Lessons By Glynnis Burroughhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/5436926/How-to-become-an-accidental-linguist-in-three-strange-lessons.htmlLearning the local language is essential. However, one expat tells of the frustrations of studying French in Bahrain, Spanish in Argentina and German in Switzerland I studied French in Bahrain, Spanish in Argentina and German in Switzerland. Can I say I can speak all three languages? Well yes, but unfortunately all of them, at the same time, in the same sentence. My first experience of language learning was… -
Michael Jackson: An EFL Teaching and Learning Tribute to a Musical Genius
26 Jun 2009 | 11:02 pmMichael Jackson’s Sudden Death a Shock The sudden death of Michael Jackson has been a shock to almost everyone. Tributes and condolences to the family have poured in from around the globe from the White House to the Vatican. Few performermers have touched so many from so many walks of life and so many countries, languages and cultures. His presence will surely be missed. His legacy though, will live on. His contributions to the field of entertainment are profound, affecting global cultures and age groups from youth to the elderly. Many English language learners remember several of his many… -
Is There an Age Limit to Learning New Languages?
25 Jun 2009 | 7:28 amIs There an Age Limit to Learning New Languages?by Jonathan Golob http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/dear-science/Content?oid=1740852&hp Dear Science,"Is there an age limit to learning new languages? If so, does it apply only to spoken languages, as opposed to ancient or programming languages?"Aspiring Native SpeakerScience consulted his friendly local linguist and was introduced to the Critical Period Theory of language acquisition—and poor Genie. Genie spent the first 13 years of her life locked inside of a room—without any sort of human contact. When eventually discovered by Los… -
Getting Dear Ole Dad into Foreign Language Learning
21 Jun 2009 | 10:01 pmHappy Father’s Day – Feliz Dia del Padre If you’re a Dad, then “Happy Father’s Day”. Speaking of Father’s Day, where does your Father or Grandfather stand in regards to foreign language learning and fluency? Too many people think, “My Dad’s to old or set in his ways or “old fashioned” and wouldn’t be interested in learning another language. Oh, really? That’s not what I keep hearing from some surprisingly elderly dads. Unless father dear is incapacitated for some reason, you might just be surprised at his response – if you ask, that is. So what ever in the world… -
Intercambio Gives Language Learning Opportunities
21 Jun 2009 | 4:34 amIntercambio gives language learning opportunitiesBy Yesenia Robles http://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/2009/jun/17 /intercambio_gives_languagelearning_opportunities/ Craig, Colorado — A group of four diverse people shared their culture and language Tuesday night at the Boys & Girls Club of Craig during a group meeting called Intercambio.The word, when translated, means “exchange.”“We analyze every little thing because there are so many possibilities,” said Ray Parfrey, of Craig, when talking about translating a popular Spanish song. Tuesday was Parfrey’s third week participating at…
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Thoughts on Translation
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Links: for your reading pleasure
30 Jun 2009 | 9:20 pmIf the summer weather has you looking for some inspiration, here are some recent blog posts I’ve enjoyed reading. These are in no particular order: Escape from Cubicle Nation (don’t you love the title?) Get Rich Slowly linked to this blog, which has some excellent tips on entrepreneurial topics. Check out the “open source coaching” posts where readers weigh in on an entrepreneur’s dilemma. Various blogs have been chronicling LinkedIn’s recruitment of volunteer translators for its website. Here is a particularly interesting post from the Masked Translator on… -
It’s personal
30 Jun 2009 | 3:48 pmAs a freelancer, it’s always difficult to decide how much personal information your clients need or want to know about you. In one sense, Americans in general are relatively disinclined to share personal information with employers. Unlike in much of Europe, where it’s customary to include your birth date, marital status and a photograph on your resumé, standard practice in the US is to omit almost all personal information, even down to the dates you graduated from college or held a certain job. On the other hand, we all want to appear “real” and approachable to… -
Testing the direct client waters
23 Jun 2009 | 7:18 pmTranslators have a variety of reasons for choosing certain types of clients: some prefer agencies for their steady workflow and layer of “insulation” between the translator and the end client, some prefer direct clients for their higher rates and higher degree of autonomy, and still other translators mix up their workflow or work with clients who don’t fit exactly into either one of these categories. In talking to beginning and experienced translators alike, I’ve noticed that many translators are very intimidated by the idea of working with direct clients. While I… -
Paper marketing materials: in or out?
18 Jun 2009 | 8:56 pmEarlier this week, NPR ran a very interesting segment (reported by Yuki Noguchi) entitled Job Seekers Find New Rules of Recruitment, which focused largely on the role of new technology and social media in the job search process. Many of the points in the segment (have a LinkedIn profile, don’t use an AOL e-mail address or an e-mail address that you share with your spouse) were helpful but not earth-shaking. However, several of the interviewees also went into vivid detail about their hatred of paper resumés, which they described as “passé.” While I agree with this concept… -
Netbooks
16 Jun 2009 | 9:33 amThoughts on Translation is back from vacation (Costa Rica was amazing, thanks for asking!) and ready to attack some new projects. Summer always seems to be a challenging work time; I’m in and out of the office a lot doing fun things with the family and we also travel for several weeks, so I’m usually trying to fit more work into less time than usual. I haven’t yet made the leap to a smartphone, so mobile computing has been on my mind a lot this season. I feel it’s really important to take at least one real work-free vacation a year, so on our recent two week trip to…
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Global Watchtower
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How Satisfied Are You with Your Translation Software Vendor?
1 Jul 2009 | 10:42 amWhenever we plan to buy something, we often look to Consumer Reports, J.D. Power, Underwriters Laboratories, Good Housekeeping, or their national equivalents to get a sense of quality, performance, and customer satisfaction from previous buyers. None of these companies have asked purchasers of translation, localization, and internationalization software how satisfied they were with what they bought, so Common Sense Advisory is stepping into the breach to ask. Voice your opinion and take our survey on customer satisfaction with language software. (more…) -
Content Management Consolidation Continues
29 Jun 2009 | 6:41 amThis morning, SDL announced that it would pay US$14.7 million to acquire XyEnterprise in its latest move to expand its global information management capabilities. The acquisition is the most recent example of consolidation in the fragmented content management system (CMS) sector. SDL acquires good technology at an attractive price (1.48 times revenue versus the 2.5 or more multiplier of better economic times), while Xy distances itself from competitors in the SGML-morphed-to-XML CMS sector. (more…) -
Chernobyl Children Project Needs English-to-Russian Translators
23 Jun 2009 | 11:32 amWe’re happy to advise translators of an opportunity to help their fellow man. The Chernobyl Children Project is looking for a few good English-to-Russian translators and interpreters. (more…) -
Freelance Translators Clash with LinkedIn over Crowdsourced Translation
19 Jun 2009 | 9:49 amThis week, LinkedIn sent a survey to language professionals to capture their feedback on potential participation in what Common Sense Advisory calls “CT3” — community, crowdsourced, and collaborative translation. What was the reaction among freelancers to LinkedIn’s call for volunteers? Outrage, mixed with ample confusion. (more…) -
Coping with Heterogeneous TMS Environments
19 Jun 2009 | 9:31 amTranslation management system (TMS) users tell us they derive significant efficiency, cost, and quality benefits from systematic management of their translation and terminology assets. But what if your company’s language assets are “managed” in multiple TMSes or content managers? Without automated synchronization between systems, the value of memories and terminology gets watered down by manual process — or by lost leverage. (more…)
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Global by Design
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.EU to offer Greek and Cyrillic support
4 Jul 2009 | 12:59 pmThe European Commission has announced that it will begin supporting domain registration in Greek and Cyrillic characters. This will allow for support of all 23 official EU languages. The EC hasn’t announced when registrations will be possible. I took a stab at registering a Cyrillic domain name and got an “invalid domain” error. My guess is that we’re looking at FY10 before this becomes a reality — as ICANN is progressing slowly on a formal process for registering IDNs (internationalized domain names). But the announcement is good news because it gives ICANN… -
Bing Beats Google in Insta-translation
14 Jun 2009 | 9:13 pmBing recently added a nifty new translation feature — one that is so simple and in many ways so obvious that I can’t help wondering why Google never got around to doing it. But that’s a topic for a later post. For now, I’d like you to try entering the following text strings into both Bing and Google (to save you time I created pre-loaded hyperlinks): Translate I love you: Bing vs. Google Translate I love you into Chinese: Bing vs. Google How do you say I love you in Italian: Bing vs. Google Below are screen shots of the first text string in both Bing and Google. -
What does Libya have in common with Twitter? Ask Bit.ly
1 Jun 2009 | 9:15 pmBit.ly, the URL shortener now used by Twitter, is not the first company to craft its name out of a county code top-level domain (ccTLD). But Bit.ly does appear to be the first company to do so with the Libyan ccTLD. As some have speculated, Bit.ly could put itself into a precarious position should it begin hosting URLs for the adult industry, or any other industry that violates Libyan laws. It’s always important to keep in mind that a company can’t “own” a domain the way it owns real estate. But this is all just speculation. The registrar Libyan Spider clearly is… -
The Twitter Domain Rush: Don’t Get “Twit-jacked”
26 May 2009 | 8:13 pmMy previous post on Twitter got me thinking about what other companies had registered language-specific domains for their Twitter accounts. Turns out, most companies haven’t even registered Twitter accounts for their primary brands. Like who? Apple, for one. Here we have someone who apparently likes apples but isn’t Apple: It appear that Microsoft reserved its account early on, though nothing is there. Microsoft does have about a dozen Twitter accounts that do include content. Coke — someone who drinks Coke, but not the company. While Pepsi does have a Twitter account. The… -
Update on the World’s Number One Starbucks Fan
24 May 2009 | 10:25 amIn 2005, I interviewed a man named Winter, who was on a quest to visit ever Starbucks location on this planet. Four years later, the quest continues. Unfortunately, as documented by the Wall Street Journal, Starbucks is now closing stores faster than Winter can visit them. In 2005, Winter had visited 4,500 Starbucks stores. Today, his count stands at more than 9,000. And he is now racing to visit those stores scheduled to close, sometimes missing them by a matter of hours. Winter is single (no surprise there) and lives at home with his parents, who wish he’d just give up this Sysiphean…
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Web-Translations Buzz
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Automated/Machine translation – put to the test
23 Jun 2009 | 4:31 pmWe’re always being asked “why can’t I just use Google Translate/Babelfish/[insert name of machine translation tool here] instead? It’s free!” Where do I start?… Well, it’s true of translation as much as of anything else: you do get what you pay for. So if you are paying nothing for your translation, you can guess how good [...] -
A travelling Spanish translator
2 Jun 2009 | 9:51 amThis - the second guest posting on our company blog – comes from Spanish translator Carlos Montilla. Unsurprisingly, given the subject of his post, tourism is one of his specialisms but here he recounts a tale from his recent trip to Peru in near native English: cheers Carlos! Spanish from Peru Puno is a city in [...] -
International Selling Tool seminar - rescheduled for 8th July
21 May 2009 | 8:06 amDaniel Rajkumar will be presenting a seminar on 8th July, as part of a programme organised by Regional Language Network Yorkshire & Humber Do you want to take your business to the world? Do you want to learn the language of your customer? Businesses proactive in their use of foreign languages achieve on average 45% more export sales. RLNYH [...] -
Web-Translations at European SME week
13 May 2009 | 9:09 amWeb Translation was proud to be involved in the first ever European SME week in Brussels last week. Here’s a video including Cassandra Oliver talking about multilingualism in Europe: Cassandra was one of 5 people from SMEs across Europe invited to participate in a series of events as part of the first European SME week. This included a round-table [...] -
Google Morocco hijacked
13 May 2009 | 1:50 amGoogle.co.ma, the Moroccon domain occupied by search engine giants Google, was temporarily whipped from within their control by a group of hackers on Saturday May 9th. It appears their only motive was to show it could be done, and bask in hacker glory at having had the skills to do it. Pakistan hackers from pakbugs.com [...]
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Women Learning Thai
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A Year’s Worth of Women Learning Thai… and Some Men Too ;-)
3 Jul 2009 | 8:42 pmBlogging birthdays come but once a year… A year and a month ago, on June 4th, WLT launched. Sigh. I know, I know. It is already July 4th and I’m running late (it has been that kind of a month). And while a blogging birthday is not the same as your firstborn turning one, it is a cause for celebration. When I came up with the idea for Women Learning Thai, I had set aims in mind. A given, I wanted to improve my Thai and increase my understanding of Thailand and Thai culture. But along the way (just to be difficult), I also hoped to upgrade both my writing and photography skills. -
Book Review: Language is Music
1 Jul 2009 | 11:32 pmSusanna Zaraysky and Language is Music… I’ve read a number of books about learning languages. Some are made up of information that anyone can find on their own with a google or two. Others are written by thoughtful people sharing actual experiences of their own. Susanna is such a thoughtful person and Language is Music is such a book. A child of Soviet immigrants struggling with English, Susanna Zaraysky grew up in California, then went on to study ten languages and speak seven languages fluently. Susanna’s language skills paved the way for her to live in nine countries and… -
Why Learning the Thai Language Needs To Be More Than a Study of Words and Grammar
28 Jun 2009 | 5:56 pm“Mai pen rai” means “no problem” or “no worries”… All languages are pointers to understanding the culture of a country or nation, and the Thai language is an excellent example of this. However, it is important to understand that an awareness of the culture, is also essential in understanding how to interpret the language. The two are twined together. Let’s take a classic phrase in the Thai language as an example. Most visitors to Thailand leave with the familiar ring of “mai pen rai” in their minds. Literally translated this means “no problem” or “no… -
Thai Virtual Keyboard from Google
25 Jun 2009 | 4:57 pmGoogle goes virtual with Thai keyboards… If you look under my resources nav at the top of WLT, you’ll find a new page: Thai Keyboard Input. The Thai keyboard is all thanks to the coders at Google, with their AJAX Language API. As you can see, they have all sorts of programming bits on offer: Translation, transliteration, language detection and more. And if you scroll way down at the bottom of that page, you’ll see this one: AJAX Language API for Virtual Keyboard. And that’s what I’ve included on WLT’s resources: Thai Keyboard Input. Not because I need a… -
Habits of Highly Effective Expats
23 Jun 2009 | 12:31 amExpat Guide on twitter, tweets… Today, Sharon Gilor (expatsguide), tweeted Glen’s Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Expats. I have noticed in strangers, friends, and yes, even myself, seven habits that I think make you a very ineffective expat. My rookie year in China is nearing a close, so I plan on making a New Year’s resolution of sorts to break these bad habits that I know I have, and I sure to not be alone in them. Habits of Highly Ineffective Expats: 6) Decadence… “Don’t worry about spilling anything, the ayi will clean it” “I don’t cook anymore, eating…
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Russian Blog
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Russian Summer Reading part I: «Портрет» Н. В. Гоголя
30 Jun 2009 | 9:20 amWhen opening this brand new 21st century edition of this 19th century «пвесть» [story; tale; ‘novella'] «Портрт» ["The Portrait"] you find the following information on the first page: «издатся к 200-лтию со дн рождния Николя Васльевича Гголя» [is published for the 200th year anniversary of Nikolai Vasil'evich Gogol's birth]. What else is special about this edition? Well, it is part of the series «рсская клссика в иллюстрциях» [Russian classics in illustrations] and that’s why… …it is… -
Russian Food: «Слава гречке!» [Glory to Buckwheat!]
26 Jun 2009 | 3:17 amIntroducing an essential part of Russian cuisine: «грчка»! «Грчка» is actually the ‘nickname’ (уменьшительно-ласктельный варинт- don’t you just love the Russian language for applying diminutive even to such things as grains?) whereas the real name for buckwheat is «гречха». In the stores you can also find it in boxes marked «круп грчневая» [buckwheat] as pictured above. Your first «грчка» experience is more often than not an unpleasant one. If you’ve never tasted «грчка» before in your life -… -
Russian Cases: «Дательный падеж» [Dative]
21 Jun 2009 | 7:37 amAnd where might one find this bold statement made out of red metal on red wood pictured above? I found it in an old and forgotten «дом культры» ['house of culture'] in Krasnoyarsk in July 2005. What does it say, anyway? «Мир нардам, власть совтам» ["Peace to the peoples, power to the soviets"] written in old school Russian with the [hard sign] at the end of masculine words which was what they did before another important Russian revolution of 1917 - the Orthography Revolution. The Soviet kitsch on the picture above isn’t solely opening today’s… -
А в то же время в Екатеринбурге… [And at the same time in Yekaterinburg…]
16 Jun 2009 | 12:02 pmUsually my Russian hometown «Екатеринбрг» [Yekaterinburg] looks like this: «бескончные прбки на лицах» [endless traffic jams on the streets] and «бескончный ремнт домв и дорг» [endless reconstruction of houses and roads]. But not anymore! Now my «роднй грод на Урле» [hometown in the Urals] looks like this! Pictured above is the main street of the city - «проспкт Лнина» [Lenin's prospect]. You might not find this picture too extraordinary, but let me inform you of the fact that I’ve lived here… -
Celebrating Russia, or ‘aspects’ of the 12th of June
11 Jun 2009 | 9:45 amThe pictures are back! «Замечтельно!» Now the blog will be complete again! «Как хорош!» And what better a tribute to Russia’s uniqueness - which we are about to celebrate tomorrow on the 12th of June - than pictures taken from the last wagon on a train while traveling through Siberia? The choice made for the post’s title today is unfortunate since it cannot be translated back into the language of our affectionate obsession - «прзднуем Россю!» [‘we celebrate Russia!'] Is that something one is allowed to say in Russian (not politically, of…
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Polish Blog
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Swój or mój? - possessive pronouns continued
3 Jul 2009 | 6:05 amHa! I see that “swój” and its different forms are not going to win any popularity contests when it comes to Polish grammar for foreigners. And honestly, I can’t blame you guys. Those little buggers are really annoying. I’ve seen some really convoluted explanations of ”swój” and so I’m not all that surprised by your comments regarding this particular possessive pronoun. On the other than, I am not sure if my explanations can be any better. But let’s give it a shot and see what happens. And first things first: swój (masculine), swoja (feminine), swoje (neuter), swoi (plural… -
Polish Possessive Pronouns - are they really that difficult?
30 Jun 2009 | 5:46 amAre Polish possessive pronouns really that difficult? I need an honest opinion here. I have always thought they were one of those relatively straightforward bits in our convoluted language. But it turns out I might have been either mistaken or overly optimistic. Yesterday I was asked this very complicated question: Ok, so you say “moja książka” (my book) and “jej książka” (her book). But then you say: “On zgubił moją książkę.” (He lost my book) and because in this sentence “moja książka” is in the accusative (he lost kogo? co?) it became “moją książkę”. And… -
Seen in Poland - Picture Post
27 Jun 2009 | 8:52 pmAs you know I’ve traveling around Poland a bit lately. It’s been fun. I got to see all sorts of very interesting things. Or not so interesting things, which for some reason stuck in my head anyway. And I dutifully took pictures of it all. Actually, speaking of pictures, I realized that we’ve never had a classic photo post on this blog before. Hmmm… How did I manage to overlook THAT? So for today, I prepared a selection of photos that though maybe not necessarily interesting for everyone (and especially not for native Poles reading this blog – I apologize in advance here for any hurt… -
Midsummer - Polish Style
24 Jun 2009 | 8:47 amThis celebration technically took place yesterday, but I’ve been so busy celebrating Midsummer in all its many incarnations since last week, that the fact that I mentioned absolutely nothing about it on the blog has simply escaped my attention. I beg your forgiveness, and I promise we’ll do better next year, OK? In the meantime, and better late than never, let me tell you about this, and incidentally - not so unique, Polish way of celebrating Midsummer. First of all, we don’t call it Midsummer in Poland. It’s either “noc świętojańska” or “sobótki” (yes, in plural) or… -
When a Free Sample Isn’t Free
22 Jun 2009 | 7:48 amThere are many things that I love about Poland, but there are also many others that irritate me to no end (post office - Poczta Polska is just one of them). Another one of those things that get me really cranky are free samples that aren’t free. But let’s start from the beginning. I was looking for a small bottle of contact lens cleaner, small enough to take with me on the airplane. And I discovered that “travel size” in Poland means 120 ml, which of course is much too large. As I walked from one store to another seeing only 120 ml bottles everywhere, I was beginning to get…
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Thai 101
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Thai Movie Titles: May and June 2009
19 Jun 2009 | 5:06 pmAs I wrote in the previous installment, "Thai titles for western films are sometimes corny, sometimes spoilery, and always entertaining. Especially when you translate them back into English. They have a style of their own." Here are my (intentionally) over-literal re-translations of a few recent movie offerings: Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins ฅนเหล็ก 4 มหาสงครามจักรกลล้างโลก "Iron Man 4: super machine war cleanses the earth" Star Trek สตาร์เทร็ค สงครามพิฆาตจักรวาล "Star… -
Abhisit urges the Royal Institute: let's face facts
4 Jun 2009 | 3:00 amAn interesting tidbit from The Nation last week (link|cache):PM urges Royal Institute to accept changes made to Thai language by InternetPrime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva Monday urged the Royal Institute to face changes caused to the Thai language by usage of the language on Internet and accept the changes.Abhisit said the Royal Institute must regulate and create standard for the changes in the language while campaigning for the correct usage of the language.The prime minister said his government would also make it a national agenda to campaign for Thai youths to love reading.The NationI have… -
Long time no see...
4 Jun 2009 | 2:23 amGreetings, readers! (Both of you.) My triumphant return has finally arrived. Okay, maybe not triumphant, but I'm going to stop being so lazy about writing posts. Please check back soon (i.e. later today) for my first real post in a month. Thanks for sticking around. Thanks, The Management -
คนพวกนั้น (Those Kind of People)
8 May 2009 | 5:32 amFor those who expressed interest in the Thai-language version Siburapha's story "Those Kind of People" (which I blogged about last week), I have now posted the original story: คนพวกนั้น. I digitized the text by scanning it and running the scans through ABBYY FineReader 9.0 OCR software. They added Thai support last year and it's by far the best of the meager Thai OCR options. No offense to NECTEC, but their ArnThai is truly terrible in comparison. But it's still not perfect, so I read through it quickly to fix obvious errors. If you spot any more drop me a line and I'll fix… -
Thai Movie DVD Roundup, Part 2: Memory Collection from GMM
8 May 2009 | 4:08 amIt's been a year since my first DVD roundup, when I summarized the classic Thai films on offer from Triple X. I planned to follow up with the Happy Time catalog. While I still have my half-finished notes for that, it'll have to wait its turn. Today I'm gonna take on a bite-sized DVD roundup: GMM's new Memory Collection.It's only in the last few weeks that I've begun to notice these films on the shelf. And so far there are only three titles in the series. But doing a little research, I find that the first in the Memory Collection series was released in January 2009, followed by released in…
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Learn Thai Podcast
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Phrase Lesson 1: Greetings (Audio)
23 Jun 2009 | 7:57 amIn this lesson you will learn some useful phrases. Click here to download the transcript of this lesson. -
Phrase Lesson 1: Greetings (Video)
23 Jun 2009 | 7:57 amIn this lesson you will learn some useful phrases. -
Thai English 4 (Audio)
16 Jun 2009 | 5:33 amIn this lesson you will learn some more Thenglish words. Click here to download the transcript of this lesson. -
Thai English 4 (Video)
16 Jun 2009 | 5:33 amIn this lesson you will learn some Thenglish words. -
Thai English 3 (Audio)
13 Jun 2009 | 12:44 pmIn this lesson you will learn some more Thenglish words. Click here to download the transcript of this lesson.
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Helping You Learn English
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Jul 2, Especially vs Specially and Particularly
2 Jul 2009 | 3:20 amCould you please tell me whether especially, specially and particularly can be used interchangeably in the following sentences Here are some notes -
Jul 2, Indefinite and Possessive Pronouns
2 Jul 2009 | 3:02 amI'm always a bit uncertain when I use an indefinite pronoun, what the correct corresponding possessive would be. As an example: ONE should know, -
Jul 2, Is "were" or "was" correct?
2 Jul 2009 | 2:53 amWhich is correct? An Alert and Investigative Summary Report (were) (was) placed in the inmate's record. I see why you might be confused. It depends -
Jul 2, Present Continuous Sentence
2 Jul 2009 | 2:45 amHi Diana, I would like to know if this sentence is grammaticly correct or not. The postman knocking at the door. I saw this sentence written like -
Jul 2, PIF: The Important Characteristics of a leader
2 Jul 2009 | 2:35 amCreating the way for people to participate in realizing something hard is called the leadership. This latter is not allowed for everyone because it
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LexiBlog
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The link between language and music, Dr. Oliver Sacks on The Daily Show
30 Jun 2009 | 4:12 pmMy admiration for Dr. Oliver Sacks is no secret. He was just on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night talking about the effects of music on the brain. I am thrilled that he was discussing this on mainstream TV as more people watch The Daily Show than have read his excellent book, Musicophilia. He discussed that even after a stroke, people will still remember music even if they forget language. I wonder what would happen to someone who had learned another language through music. Would he/she have a better chance of retaining their language skills after a stroke?Watch this clip from The… -
Back in Sarajevo: Music jolts memory and language learning
23 Jun 2009 | 1:04 amMusic must be one of the most powerful forces of nostalgia!Yesterday, I had a lot of fun dancing to the gypsy music of Goran Bregović, a Sarajevo-born musician and composer. He has collaborated with Iggy Pop and Cesaria Evora and created the soundtracks for Emir Kusturica’s films (Time of the Gypsies, Arizona Dream, Underground).While listening to the concert, I felt like I was back in Sarajevo in my small cottage learning the local language (Bosnian, Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian) from my dear Bosnian friend, Damir Imamović. He taught me to sing popular songs from the former Yugoslavia. We… -
999,998... 999,999... 1 Million?
12 Jun 2009 | 6:59 amHow many words are there in the English language? According to the Global Language Monitor, a website that has developed a mathematical formula for determining the rate of creation of new English words recently featured in an article on CNN.com, the count has just reached 1,000,000 this Wednesday. But are the building blocks of sentence formation really enumerable?The Oxford English Dictionary contains 600,000 words. Most agree that the English language contains many words that haven't yet made it into the dictionary, particularly those which can be classified as jargon or slang. But how many… -
From Merengue to Borscht: learning Russian with Soviet Army music
6 Jun 2009 | 3:36 pmThere’s proof that music leads to learning!Last week, I was helping my friend David Mathison at his booth at Book Expo America. David was selling his book, Be the Media, a guidebook for authors, musicians, film makers, radio hosts and other creative people to create their own media companies. David’s aim is for people to bypass the major music studios and publishing houses and distribute their own content using the Internet and social media marketing. A man wearing a T-shirt with the word “BEAR” was admiring the stand. I asked him if he had any questions. Miguel Vargas-Caba, the Latin… -
Writers Wanted (No experience required )
3 Jun 2009 | 11:43 amNote: No experience required.Do you love learning new languages? Whether you do it just to learn a bad word...or because you need it for a job; maybe you're just interested in learning new things. We all learn new languages for our own reasons. I have a question for you?Are you a self proclaimed world traveler, or do you wish you were? Do you recollect about the different cultures you've immersed yourself in? Can you envision meeting people from all over the world and sharing your unique experiences with other people as passionate as you?Its time for your experiences to grow out of your head;…
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WeboWord - Vocabulary Visually!
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WeboWord’s Weekly Crossword - 21
4 Jul 2009 | 6:52 amCheck out the interactive version here! Word bank Adulation Alacrity Altruistic Amiable Crinkly Dissent Across 5. His __________ disposition acquired him a large circle of friends, who deeply lament his death. 6. For his young age, his skin was rather __________. Down 1. Dolphins are strongly __________ animals that help their sick or injured fellow dolphins. 2. Michael Jackson was worth every bit of the __________ he received. 3. Chinese government censors are scouring the Internet for signs of __________. 4. It was quite a surprise to see a relatively small engine push a large car along… -
Amiable - Someone friendly and pleasant
3 Jul 2009 | 5:45 amNote: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it. It comes from French aimable meaning lovable which itself comes from Latin root amare meaning to love. Pronounced as Aim + ee + Able (emphasized) {Listen to it here} Situational Uses / Sentences: His amiable disposition acquired him a large circle of friends, who deeply lament his death. His amiable personality made him extremely popular and was soon voted the president of the council. Which of your colleagues are amiable? Post from: WeboWord Do send us your feedback at contact@weboword.com Amiable - Someone… -
Altruistic - Used to describe selflessness or unselfish concern for the welfare of others
2 Jul 2009 | 5:45 amNote: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it. Pronounced as Al + Tru + Is (emphasized) + Tick {Listen to it here} It comes from Italian altrui meaning that which belongs to other people which itself is from Latin Alter meaning other. Alter is the root of other words like Alternate, Alter Ego, etc. Situational Uses / Sentences: Skeptics often find hidden agenda even in purely altruistic deeds. Would you agree? Dolphins display a strong altruistic nature towards sick or injured animals, swimming under them for hours at a time and pushing them to the… -
Alacrity - Eager readiness
1 Jul 2009 | 6:15 amNote: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it. Pronounced as Uh + Lack (emphasized) + Ruh + Tee {Listen to it here} It comes from the Latin root Alacritas meaning lively. Situational Uses / Sentences: It was quite a surprise to see a relatively small engine push a large car along with such alacrity. The council didn’t demonstrate the alacrity that the decision required and was a big let down for the citizens. Post from: WeboWord Do send us your feedback at contact@weboword.com Alacrity - Eager readiness Related words & puzzles:Amiable -… -
Wonderful Contributions!
1 Jul 2009 | 6:00 amCheck out these wonderful user made contributions we’ve had so far @ WeboWord! Vishesh Kumar Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it. Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it. Angela Thomas / Anyaixchel Anya's visage was overcome with astonishment at a recent tweet. Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it. We loved your work Vishesh and Angela and look forward to many more user contributions. Wish you all a very doozy July! Post from: WeboWord Do send…
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Japanese Words
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Using Firefox To Boost Your Japanese Learning Online
We spend a lot of time in front of our computers. So the better it is set up for Japanese, the more likely we will be to actually view Japanese. Over the next few posts I will be showing you how to setup your browser to make it easy to ... -
Remembering The Kana: “The” Book To Learning The Japanese Kana
Learning to read and write Japanese is by far the most difficult part of learning the language. There are a lot of characters and they have no resemblance to the English alphabet at all. It takes hour after hour of writing them down again and again to remember them, and ... -
The Danger of Pride When Learning Japanese
When it comes to learning Japanese, pride is the enemy. The more pride you have the slower your progress learning Japanese will be. The main reason for this is that pride limits your ability to learn new Japanese material and ask lots of questions. It usually gets worse the higher ... -
How To Address Someone in Japanese
The Japanese language has a number of ways to show the relationship between speakers. There are are diffierent words used in different situations depending on whether the person you are speaking to is considered to be inferior, equal, or superior. While this may sound a bit harsh, it is used ... -
Imasu and Arimasu
Japanese has two words for "to exist". Unlike English, which uses different words depending on whether the object is singular or plural, Japanese uses different words depending on whether or not the object is alive . います (imasu) is used when discussing plants and animals (including humans) and あります (arimasu) ...
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There's Something About Translation...
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Who cares what other translators are doing wrong?
9 Jun 2009 | 5:58 pmI was surprised to feel my face stretch into a smile of recognition this morning during my regular industry review. In asking himself if translators should care how much their colleagues charge, translator and programmer Ryan Ginstrom summed up what I found myself trying to express only yesterday in an aborted message to a mailing list. Translator mailing lists are full of discussions about low rates, unqualified colleagues, unreasonable clients and unrealistic deadlines. (And when I say “discussions”, I mean complaints.) There’s nothing wrong with letting off a little steam… -
ITI Conference round-up: a social media perspective
18 May 2009 | 4:19 amThis is a round-up of my experiences of the ITI International Conference in London this year. Presenting Some background This year was only the second since 2003 that I did not attend the conference in person. I did seriously consider arranging a trip back to Europe based around the conference, but last year decided to focus my resources on events around the Asia-Pacific region instead. Then late last year, Philippa and I were invited by the organising committee to present a paper on social media, based on our own experiences of applying these tools to our everyday business activities. The… -
Experts in the Industry: Silvia Ferrero, English to Spanish translator and interpreter
12 May 2009 | 8:55 pmSilvia Ferrero is an English to Spanish freelance translator and interpreter with a specialism in software and website localisation. Prior to going freelance, she gained valuable experience in the games localisation industry while working in-house for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. She holds a degree in English Philology from the University of Zaragoza in Spain and an MA from the University of Salford. Silvia is also Chair of the ITI’s North-West Translators’ Network. On Saturday 16th May, Silvia will present a paper on the move towards sustainability in the games localisation… -
Experts in the Industry: Suzanne Kirkbright, German to English freelance translator
10 May 2009 | 9:37 pmSuzanne Kirkbright is a full-time German to English freelance translator, specialising in the general arts, media and publishing. Prior to becoming a translator, she worked for over ten years as a German lecturer and was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt scholarship to research an English biography of a 20th century German intellectual. Suzanne has translated a series of nature guides for natural history publisher A&C Black in London and was a participant in the ITI’s online training course, the PSG, in 2007. On Saturday 16th May, she will be part of a panel discussion on… -
Experts in the industry: Philippa Hammond, French, Spanish, Portuguese to English translator
8 May 2009 | 10:24 pmPhilippa Hammond is a French, Spanish and Portuguese to English freelance translator based in London. She has an MA in Translation and Linguistics from the University of Westminster and a BA(Hons) in French and Spanish from Cardiff University, and worked in-house for several years before going freelance. Philippa maintains a professional blog, is editor of the ITI French Network newsletter, and helps mentor newcomers to the industry as part of the ITI’s online training course, the PSG. On Sunday 17th May, Philippa will be speaking (with me!) on sustaining careers in T&I using social…
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Japanese Words
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Using Firefox To Boost Your Japanese Learning Online
We spend a lot of time in front of our computers. So the better it is set up for Japanese, the more likely we will be to actually view Japanese. Over the next few posts I will be showing you how to setup your browser to make it easy to ... -
Remembering The Kana: “The” Book To Learning The Japanese Kana
Learning to read and write Japanese is by far the most difficult part of learning the language. There are a lot of characters and they have no resemblance to the English alphabet at all. It takes hour after hour of writing them down again and again to remember them, and ... -
The Danger of Pride When Learning Japanese
When it comes to learning Japanese, pride is the enemy. The more pride you have the slower your progress learning Japanese will be. The main reason for this is that pride limits your ability to learn new Japanese material and ask lots of questions. It usually gets worse the higher ... -
How To Address Someone in Japanese
The Japanese language has a number of ways to show the relationship between speakers. There are are diffierent words used in different situations depending on whether the person you are speaking to is considered to be inferior, equal, or superior. While this may sound a bit harsh, it is used ... -
Imasu and Arimasu
Japanese has two words for "to exist". Unlike English, which uses different words depending on whether the object is singular or plural, Japanese uses different words depending on whether or not the object is alive . います (imasu) is used when discussing plants and animals (including humans) and あります (arimasu) ...
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Ingls na Ponta da Lngua
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Como dizer 'graus de miopia' em inglês?
2 Jul 2009 | 8:00 pmHá algum tempo recebi um email no qual me perguntavam como é que se diz 'óculos de grau' em inglês. Enviei a minha resposta à pessoa e ficamos por isto mesmo.Porém, ontem recebi dois emails de locais bem diferentes perguntando a mesma coisa e ainda por cima perguntando como dizemos 'grau de óculos' em inglês. Ou seja, como se não bastasse o 'óculos de grau' agora veio também o 'grau de óculos'.Você ainda não entendeu, né? Eu uso 'óculos de grau'. E faz tempo! Desde os 13 anos que vejo o muito através de óculos. Sou míope. Tenho 6,5 graus de um lado e 7 graus do outro. Isto… -
Expressões Idiomáticas: Aprenda Inglês como os Gringos Aprendem
1 Jul 2009 | 8:00 pmDevido ao grande número de emails que venho recebendo ultimamente, decidi voltar com a promoção do eBook "Expressões Idiomáticas: aprenda inglês como os gringos aprendem", por apenas R$10,00 [dez reais]. Junto com o eBook vai também 03 arquivos MP3 com as mais de 200 expressões idiomáticas que constam nele. Assim, você aprende tudo lendo e ouvindo.Agora você poderá pagar por meio de boleto bancário, cartão de crédito e outros bancos [veja as bandeiras e bancos na figura acima]. Para saber como efetuar o pagamento diretamente para mim veja as informações no final deste post. -
Modal Verb: NEED
30 Jun 2009 | 8:00 pmJá postei aqui no blog várias dicas falando sobre modal verbs. Segue abaixo uma pequena amostra de algumas destas dicas:O que são modal verbs?Modal Verb: MAYModal Verbs: a diferença entre 'shall' e 'will'Modal Verbs: expressando obrigaçãoModal Verb: CANClaro que há outros aqui pelo blog, para encontrá-los basta utilizar a barra do Google que está ai acima do título do post de hoje. Pois bem, quero agora falar um pouco sobre o modal verb 'need'.Para a maioira dos estudantes 'need' significa 'precisar'. E, honestamente, é isto mesmo. Veja os exemplos:You need to rest sometimes. -
O uso de 'very much' ou 'a lot'
29 Jun 2009 | 8:00 pmSemana passada escrevi aqui no blog um post falando sobre as diferenças entre 'very', 'much', 'many', 'a lot of' e 'lots of'. Nele também aconselhei você a ficar longe daquela história maluca de 'countable nouns' e 'uncountable nouns' por um tempo. Caso você não tenha lido a dica, basta clicar aqui para não ficar de fora. Aconselho você a clicar aqui também para cadastrar o seu email e receber dicas de inglês gratuitamente a partir de hoje.O assunto de hoje é baseado em um comentário deixado por uma leitora [Tânia] naquele post. A dúvida da leitora era sobre o uso de 'very much'… -
Que tipos de collocations aprender?
28 Jun 2009 | 8:00 pmEste post é uma adaptação do livro 'Por que assim e não assado? O guia definitivo de collocations em inglês' [Ed. Elsevier/Campus]. Logo, se for reenviá-lo a alguém, favor citar a fonte. Respeite os direitos autorais e a propriedade intelectual do autor. Para adquirir o livro basta clicar na figura.Vários estudantes de língua inglesa sabem que 'hold' significa 'segurar' e que 'conversation' quer dizer 'diálogo' ou 'conversa'. Mas quantos seriam capazes de usar estas duas palavras juntas e dizer 'hold a conversation'? Acredito que poucos conheçam esta combinação! Mesmo que já a…
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OneHourTranslation Blog
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Should Translation Crowdsourcing Be Done for Free?
2 Jul 2009 | 6:16 amRecently, LinkedIn and other sites such as Facebook and Plaxo received much fury from the people involved in professional translation. The brows were raised due to a survey sent out to gather data on language people’s ideas about crowdsourcing, community, and collaborative human translation. Freelancers in the professional translation field thought in unfair to offer such a service when they are doing business out of it. In a way, a couple hundreds of those in the translation service felt violated that LinkedIn and the rest are trying to give out an impression that anyone who can… -
The Conflict with Notarial Professional Translation
28 Jun 2009 | 1:25 amProfessional translation is applicable to almost every kind of document. I say almost because not all documents can be serviced by a qualified translator offering fast translation service 24/7. There’s the case of notaries, which cannot be classified under most translation services. The conflict lies in the process itself. Notarial legalization is important in keeping this kind of document official. It can only be done when the translated document is presented along with the original source document. Efficient translation services available nowadays only hold virtual offices so it would… -
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-28
28 Jun 2009 | 12:30 amToday all of us are working very late here at our offices. If you’re around - come to visit (and bring a pizza with you) # RT @Werner:”What’s Next: Dispatches on the Future of Science” - 18 excellent essays by a new generation of scientists http://bit.ly/YTd2p # Lior just updated our translators FAQ page http://bit.ly/VPpdq # @ZZZLLL I guess OHT is not an option … in reply to ZZZLLL # That’s cool: BowLingual Voice, the dog translator now speaks in human voice http://tinyurl.com/mufnam # I recommend the team of @seeV for technological placement in Israel #… -
How to Communicate Well With Professional Translation Customers as a Translator?
27 Jun 2009 | 1:21 amThe translation customers are the top priority of all professional translation service providers. All their needs must be met. Their expectations must be fulfilled. Otherwise, they will seek professional translation service somewhere else. If they do that, a translation service’s credibility is also adversely affected. The most important key one should remember in satisfying the customer-translator relation and in any kind of relationship for that matter is none other than communication. So, how do you effectively communicate with your professional translation customer? Take a cue from… -
Professional Translation: Website Translation
26 Jun 2009 | 3:30 amThe Internet has opened so many doors to people wherever they may be in the world. It has served such a big purpose, especially to marketers like me, who are geared toward global business expansion. With more and more Internet users looking for a localized kind of service, it is no longer sufficient to provide a website that is speaking in universal language or English. Good thing, there are translators out to offer efficient translation service available 24/7. Website translation is an important service that many marketers are looking into to help them reach out to their target audience…
