Linguistics

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  Google News: Linguistics

• Jackson native uses podcast to share experiences in Japan - The Jackson Citizen Patriot - MLive.com

  7 Nov 2009 | 3:13 am

  The Jackson Citizen Patriot - MLive.comJackson native uses podcast to share experiences in JapanThe Jackson Citizen Patriot - MLive.comCarlson, who took a couple years of Japanese classes, was teaching linguistics at UM when he decided to move to Japan in 1983. The move represented a chance

• Pagotto passionate about making ideas happen - Honolulu Advertiser

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:59 pm

  Pagotto passionate about making ideas happenHonolulu AdvertiserAfter five years, she returned to Montreal, where she earned her Master's degree in linguistics and proceeded to earn her doctorate in the same subject at

• MLA to Include International Bibliography in the Summon Web-Scale Discovery ... - ResourceShelf (blog)

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:12 am

  MLA to Include International Bibliography in the Summon Web-Scale Discovery ResourceShelf (blog)Linguistics and language materials range from history and theory of linguistics, comparative linguistics, semantics, stylistics, and syntax to translation.

• Language symposium draws scholars from across globe - Web Devil

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:01 am

  Language symposium draws scholars from across globeWeb DevilThe Symposium was founded by Paul Kei Matsuda, an associate professor of English and applied linguistics at ASU, and Tony Silva, professor of English at

• Professor develops smart computer applications - The Exponent

  6 Nov 2009 | 7:05 am

  Professor develops smart computer applicationsThe ExponentMost people don't have a multiple language fluency, found a linguistics program, travel the world, write scholarly books and develop and more »

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  ScienceDaily: Language Acquisition

• Babies' Language Learning Starts From The Womb

  5 Nov 2009 | 2:00 pm

  From their very first days, newborns' cries already bear the mark of the language their parents speak, reveals a new study. The findings suggest that infants begin picking up elements of what will be their first language in the womb, and certainly long before their first babble or coo.

• TV Bombards Children With Commercials For High-fat And High-sugar Foods

  5 Nov 2009 | 11:00 am

  Childhood obesity in the United States is reaching epidemic proportions. With more than one fourth of advertising on daytime and prime time television devoted to foods and beverages and continuing questions about the role television plays in obesity, a new study examines how food advertising aimed at children might be a large contributor to the problem.

• Literary Arabic Is Expressed In Brain Of Arabic Speakers As A Second Language

  4 Nov 2009 | 11:00 pm

  Literary Arabic is expressed in the brain of an Arabic speaker as a second language and not as a mother tongue, according to a new study. The research offers an explanation for the objective and day-to-day difficulties that confront Arabic-speaking students when attempting to learn to read the non-spoken language.

• Dementia: Rare Brain Disorder Is Highly Hereditary

  4 Nov 2009 | 8:00 pm

  New research shows that frontotemporal dementia -- a rare brain disorder that causes early dementia -- is highly hereditary.

• Learning To Talk Changes How Speech Is Heard: 'Sound Of Learning' Unlocked By Linking Sensory And Motor Systems

  4 Nov 2009 | 2:00 pm

  Learning to talk also changes the way speech sounds are heard, according to a new study. The findings could have a major impact on improving speech disorders.

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  Lingformant

• Study Sheds New Light On The Nature Of Broca’s Area In The Brain

  Vili Maunula

  24 Oct 2009 | 12:24 am

  A study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine reports a significant breakthrough in explaining gaps in scientists’ understanding of human brain function. The study – which provides a picture of language processing in the brain with unprecedented clarity – is published in the October 16 issue of the journal Science. Full article: Medical News Today

• Brains benefit from multilingualism

  Vili Maunula

  24 Oct 2009 | 12:23 am

  For a considerable time already there has been discussion within scientific circles about whether knowing and using multiple languages could possibly have positive effects on the human brain and thinking. There have been a number of international studies on the subject, which indicate that the ability to use more than one language brings an individual a considerable advantage. The report of the research team appointed by the European Commission, ”The Contribution of Multilingualism to Creativity”, presents the first known macro analysis based on the available evidence, which has been…

• Infants able to identify humans as source of speech, monkeys as source of monkey calls

  Vili Maunula

  24 Oct 2009 | 12:21 am

  Infants as young as five months old are able to correctly identify humans as the source of speech and monkeys as the source of monkey calls, psychology researchers have found. Their finding, which appears in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), provides the first evidence that human infants are able to correctly match different kinds of vocalizations to different species. Full article: EurekAlert

• Infant sucking habits may affect how baby talks

  Vili Maunula

  24 Oct 2009 | 12:20 am

  Pacifier, baby bottle or finger sucking may hamper a child’s speech development if the habit goes on too long. In a study that took place in Patagonia, Chile, researchers associated the persistence of these sucking habits with an increased risk of speech disorders in preschool children. The children were more likely to have difficulty producing certain word sounds and to simplify their pronunciation. Full article: EurekAlert

• University of the Basque Country researcher develops new system called Saroi to detect and correct syntactic mistakes in Basque

  Vili Maunula

  21 Sep 2009 | 9:24 am

  Saroi is a general tool which, apart from dealing with errors, is used for making consultations about structure in the trees of analysis and for undertaking searches for linguistic structures in such trees. Full article: Basque Research

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  Google News: Language News

• Schools consider foreign language program revamp - Ashland Daily Tidings

  7 Nov 2009 | 2:23 am

  Schools consider foreign language program revampAshland Daily TidingsThe Ashland School Board on Monday will discuss revamping the district's foreign language program — by starting French or Spanish and more »

• Language unites people: Learn it - DesMoinesRegister.com

  7 Nov 2009 | 2:06 am

  Language unites people: Learn itDesMoinesRegister.comMost of us learned this great nation of ours was formed by people representing differing religions, nationalities and languages. The one unifying element of Learn English for cohesivenessDesMoinesRegister.comall 2 news articles »

• USA Today Editorial, Rep. Stupak Opinion Piece Differ On Abortion Language In ... - Ethio Planet News

  7 Nov 2009 | 1:38 am

  CBS NewsUSA Today Editorial, Rep. Stupak Opinion Piece Differ On Abortion Language In Ethio Planet NewsUSA Today on Monday included an editorial opposing Rep. Bart Stupak's (D-Mich.) efforts to introduce an amendment imposing additional restrictions on House Democrats still quibbling over abortion languageModernHealthcare.comDown to the Wire on Healthcare Abortion LanguageChristian Broadcasting NetworkRule For House Health Reform Bill To Include Ellsworth Language On Abortion Medical News Today (press release)Human Events (blog) -Mid-South Farmer -CR Newswire (press release)all…

• Language learning for babies starts in the womb - Examiner.com

  6 Nov 2009 | 11:04 pm

  Telegraph.co.ukLanguage learning for babies starts in the wombExaminer.comA new study published on the November 5th online edition of Current Biology reveals that newborns' cries already carry the mark of their parents language. Health Buzz: Newborn's Cries Mimic Mom's Language and Other Health NewsU.S. News & World ReportBabies are found to cry in their mother tongueLos Angeles TimesThe Cries of a Newborn May Reflect Parents' LanguageHealthNewsSoftpedia -LifeNews.com -eFitnessNowall 185 news articles »

• On Language Cadillac Thrives as a Figure of Speech - New York Times

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:24 pm

  On Language Cadillac Thrives as a Figure of SpeechNew York TimesThe Cadillac division of General Motors has seen better days, with woeful sales figures even compared with those of other brands in the

• 
  English Experts

• 13 frases em inglês com expressões consagradas

  Donay Mendonça

  4 Nov 2009 | 2:15 pm

  Olá Pessoal! Há alguns anos minha conclusão foi a de que se conseguíssemos dizer adequadamente tudo aquilo que precisássemos em uma segunda língua estaríamos fluentes de fato. Depois disso meus estudos ficaram mais fáceis e objetivos. Hoje volto a mostrar a vocês mais expressões fundamentais e consagradas no inglês. Confiram: 1. Não é para menos, não é de se admirar: No wonder Ex: They must be afraid of you, and no wonder. (Eles devem estar com medo de você, e não é para menos.) 2. Dinheiro, grana: Money Ex: Money makes money. (Dinheiro gera dinheiro.) 3. Alcance: Reach Ex:…

• Poemas em inglês: The Raven – Parte 1 de 6

  Jason Bermingham

  3 Nov 2009 | 2:33 pm

  Hi, this is Jason Bermingham on English Experts. For the past few weeks we have been training our English pronunciation with tongue-twisters. These are texts that often challenge English speakers with hard-to-say combinations of words that have little meaning. Now we progress to the next level, moving from tongue-twisters to poetry. I am going to start reciting famous English-language poems, giving English Experts users an opportunity to follow along and improve your pronunciation as well as your literary knowledge. In the spirit of Halloween, our first poem will be “The Raven” by one of…

• Curso de Inglês para Tímidos: Lição 14

  Adir Ferreira

  2 Nov 2009 | 4:48 pm

  Caros leitores! Primeiramente eu gostaria de agradecer a grande participação nas lições do curso de inglês para tímidos. Já estamos na lição 14 e conseguimos uma incrível média de participações por lição. Nunca pensei que os exemplos das lições iriam virar música. Acho que o trabalho está gerando frutos, graças a vocês. Agora vamos aprender mais um pouco. Quando expressamos um desejo que não pode ser realizado no momento atual, usamos a expressão I wish (Eu gostaria) e um verbo no passado. Confira alguns exemplos: I wish I was thinner. (Gostaria de ser mais magro.) I…

• Inglês com músicas: liberte sua criatividade

  Alessandro

  29 Oct 2009 | 3:00 am

  Conheço muitos leitores que estão aprendendo inglês através da música. Alguns motivados pela ansiedade de entender as letras da banda favorita, outros por gostar de tocar um instrumento musical. Existem também aqueles que simplesmente acham divertido estudar as letras das canções. O método tem se mostrado eficiente, seja para ensinar o idioma, como fez a professora Deise Mara que fez uma paródia para ensinar as regras do Simple Present, seja para aprender como fez o Marcelo em seu blog. Quando penso que havia esgotado o assunto, recebo um email do leitor Eduardo Cassoli com uma…

• Trava-Línguas em inglês: todos os sons de vogais da língua inglesa

  Jason Bermingham

  28 Oct 2009 | 9:25 am

  Hi, this is Jason Bermingham on English Experts. First of all I want to thank all of you who have been reading this blog, and I want to thank you for your nice messages. As many of you know, I’ve been posting a series of tongue-twisters over the past few weeks. These exercises are meant to improve your pronunciation by putting your mouth in extreme-language situations. I doubt you’ll ever have to say anything this hard in real life, like say in a job interview. But that’s the whole point. If you can say this stuff, everything else will be easy. So sit down if you aren’t already and…

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  The English Blog

• Video: US Army Base Massacre

  Jeffrey Hill

  7 Nov 2009 | 12:20 am

  The female civilian officer, Kim Munley, who brought down a gunman as he rampaged through America's biggest army base killing 13 people, has been hailed a heroine. Sky's Robert Nisbet reports.

• Cartoon: Victory in Afghanistan

  Jeffrey Hill

  6 Nov 2009 | 10:43 pm

  This cartoon by Christian Adams from The Daily Telegraph uses the concept of the Penrose stairs, an impossible object created by Lionel Penrose and his son Roger Penrose. The best known example of Penrose stairs appears in the lithograph Ascending and Descending by Dutch artist M. C. Escher, where it is incorporated into a monastery where several monks ascend and descend an endless staircase. (Source: Wikipedia)In the cartoon, we see Barack Obama and Gordon Brown ascending/descending a Penrose staircase. A sign points towards 'Victory'. The rocky, mountainous terrain is clearly…

• Words in the News: Killer

  Jeffrey Hill

  6 Nov 2009 | 10:04 pm

  The Independent reports on the massacre at a military base in Texas. Full story >> VOCABULARYIf a person, animal, or other living thing is killed, something or someone causes them to die. A killer is a person who has killed someone, or who intends to kill someone. •  The children of a murdered woman have appealed for information to catch her killer, 35 years after she died.

• Book: Management Bollocks

  Jeffrey Hill

  6 Nov 2009 | 7:41 am

  Rory Havers is a Scottish author who used to be vice president of Continental Airlines. His new book 'Management Bollocks' features archive images from the last century overlaid with speech bubbles containing examples of management jargon. The results can be quite amusing, as in this example. READ MORE• Former airline exec lifts the lid on baffling management-speakVOCABULARY1. Bollocks is an impolite word for testicles. If you describe something as bollocks, you think it is a load of rubbish. The Sex Pistols first album was provocatively called "Never Mind The Bollocks,…

• Video: Poll Suggests Aussies Want A Republic

  Jeffrey Hill

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:05 am

  Ten years to the day since Australians voted to keep the Queen as head of state, a new opinion poll suggests 59% of them now want a republic.

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  Mission to Learn

• Two Brief Lessons from the Mile High Learning Club

  jtcobb

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:46 am

  I do some of my best learning when I am settled in at 35,000 feet. I read. I tap into the large store of iPod learning content I keep on hand. I think (although it may look like I’m sleeping). Sometimes I even manage to find a nugget of wisdom in the airline magazines. Here’s a couple from a recent flight from Raleigh to Baltimore, compliments of the Southwest Airlines Spirit magazine: Be Deliberate Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything is Illuminated and Eating Animals, says that his choice to be vegetarian is “one of my ways of being deliberate within my life.”  Safran Foer…

• 15 Online Resources for Book Lovers

  jtcobb

  26 Oct 2009 | 3:33 am

  Immersing yourself in a book or in the literary culture is a great way to get more out of the books you read. There are thousands of sites online created specifically for people who like to read. Many of these sites can be used to find, read, discuss, and share books online. Here is a list of 15 free online resources that any book lover will enjoy: AddAll – AddAll is a free book search and comparison site. It compares prices on books from more than 20,000 sellers so that book buyers can get the best deal possible when shopping online. aNobii – aNobii is a book community that…

• 35+ Delicious Learning Links – a new Monitor is out!

  jtcobb

  23 Oct 2009 | 6:27 am

  Last night I hit “Send” on a new edition of the Learning Monitor e-newsletter. As usual it is chock full of free and low-cost learning sources for lifelong learners. Subscribe and you’ll automatically receive the full issue once you confirm your subscription, but here are a few items from the Learning Smorgasbord to whet your appetite: from Collections & Teach-Learn-Share Sites Free Internet Libraries Free Internet Libraries provides free books, course notes, practice problems, test reviews, career advancement materials, teaching materials, and much more. from Science…

• 4 Simple Steps to Jump Start Your Learning Habit

  jtcobb

  20 Oct 2009 | 6:20 am

  Each of us is physically active, even if only in very small ways, throughout each and every day, and yet we all realize that true physical fitness usually only comes as a result of a conscious, consistent exercise habit. So it is with learning. Our learning never really stops, but once we reach the stage of life where there is no longer a teacher standing in front of us on a regular basis, it usually becomes a much more haphazard affair. I happen to be a fan of random, haphazard learning, but like most devoted lifelong learners, I also appreciate the sense of fulfillment that comes from…

• Collaborative Learning with Grockit – Podcast

  jtcobb

  19 Oct 2009 | 3:17 am

  It’s time for another edition of the Radio Free Learning podcast here on Mission to Learn. In this episode, I talk with Farb Nivi, co-founder and CEO of Grockit. I became intrigued with Grockit quite a while ago when the company was promoting itself as a collaborative, game-driven learning platform. Since that time, Grockit’s focus has turned towards the test preparation market and helping learners prepare, collaboratively, for big standardized tests like the SAT and the GMAT. In this podcast, I talk with Farb about how the Grockit platform works, his views on teaching and…

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  Language Log

• More bad grammar books published

  Geoffrey K. Pullum

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:47 am

  It is an exhausting business trying to keep up with the extraordinarily dumb content of the continuing flow of truly awful grammar texts as the amateurs crank them out. I am so grateful to Brett Reynolds for having shouldered some of the burden by putting reviews of recent ghastlies on his blog English, Jack. He has discussed the over-loose definition of "phrase" in the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics; he has critiqued Eric Henderson's Writing by Choice; he has excoriated Ron Cowan's The Teacher's Grammar of English in at least four posts, this one, this one,…

• Adjective phrases: answer to exercise

  Geoffrey K. Pullum

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:21 am

  Let me return to the issue of wildly incompetent grammar text writing and the question (which I posed here) of whether and how you can find three adjective phrases in the following list of word sequences: thank you said Jim Janet ran home the poor injured duck a shivering and frightened give me that with a heavy bag If you would like the answer, read on. I'll give you the bottom line up top: it is impossible to find three adjective phrases in the list, whether you use modern definitions, or traditional definitions, or the bungled definitions in the book I took the above exercise from (Pupil…

• Native wails

  Mark Liberman

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:51 am

  In today's newspapers and magazines: "Newborns cry in their native language". "Babies cry with an accent within the first week of life". "Babies cry wiith the same 'prosody' or melody used in their native language by the second day of life". "Newborn babies mimic the intonation of their native tongue when they cry". "French babies cry in French, German babies cry in German and, no doubt, the wail of an English infant betrays the distinct tones of a soon-to-be English speaker". The science behind these statements is in a paper released yesterday: Birgit Mampe, Angela D. Friederici, Anne…

• Horn on personal datives

  Benjamin Zimmer

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:16 pm

  Mark Liberman's post, "On beyond personal datives?", has generated quite a bit of discussion in the comments section, much of it related to Larry Horn's paper, "'I love me some him': The landscape of non-argument datives", in Bonami & Hofherr (eds.), Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 7, 2008. Larry has sent along a response to the commenters, which is reproduced here as a guest post. [Guest post by Larry Horn] I'd like to note first that despite the critiques by some commenters about "the Bonami & Hofherr definition" of personal datives, they should be absolved of any blame;…

• The F Word

  Mark Liberman

  5 Nov 2009 | 11:52 am

  Yesterday's South Park episode features an elaborate drama of grass-roots lexicography.  The wikipedia entry gives some details: The boys and the citizens of South Park are troubled by a large group of Harley-Davidson riders frequently making noise in town. Numerous complaints are made to the bikers, but they disregard this, seeing themselves as getting attention, and continue to make more noise around town. Frustrated, the boys and other schoolmates assemble to defecate on the seats of the motorcycles and they spray paint "Fags get out" on several buildings around town as well. The school…

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  GoodWord from alphadictionary.com

• 11/7/09 - hooligan

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  A rowdy, a tough, a nasty, a ruffian, a petty thug, a destructive young person.

• 11/6/09 - chary

  5 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  1. Very careful, cautious, suspiciously reluctant to do something, wary. 2. Shy or modest, fearful.

• 11/5/09 - imprimatur

  4 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  An official approval or stamp of approval, official permission to do something.

• 11/4/09 - vertiginous

  3 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  1. Spinning on an axis, rotating, whirling. 2. Dizzy, giddy from a sense of spinning while standing still, suffering from vertigo. 3. Dizzying, causing a sense of spinning. 4. Unstable in thought or opinion, giddy-minded.

• 11/3/09 - mussitate

  2 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  1. To mumble inarticulately, moving the lips and making a low vocal sound, or to mutter through the teeth. 2. {Medicine} To move the lips without making a sound.

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  University of Michigan Linguistics Department

• New Fullbright Teachers

  rqueen

  2 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm

  Two of our undergradaute concentrators, Baird Campbell and Charlotte Peterson, have been awarded English Teaching fellowship from the Fullbright Program. Congratulations Baird and Charlotte!

• Workshop in Honor of Rich Thomason

  rqueen

  2 Nov 2009 | 11:57 am

  A workshop on Logic, Linguistics and Artifical Intelligence will be held in the East Conference Room in the Rackham Building on Friday, Nov. 6 and Sat., Nov. 7 in honor of Rich Thomason. Speakers include: Charles Cross, Bas van Fraasen, Alex Lascarides, Leora Morgenstern, Barbara Partee, Robert Stalnaker, Matthew Stone and Frank Veltman.

• Sally Thomason is the “Unwitting Lexicologist” in the newest issue of the alumni magazine

  rqueen

  2 Nov 2009 | 11:52 am

  This term’s issue of the College of LS&A Alumni magazine featured a story about Sally Thomason and her work with the Montana Salish and Pend d’Oreille elders. You can read it here.

• Carmel Apples to Apples: Linguistics Club meets Monday, Oct. 26

  rqueen

  26 Oct 2009 | 6:51 am

  “Caramel Apples to Apples” Monday at 7:30pm 403 Lorch (Catford Room) The Linguistics Club will be meeting Monday, Oct. 26 for an event we’re calling “Caramel Apples to Apples.”   The gracious LingClub exec board will be providing apples and caramel for you, which you can enjoy while playing a rousing game of “Apples to Apples.”  This will be a great way to de-stress after all those midterms (and if you still have exams coming up, take a break!).

• UM Linguists at the Acoustical Society of America

  rqueen

  26 Oct 2009 | 6:49 am

  Several UM linguists will be presenting their work at the 158th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in San Antonio, Oct. 26-30. Presenters and abstracts listed below The perceptual time course of coarticulatory nasalization. Patrice S. Beddor,  Julie E. Boland, Andries Coetzee, Kevin McGowan Abstract: Listeners’ moment‐by‐moment processing of anticipatory vowel nasalization and a following nasal consonant was investigated. English‐speaking participants’ eye movements were monitored as they heard instructions to look at one of two pictured objects on a computer screen.

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  Paleoglot

• A modification of Indo-Aegean, plus some new grammatical ideas on Minoan

  2 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

  I like to explore new ideas and test them as always. One of my ever-evolving ideas is on the idea that Indo-European and Aegean are related to a common Proto-Indo-Aegean ancestor datable to 7000 BCE. Or so I've been thinking up to now but...I decided to explore a radical new extrapolation that's got a grip on my mind recently. What would be the consequences to my theories if Proto-Indo-Aegean

• Searching for an etymology for Germanic *handuz 'hand'

  26 Oct 2009 | 8:00 pm

  First, let's get nonsense out of the way by letting a published author state the obvious about origins of the Proto-Germanic etymon *handuz 'hand' that are most implausible yet unfortunately popular among idle hobbyists online. In the words of A. Seidenberg in km, a widespread root for ten (1976): "The effort to relate km or kmt to *handus, or, more generally said, to see a reference to the hands

• Nipping the PIE ergative *-s theory right in the bud

  24 Oct 2009 | 3:00 pm

  Recently a commenter brought up the "PIE ergative theory" and this was woven into another idea about Indo-European's purported connection with North-West Caucasian in remote prehistory. I don't have a problem with the idea that PIE might have had contact with NWC (note: not a genetic relationship, just contact). If a form of Pre-Proto-Indo-European were in the steppelands of Western Asia circa

• Prehistoric isoglosses in Proto-Steppe

  15 Oct 2009 | 4:00 pm

  As you can see, I've been pondering on Proto-Steppe today. Many people refer to this early hypothetical language set most sensibly around 9,000 BCE as Indo-Uralic and it's called this because it's the common ancestor of both Proto-Uralic (PU) and Proto-Indo-European (PIE) afterall. However I still prefer my own term Proto-Steppe a) because it's more descriptive of the likely region where it was

• Comments on the Etusco-Latin tupi/tōfus connection

  12 Oct 2009 | 7:00 pm

  As probably some can tell by my previous explanation of the rules of this blog, I recently received a comment that irritates me for the reasons already mentioned: stubborn to facts, condemning the very act of speculation even when facts are present, and being all-in-all too stubborn to look up viewpoints that are contrary to one's own. The internet is not just a valuable tool of self-expression

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  Fritinancy

• The Cadillac of Language Columns

  Nancy Friedman

  6 Nov 2009 | 7:35 am

  That would be Ben Zimmer's "On Language" column in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, "Cadillac Thrives As a Figure of Speech." In fact, I'd encourage you to read it even if I weren't quoted in it.Here's a tasty passage in which I'm not quoted;  it's worth reading anyway, as is all of Ben Zimmer's writing:It was perhaps a bad sign when, in a print ad in 1979, Cadillac felt the need to remind consumers that it was still “the Cadillac of cars.” As the fortunes of Cadillac declined in the ’80s and ’90s, the old laudatory…

• Opportunism Knocks

  Nancy Friedman

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:32 am

  This ad for Saks Fifth Avenue appeared on page A3 of Monday's New York Times: I skimmed along until opportunistic brought me up short. Opportunistic? Really?It's clearly the wrong word. But why? And what should it have been? Some background: Opportunity, opportune, and opportunist(ic) share a Latin root, opportunus, which means "favorable": it's a contraction of ob portus, "toward the harbor." An opportunity is a favorable time; opportune, the adjective, means "favorable," "timely," or "convenient." Both words came into English…

• Any Color, As Long As It's Printable

  Nancy Friedman

  4 Nov 2009 | 6:23 am

  General Motors, apparently not satisfied with a $30 billion government bailout, is asking U.S. citizens to chip in just one more tiny little thing: a color name for the new Chevy Volt, the world's first mass-produced extended-range electric vehicle. From the photos, I'd say it looks silverish-greenish. But hey, we're Americans! We can do better!So GM sponsored a contest (deadline was this morning, I regret to inform). And then Autopia, Wired.com's car blog, spread the word. And the fun began. Suffice it to say that Autopia's readers exibit little of the earnest…

• Webster's New World Dictionary Word of the Year

  Nancy Friedman

  3 Nov 2009 | 10:47 am

  It's distracted driving.From Webster's Word of the Year website:A sign of the times surely, distracted driving is another reflection – and consequence – of our ongoing romance with all things digital and mobile and the enhanced capabilities they provide. While it now may be easier and quicker to feed our multitasking habits, it is not always safe, and many jurisdictions are formalizing that position by making it a crime to text or otherwise use a cellphone while driving. In other words, CrackBerry users beware, lest a charge of DWD (driving while distracted) or DWT (driving…

• Word of the Week: Mockolate

  Nancy Friedman

  2 Nov 2009 | 7:44 am

  Mockolate: A derisive term for an ingredient used as a chocolate substitute that contains cocoa solids but no cocoa butter. Cheaper than real chocolate, mockolate is sometimes found in inexpensive confections and baked goods, sometimes described as "chocolate-y coating" or "milk compound chocolate."Mockolate hasn't yet shown up in published dictionaries. (Mocktail, however, appears in the fourth edition of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, published in 2006.) The online Double-Tongued Dictionary provides a single citation for mockolate, from a…

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  Language Geek

• Not dead.

  Josh

  20 Oct 2009 | 9:07 am

  No, I’ve not died, nor have I fallen off the planet. I’m just in the midst of being defeated by far too many papers at the university. Regular Language Geeking shall resume at some point in the near future.

• What do you put in your SRS?

  Josh

  23 Aug 2009 | 3:17 pm

  I’ve been reflecting on how I use Anki, my SRS program, and I think I’ve perhaps gone a bit overboard with it. For a long while now, any unknown word that I’ve come across has gone into it – even words that I really don’t need (or even particularly want) to know. For example, a few days ago while doing reviews with my German deck, I came across a card that I had made over a year ago. The card was for the German word for “hot water tap.” I think I pulled this word from the Using German Vocabulary textbook that I’ve mentioned before, because…

• The “Lyrics” tab on iPods

  Josh

  9 Aug 2009 | 7:19 am

  Geoff has a great post on making use of the Lyrics information, which iTunes lets you attach to any audio file in your library. Once you sync your iPod with your iTunes library, whatever you put in the Lyrics information tab will be available on your iPod. As he says, while it’s meant for lyrics, it’s really just a text field, so you can put anything in it – Assimil dialogues, troublesome vocabulary, or transcripts of whatever you’re listening to. I’ve had an iPod of some sort for years now, and I never thought of doing this, even after seeing some podcasts come…

• Returning from a hiatus

  Josh

  22 Jul 2009 | 8:33 pm

  The past 3 or 4 weeks have been hectic for me, with “real life” (that is, not language stuff, alas) throwing some curve balls at me. I’d love to say that I’ve diligently carried on with my language learning endeavors, but I can’t. I’ve not picked up a grammar book or dictionary for weeks, nor have I even read much in foreign languages. My German deck in Anki has over 500 cards due! While that’s certainly not a good thing, some good has come from it, and that is this: I’ve been reminded once again that one is allowed to set aside language…

• Language Juggling

  Josh

  24 Jun 2009 | 10:31 am

  I’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…

• 
  languagehat.com

• THE BOOKSHELF: THE F-WORD.

  languagehat

  6 Nov 2009 | 2:36 pm

  Oxford University Press sent me a copy of the new third edition of Jesse Sheidlower's magnum opus, The F-Word. Before I continue, I should point out that the book, and therefore this post, is chock-full of examples of the most notorious curse word in the English language. You have been warned. As I say, this is the third edition. Some of you who have acquired one of the earlier editions may be wondering "Do I need the third?" The answer is: Yes, yes you do. If you care enough about the history and use of the word fuck to own the book, you owe it to yourself to get this edition. This is not…

• RED HERRING.

  languagehat

  5 Nov 2009 | 8:51 am

  I have just run across Michael Quinion's post at World Wide Words about the phrase "red herring"; I have seen the implausible explanation that herrings were dragged across trails to confuse hounds (who would do that, and why?), and Quinion (with the help of Gerald Cohen, Robert Scott Ross, and the Oxford English Dictionary) clears the matter up. A seventeenth-century treatise by Gerland Langbaine on horsemanship "suggested a dead cat or fox should be dragged as a training-scent for the hounds, so that the horses could follow them":If you had no acceptably ripe dead animals handy, he added,…

• STRANGE DATIVES.

  languagehat

  5 Nov 2009 | 7:13 am

  Here's the start of Mark Liberman's latest post at the Log:Yesterday, Daniel Mahaffey wrote to ask about his friend's "unusual indirect object sentences". Thus after backing into a dog in a crowded kitchen, she said "I nearly stepped on me a dog". Daniel reasons that this is analogous to the benefactive pronouns in standard written English phrases like "I wrote him a song", or in widespread vernacular examples like "I wrote me a song" (where the standard version would be "wrote myself a song"). But, as Daniel observes, a couple of things are different in this case. First, analogous examples…

• HILDA MORLEY.

  languagehat

  4 Nov 2009 | 3:32 pm

  Today's post at wood s lot begins with a nice snippet of Ern Malley (and anyone not familiar with the Ern Malley hoax should read this excellent introduction, with a nice Herbert Read quote that it is "possible to arrive at genuine art by spurious means") and moves on to quote a longish poem ("The Ships Move On") by a poet I was completely unfamiliar with, Hilda Morley (1919 - 1998). It's a shame such a fine poet was treated so badly by the boy's club at Black Mountain College, where she taught at the height of its influence but is ignored in histories of the place, and even more of a shame…

• HOW KEATS SPOKE.

  languagehat

  3 Nov 2009 | 6:21 pm

  As fond as I was of William Safire, I must admit I prefer the new, unpredictable "On Language" column in the NY Times. This week, Caleb Crain writes about how John Keats talks in the recent movie Bright Star (which I still haven't seen) and how he might have talked in reality. While Crain appreciated the "playful, delicate, precise" dialogue of the movie, he thinks Keats may have talked quite differently, saying "Keats was self-conscious about his everyday speech":In August 1818, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine accused him of “Cockney rhymes,” pointing out that he matched thorns with…

• 
  A Way With Words

• Shivaree (minicast)

  Grant Barrett

  4 Nov 2009 | 1:00 am

  You may remember the call we had from Tony in Encinitas, California. He was curious about the term for an unusual hazing ritual. Listen here: Download audio file (091104-AWWW-shivaree-minicast.mp3) Download the MP3 here (1.9 MB). To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter. “My dad woke us up one night, about 8 o’clock. He said don’t be alarmed. There’s going to be gunfire and a lot of noise, and there’s going to be a lot of people in the house and…

• Bless Your Heart (full episode)

  Grant Barrett

  31 Oct 2009 | 9:07 am

  This week, it’s backhanded phrases, those snarky remarks that come sugar-coated in politeness, like “How nice for you,” “Oh, interesting!,” and the mother of all thinly veiled criticism, “Bless her heart.” Also this week, free reign vs. free rein, the origin of the one-finger salute, and what it means if a Frenchman has big ankles. And Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings stops by to try his hand at a slang quiz. Listen here: Download audio file (091102-AWWW-bless-your-heart.mp3) Download the MP3 here 23.5 MB). To be automatically notified when audio is…

• Zig-Zag and Shilly-Shally (full episode)

  Grant Barrett

  24 Oct 2009 | 9:29 am

  Bavarian Chalet. Mushroom Basket. Moose Point. Who in the heck comes up with the names of paints, anyway? Martha and Grant ponder that mystery. They also explain why those annoying emails go by the name spam. And Grant explains the difference between being “adorbs” and “bobo.” Listen here: Download audio file (091026-AWWW-zig-zag-and-shilly-shally.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. Bavarian Chalet. Mushroom Basket. Moose Point. Who in the heck…

• Tilly Tickets (minicast)

  Grant Barrett

  19 Oct 2009 | 10:40 pm

  Did you ever use a tilly ticket in the bathroom? Listen here: Download audio file (091020-AWWW-tilly-tickets-minicast.mp3) Download the MP3 here (1.5MB). To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program, or subscribe to the newsletter. Over the years, we’ve answered lots of your questions about words and phrases that have to do with going to the bathroom. We’ve talked about euphemisms like I have to go see a man about a horse. Or that Victorian-era locution, I’m going to go pluck a rose. Or my…

• X, Y, and Zed (full episode)

  Grant Barrett

  17 Oct 2009 | 7:45 am

  Some teachers are using a controversial tactic to get young students reading: They let their pupils choose which books to read for class. Does it work? Also, should that line at the grocery store checkout read 15 items or less or fewer? And is the expression these ones grammatically incorrect? Listen here: Download audio file (091019-AWWW-x-y-and-zed.mp3) Download the MP3 here (3.37 MB). To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program. The owner of a yarn store in Juneau says a customer corrected her when she pointed…

• 
  The Linguist

• The LingQ Podcasts, a series of podcasts in ten languages

  Steve Kaufmann

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:29 pm

  I should bring people's attention to the LingQ series of language podcasts, which are available for free download. These podcasts consist mostly of casual conversations, and the transcripts are to be found in the LingQ library. If you visit the EnglishLingQ website you will find links to the individual podcast series, for English, French, Spanish (mostly from Argentina), Mandarin, Japanese, German, Swedish, Italian, Russian, and Portuguese (mostly from Portugal). We are constantly looking to improve these. All comments are welcome. There are natural conversations and not lessons, so to…

• Forgetting and learning languages

  Steve Kaufmann

  6 Nov 2009 | 11:15 am

  Here are a couple of videos I did on this subject recently.Forgetting languages and GermanForgetting and learning languages

• Great English language podcasts for advanced speakers, I fixed the links.

  Steve Kaufmann

  5 Nov 2009 | 12:33 pm

  I referred you to a site with great podcasts in English intended for native speakers. The links on the site did not work. I have searched the individual links and put them up. Enjoy.

• What are the leading language learning blogs in languages other than English?

  Steve Kaufmann

  4 Nov 2009 | 4:06 pm

  I would like to follow some blogs on language learning in other languages. Any suggestions on the best ones to follow? I would also like to ask these bloggers to review LingQ.

• How about doing a review of LingQ?

  Steve Kaufmann

  4 Nov 2009 | 3:58 pm

  We have made a number of changes at LingQ over the last few months.We would like to know what people think.  A number of you have your own blogs, and some are about language learning. I would be very interested in hearing what you think of the evolving LingQ. Would you be interested in doing a review of LingQ on your blogs?

• 
  Sinosplice

• No Longer Happy with DreamHost

  John Pasden

  2 Nov 2009 | 9:51 pm

  I haven’t been blogging much lately because I’ve been looking for a new web host in my spare time. I’ve been with DreamHost for years, but recently their service has become unforgivably bad. My main complaints are: My site was hacked while at DreamHost once. (One time is forgivable) My site was later hacked again, which was probably due to outdated web app installations (and not the previous hack). But DreamHost proved amazingly unhelpful in shutting out the hacker. I thought I had shut him out once, but I was wrong. The best solution in this case, then, is to back…

• Michael Love on the Pleco iPhone App

  John Pasden

  26 Oct 2009 | 8:18 pm

  The following is an interview with Pleco founder Michael Love, regarding the Pleco iPhone app, which is now in beta testing. John: The long wait for the iPhone app has caused much distress amongst all the Pleco fans out there. Any comments on the development process of your first Pleco iPhone app? Michael: Well, much of the delay stems from the fact that we really only started working on the iPhone version in earnest in January ‘09 – before that we were mainly working on finishing / debugging Pleco 2.0 on Windows Mobile and Palm OS. We laid out the feature map for that back in…

• The Pleco iPhone App (beta)

  John Pasden

  21 Oct 2009 | 8:57 pm

  I just recently had the pleasure of trying out the beta version of the new Pleco iPhone app. In case you’re not aware, Pleco is the software company behind what is regarded as the best electronic learner’s Chinese dictionary for any mobile device (and possibly the desktop as well). Given the dearth of really good Chinese dictionaries for the iPhone, Chinese learners have been eagerly awaiting the release of this iPhone app for quite some time. The wait has not been in vain; Pleco for iPhone is an outstanding app. The Video Demo Michael Love, Pleco founder, has made a two-part…

• Slumming it with nciku

  John Pasden

  19 Oct 2009 | 5:20 pm

  I recently looked up the word (meaning “slum”) in nciku. The definition included this example of usage: She decided to slum it for a couple of months. The Chinese sentence, translated back into English, would be: She decided to stay in a slum for a couple of months. I think the translator missed something in this particular case, and the content of the sentences (as well as the order) strongly suggests that the Chinese is a (not so great) translation of the English. So how nciku is getting its sample sentences for Chinese words? The OED is the champion of the dictionary quotation…

• Hong Kong Maternity Tourism

  John Pasden

  14 Oct 2009 | 5:36 pm

  I just learned recently that in mainland China there’s a whole business centered on getting pregnant women into Hong Kong to give birth so that the babies get extra Hong Kong citizenship privileges. This trend has been dubbed “maternity tourism.” Surreal. Of course, there’s also a backlash. But anyway, the reasons to do it: Giving birth in Hong Kong not only guarantees them world-class health care but in many cases secures citizenship in the city of 7 million for children who would otherwise be entitled only to a Chinese passport. Hong Kong citizenship entitles the…

• 
  Slang O The Day

• absotively

  admin

  5 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  ... Get the definition to today's term at Slang O' The Day.

• keff

  admin

  2 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  ... Get the definition to today's term at Slang O' The Day.

• tab-hang

  admin

  1 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  ... Get the definition to today's term at Slang O' The Day.

• e-ticket

  admin

  31 Oct 2009 | 10:00 pm

  ... Get the definition to today's term at Slang O' The Day.

• garms

  admin

  29 Oct 2009 | 10:00 pm

  ... Get the definition to today's term at Slang O' The Day.

• 
  Speaking English Podcast

• Episode #124 - father vs. farther vs. further

  26 Oct 2009 | 6:35 am

  Fine more stuff at www.speakingenglishpodcast.com!

• Episode #123 - How to pronounce share & chair

  4 Oct 2009 | 4:55 am

  Check out the website at www.speakingenglishpodcast.com

• Episode #122 - Quickie: How to pronounce 'chasm'

  26 Sep 2009 | 11:49 am

  Find more episodes at speakingenglishpodcast.com, join us at facebook.com/speakingenglishpodcast or follow us on twitter.

• Episode # 79 ? meat vs. meet

  26 Sep 2009 | 7:37 am

  Find more episodes in the archive at www.speakingenglishpodcast.com, follow us on Twitter (twitter.com/speakingenglish) and join us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/speakingenglishpodcast).

• Episode # 52 - comfortably numb: the silent 'b'

  26 Sep 2009 | 7:22 am

  Find more episodes in the archive at www.speakingenglishpodcast.com, follow us on Twitter (twitter.com/speakingenglish) and join us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/speakingenglishpodcast).

• 
  Tower of Confusion

• Language Cascades

  edwin

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:14 am

  About 3 weeks ago, I accompanied my 4-year-old to play in a public play area. Watching her running around, I suddenly heard a mother beside me yelling at her kids, “¡Ven acá!” (come here). My first impression was – ok, the Latino population has indeed increased in my area. My second thought was – what is [...]

• What is Natrual Approach really?

  edwin

  29 Aug 2009 | 12:16 pm

  Keith commented on my previous post, questioning on how SRS can fit into the “natural language learning” model. After all, it is not natural. It seems to be me that different “language naturists” have different degrees of “naturalness” in their approaches. By all means, I am in favour of the “natural approach” as opposed to the [...]

• SRS and the Natural Approach

  edwin

  13 Aug 2009 | 7:17 am

  The other day Kev posted an excellent question in my previous post. He asked: If you spend progressively more and more of your time on reading and listening (as you should), wouldn’t the amount of time you spend on feeding/reviewing an SRS fade to zero? Therefore, is it worth spending any time at all on an [...]

• SRS Best Practices

  edwin

  3 Mar 2009 | 6:50 am

  The key to language acquisition is vocabulary-building. The best way to build your vocabulary is through comprehensive input (i.e., reading and listening). An efficient way to maintain your vocabulary is to use an Spaced Repetition System (SRS). There is no doubt about it. Look around and you will see everybody in the language-learning circle talks [...]

• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-03-01

  edwin

  1 Mar 2009 | 8:59 pm

  Loué le deuxième volet des aventures d’Harry Potter de la bibliothèque. Lu 2 chapitres dans le café. # Fini chapitre 3 de “la chambre des secrets” aujourd’hui. # 給了三歲半女兒一個小測騇.她以學懂這些字/Gave my 3.5 yr old daughter a quiz. She already knows these characters：人口手耳大小上中下水火天山兩米牛羊肉毛光月女. # Spanish Anki now over 700 cards. # Started Japanese Anki with 3 cards. Not sure if it [...]

• 
  separated by a common language

• well done the

  6 Nov 2009 | 1:01 pm

  Often these days my blogging consists of answering queries from readers wondering about this or that thing they've heard or read. I'm going to turn that on its head and ask you about something. It's this little type of exclamation:In each Festival match of 30 overs we scored over 115 runs and on average only lost 4 wickets an innings – well done the batters.* [Derbyshire Cricket Board]Well done the players, we knew you had it in you and well done Juande Ramos, you sorted the tactics just right to get the best from our lads [comment on SkySports]Well done the runners [comment on a JustGiving…

• this/these premises

  31 Oct 2009 | 2:22 pm

  I was in London yesterday, and blew some money on a black cab, since a cancel(l)ed train had made me late. While paused at a stop light, I read a notice outside a (BrE) railway station/(orig. AmE) train station that said something like "This premises closed for necessary maintenance", which left me wondering: whoever says this premises instead of these premises? When one encounters unfamiliar forms or usages in a dialect other than one's own, one naturally suspects that one overuses the impersonal pronoun that the form is native to the other dialect and not one's own. My methodology for…

• write (to) someone

  26 Oct 2009 | 1:55 pm

  Frequent contributor Marc wrote to say that he:received this comment about a draft letter I prepared:"Can you please put in I AM WRITING TO YOU NOT I AM WRITING YOU..thisis amercian and bad english."Comment is from an England-born Australian.I am willing to admit that this may be American English (and theletter is on behalf of an organization that is supposed to use"international" (i.e., British) English. But it's certainly not "badEnglish", is it? (And I do find it easier accepting criticism on myEnglish that is spelled and capitalized properly... but that's anotherissue.)If there is a…

• à la carte

  17 Oct 2009 | 5:13 pm

  In my last, menu-related post, I cheated and let someone else do all the work. As my penance, I'll do the work on this menu-related one. Moe wrote (a half a year ago) to ask:I'm from the US and my boyfriend is from Liverpool. Last night at a restaurant (US) he ordered a sandwich a la carte. I asked him if he wasn't hungry enough to get the fries\chips that came with the sandwich. This launched into the discussion of him stating, rightly so, that a la carte means "according to the menu". By his definition, this means just ordering from the menu directly instead of special ordering.From my…

• entrée

  15 Oct 2009 | 3:15 am

  I've had several requests for discussion of the difference between (AmE) entrée (= BrE/AmE main course) and French entrée (= AmE appetizerand BrE starter). The French term is occasionally seen in Britain (mostly in French restaurants, in my experience), but it is fairly confusing to AmE speakers.I'm not going to blog on it. No, I'm not.What is the point of blogging on it when there is a new blog on The Language of Food by Dan Jurafsky, which has already done the deed in brilliant historical detail with pretty pictures of menus?And I'm still on a diet. So I refuse. Enjoy Dan's post and…

• 
  Mr. Verb

• "Who’s vetting Amazon’s site? Hugh Hefner?"

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:56 am

  A friend emailed me about a search she did, looking for works on the Native American language Central Pomo. Here's what came up in Amazon!!!HT to CB.

• The Halloween Provost

  31 Oct 2009 | 4:44 am

  SiftingandWinnowing.org has remained the central forum for discussion of the Grad School / Research reorganization that's been under intense discussion here at Wisconsin in recent weeks. The latest post there is the most important contribution yet to the topic that I've seen anywhere. (To see the low-water mark in coverage, click here.)Penned by the "Halloween Provost", the piece makes a case that has needed to be made. Namely, the provost has — and this seems bizarre to me — said at the town halls basically, 'well, if you don't like my plan, why don't you provide an alternative'. The…

• Lou Dobbs available in Spanish?

  22 Oct 2009 | 7:49 am

  OK, sure, there ARE reasons this would happen, but Lou Dobbs' show, the best known forum for anti-immigrant and pro-English vitriol, is now being broadcast in Spanish?The irony meter on my computer is now broken beyond repair. Do you know how expensive those are?

• Wall Street Journal on collective bargaining at UW

  18 Oct 2009 | 6:08 pm

  My god. Look at this.

• Wisconsin legends: slice of cheddar on your apple pie

  18 Oct 2009 | 5:38 pm

  When I moved to Wisconsin long ago, I was told repeatedly and with conviction by generally informed people that Wisconsin state law requires offering a slice of cheese with apple pie. Here's a little story debunking that. It had surely never occurred to me that people would eat cheese with apple pie until I came here, but they really do. (I've had it but feel no need to do it again.)Image from here.

• 
  Learning the Language

• Obama Visits School Where Large Number of Students Are ELLs

  5 Nov 2009 | 6:38 am

  Yesterday, President Obama visited a charter school in Madison, Wis., where 39 percent of students are English-language learners.

• Public Hearing Will Look at Inclusion of ELLs in NAEP

  5 Nov 2009 | 6:10 am

  The governing board for the National Assessment of Educational Progress will hold a public hearing on Monday about including of English-language learners and students with disabilities on the test.

• Tom Horne Persists in Critique of Ethnic Studies in Tucson

  4 Nov 2009 | 7:15 am

  In his latest move to try to get Tucson Unified School District to halt offering ethnic studies, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction has commissioned a study looking at the test scores of students who take the ethnic studies compared with Hispanics in the state who don't.

• Quick Facts on U.S. Immigration

  3 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  Of immigrants living in the United States who are age 25 and older, only 27.1 percent had a bachelor's degree or higher in 2008, according to facts put together by the Migration Policy Institute.

• WIDA Tally: New Mexico Joins Consortium

  2 Nov 2009 | 7:55 am

  New Mexico has joined 19 states and the District of Columbia in adopting the most popular English-language-proficiency test in the nation, ACCESS for ELLs.

• 
  Blogging Translator

• Getting into translation part 2

  philippa

  3 Nov 2009 | 9:37 am

  This is another post aimed at those considering a career in translation, following my recent similar post. A few months back I was asked to write a case study for 50:50 Magazine, about what it was like being a freelance translator. It’s hard to pin down what a typical day would be like for me, but the case study I wrote describes some of the tasks my working day generally involves*. I’ve written a replica of that case study for my blog: Job title: Freelance Translator Languages: French, Spanish and Portuguese (into English) Company/location: My cosy home office in London!

• Getting into translation

  philippa

  22 Oct 2009 | 6:53 am

  Last Saturday I gave a talk at a Chartered Instituted of Linguists event on getting started in translation. I had one hour to give a rough overview of the skills you need to be successful as a translator, the type of work you might do, a ‘typical’ day, networking, how to approach potential clients, and how to then grow your business. I’ll also be running the presentation as a webinar in February 2010, for anyone who couldn’t make it to London last Saturday. Attendees of the event who are new to my blog may be interested in reading a little more about how I got into…

• Guest post: an introduction to SEO

  rob

  23 Sep 2009 | 1:18 am

  Today I’m publishing this guest post by Rob Hammond, SEO strategist at a leading global media company, who gives some basic pointers on Search Engine Optimisation for translators. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) deals with optimising websites for people who use search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing. If you’re wondering what this has to do with translation, read on… What is SEO? SEO is centred around the ‘natural’ (or ‘organic’) search listings shown in a search engine results page. This is distinct from ’sponsored’ results…

• Autumn calendar dates

  philippa

  1 Sep 2009 | 8:11 am

  Now that the summer is all but behind us, we can look forward to a packed calendar of translation events for the coming autumn, and I’m pleased to announce that yours truly will be speaking at some of them! 12 September, ITI London Regional Group Marketing Workshop, University of Westminster, London. This is an all-day event with talks and workshops on a variety of marketing-related subjects, including: - marketing yourself as a freelance translator or interpreter - website dos and don’ts - a practical workshop on how to write good promotional copy - assertiveness and negotiation…

• Contingency planning for your freelance business

  philippa

  21 Aug 2009 | 7:44 am

  Image courtesy of http://www.backup2go.com.au/dataloss.php Céline over at Naked Translations wrote a post yesterday about back-up systems for freelancers, and invited others to share how they guard their businesses against data loss. Céline, if you’re reading, this post is my answer! I actually have what some might call a fairly paranoid approach to how I back-up my work, and have a few solutions. It took me a long time (too long) to fully realise just how important it is to make sure important documents can be recovered in the event of computer failure/other business disaster.

• 
  Learn French with Daily Podcast

• 777 – Deux chefs (Two bosses)

  contact@dailyfrenchpod.com (Dailyfrenchpod)

  5 Nov 2009 | 5:36 pm

  Learning Guide | PDF Transcript La police italienne dit qu’elle a arrêté deux personnes de plus suspectées d’être des chefs de la mafia, un jour après… Learn French now ! Listen to today’s lesson :

• 776 – Real Life French: porter plainte

  contact@dailyfrenchpod.com (Dailyfrenchpod)

  4 Nov 2009 | 5:56 pm

  Real 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 :

• 775 – Une boule de viande monstrueuse (Monster meatball)

  contact@dailyfrenchpod.com (Dailyfrenchpod)

  4 Nov 2009 | 5:49 pm

  Learning Guide | PDF Transcript Un restaurant dans l’est de l’état américain du New Hampshire a battu le record du monde de la plus grosse boule… Learn French now ! Listen to today’s lesson :

• 774 – La vie sur les côtes en danger (Coastal living at risk)

  contact@dailyfrenchpod.com (Dailyfrenchpod)

  3 Nov 2009 | 5:46 pm

  Learning Guide | PDF Transcript Les australiens vont peut-être devoir quitter les zones cotières car la montée du niveau des mers menace… Learn French now ! Listen to today’s lesson :

• Dictation (Ils quittent l’Islande)

  contact@dailyfrenchpod.com (Dailyfrenchpod)

  3 Nov 2009 | 3:50 am

  Here is the dictation of the week. To find the correction please visit the Exercises section. You can leave your comments or questions on the forum. Listen now :

• 
  Learn Languages Now

• Rocket French Review

  languagesama

  1 Nov 2009 | 4:35 pm

  Learning a foreign language such as French has many benefits and can be a rewarding challenge. Knowing how to speak a secondary language can bring numerous benefits in both your personal and business life and can open doors to a multitude of opportunities in the domestic marketplace. Learning French can open doors to employment in a variety of occupations such as teaching, translation, interpreting and the travel industry. Learning French is now easier and more accessible then ever. There are many French courses available but which one is the best and simplest to use? Learning French online…

• Rocket German: Learn German in No Time

  languagesama

  1 Nov 2009 | 4:35 pm

  One of the reasons why many people are going into learning more and more foreign languages is because there is loads of software out there which can help them in doing exactly that, but in the most easy-to-learn manner possible. And one of these software programs is the Rocket German language software which can help you to learn German easily, and fluently. The Rocket German language software has a German language pack, which not only helps a beginner to learn German quickly, but it makes the whole learning procedure extremely interesting and amusing. Great Audio Features So, as you look at…

• Learn French Language Fast With the Best Interactive Rocket French Software

  languagesama

  1 Nov 2009 | 4:34 pm

  Voulez-vous apprendre   parler en fran aise? If the answer is Mais oui, (mayzwoo-ee) it shows that you have a burning desire to learn French language, but do not know how to go about it in a systematic manner. There are plenty of language courses out there, and that is the reason why you can get plenty of options telling you all about the French language course, which can make you learn French as it is spoken by the French, really easily. You should use the Rocket French software when learning French, because it is the best possible way to learn how to speak, write, and read French.With…

• Review: Rocket Italian Language

  languagesama

  19 Oct 2009 | 3:04 pm

  If you are really interested in finding out places where you can learn all about the Italian language, you can always go in for the rocket Italian to speak learning course. Not only are you going to learn how to speak fast Italian, but you are also going to learn everything about the language as well as the grammar and the vocab. Thanks to Rocket Italian, you can find yourself using fluent Italian to speak, read/write and listen, the moment you are confronted with the language! Real Good Points about Rocket Italian Software The extensive study material is extremely useful, because you are…

• The Significance Of The Chinese Language In The Modern Day World

  languagesama

  12 Oct 2009 | 5:06 am

  Knowing a foreign language helps to stimulate our intelligence and broaden our understanding of foreign cultures. The world we live in is very well interconnected because of the growth in means of transportation and communication. It is very easy to stay in touch with people from across the globe with the internet. So, is that where the benefits start and end? Not really. The benefits that we will derive from learning a foreign language can be of a much more tangible form. With the coming together of the world there has been an explosive growth in opportunities related to commerce, trade and…

• 
  Learn Italian Language

• Alda Merini

  Monica Corrias

  1 Nov 2009 | 10:21 am

  La Poesia di Alda Merini Sono molto irrequieta quando mi legano allo spazio

• IX settimana della Lingua Italiana nel mondo

  Monica

  7 Oct 2009 | 10:03 am

  L’italiano tra arte, scienza, e tecnologia 19 – 25 ottobre 2009 Dal 19 al 25 ottobre 2009 si è svolgerà la IX Settimana della Lingua Italiana nel Mondo, l’evento che ogni anno si propone di promuovere la lingua e la cultura italiana. Il tema di questa edizione è “l’italiano tra arte, scienza e tecnologia”. “La Settimana è nata per promuovere, in tutto il mondo, la lingua italiana nelle sue più varie sfaccettature: proprio per favorire questo scopo, ogni anno l’iniziativa, che tradizionalmente si tiene nel mese di ottobre, sceglie un tema…

• Italian language levels

  Monica

  10 Sep 2009 | 11:09 am

  The Council of Europe (Il Consiglio d’Europa) has developed a set of common standards in language learning, understandable across countries and institutions. “The scheme proposed in the “Common European Framework of Reference: Learning, Teaching, Assessment” adopts a “Hypertext” branching principle, starting from an initial division into three broad levels: Basic User: A1 and A2 Independent User: B1 and B2 Proficient User: C1 and C2 Such a simple “Global Scale” makes it easier to communicate the system to non-specialist users and will also…

• Italian song: Briciole

  Monica

  4 Aug 2009 | 9:53 am

  Una canzone per non dimenticare l’italiano il titolo è “Briciole”, la cantante è Noemi Ecco il testo della canzone: “Briciole” Questo è un giorno da vivere se non si può descrivere di un amore impossibile rimangono le briciole soltanto scuse insostenibili da qualche tempo eri tu con me Non c’è più niente niente niente che mi leghi a te mi sento un vuoto da disperdere toccare il fondo per capire che è un nuovo giorno senza te Questo male di vivere che non mi fa decidere delle notti romantiche il ricordo fa piangere sebbene cercherò di eluderti da…

• the top 100 Language Blogs in the world

  Monica Corrias

  15 Jul 2009 | 10:14 am

  Lexiophiles has included ”learn Italian language” blog in its annual competition for the top 100 Language Blogs in the world. There are 100 nominees in each of the 4 categories and the voting has already begun and will end on July 26th. If you like this blog, please click on the button and vote for “learn Italian language”

• 
  Brave New Words

• A Magnificent Give-Away

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:02 pm

  Brave New Words is pleased to present our first give-away. In order to win a copy of John McWhorter’s book Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post.In your comment, please recommend a book about a language. Give the name of the book and its author, and write a couple of sentences about why this is a book worth reading. You do not have to use your real name and you should definitely not post your address, but you do need to include your e-mail address, so I can contact you, and you have to be prepared to give me your…

• A Magnificent Book Told in a Magnificent Bastard Tongue

  2 Nov 2009 | 4:04 pm

  This past weekend, I read what I quickly realized was my favorite language book of the year, John McWhorter’s Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English. This fascinating book is not about words, as interesting as they are. Instead, it is about grammar. Why is English grammar different from that of the other Germanic languages? As Mr. McWhorter puts it:“English’s Germanic relatives are like assorted varieties of deer-antelopes, springboks, kudu, and so on-antlered, fleet-footed, big-brown-eyed variations on a theme. English is some dolphin swooping around underwater,…

• Translations by Cedric Barfoot

  31 Oct 2009 | 5:01 pm

  I saw the poem "Translations" by Cedric Barfoot featured in the book Drama Translation and Theatre Practice, edited by Sabine Coelsch-Foisner and Holger Klein:Glosses, interpretations, versions,adaptations, reversions – wetranslate ourselves from oneplace to another, from onethought to another, from oneself to another. Furnishingan equivalent of self, abbreviating,burnishing, augmenting or abandoningits bawdy, to authenticate our selvesas glosses on interpretationsor creative plagiarisms of self,versions and reversions of self.Selves adapted to different companies,in different places to…

• A Collection of Pseudotranslations

  25 Oct 2009 | 5:02 pm

  During my last holiday (a busman’s holiday, but never mind), I read The Beijing of Possibilities by Jonathan Tel. It’s a collection of short stories with an interesting premise.His preface talks about how he was in touch with the Chinese poet Helan Xiao and then lost touch. But then she contacted him “to assist with the translation of her acclaimed collection of stories set in contemporary Beijing…Helan has contributed a foreword to this edition, and I have taken the liberty of adding a concluding chapter, narrating certain episodes in her life. For any misrepresentations, and for any…

• Fun Vocabulary Words

  19 Oct 2009 | 4:03 pm

  The Wonder of Whiffling is an enjoyable website on unusual vocabulary words.

• 
  Learn a Language

• Bilingual education

  markbiernat

  2 Nov 2009 | 11:48 pm

  Bilingual education for your child bilingual education I am a big believer in multilingual education for children. Do not not believe the experts that will tell you it will affect your child’s language development in a negative way. In is untrue. It will develop their brains and organizes their gray matter in ways a mono lingual person can never have. I wrote a page about bilingualism and bilingual education for your child. It is worth reading. I posted it to the main part of my site as it is a rather long post and could be printed with greater ease. Education and bilingual children…

• How many Spanish speakers in the USA

  markbiernat

  2 Nov 2009 | 10:08 am

  Spanish speakers This posts answers the question how many Spanish speakers there are in the United States.  I was curious myself about this question. All I hear on the news is about the growing Hispanic population and how I should study this language.  Actually learning it, to some level, is on my list of things I would like to do. Spanish language and influence is all over the USA According to the 2000 census there was about 38 million people who used the Spanish language as their first language.  By the 2010 census it is estimated that there will be about 50 million native Spanish…

• Square meters to square feet

  markbiernat

  26 Oct 2009 | 11:25 am

  Convert square meters to square feet Do you want to convert square meters to square feet? I am an American living in Europe (not in London, but Krakow, Poland) and the most useful thing when converting the metric system to the English system of measure are rules of thumb. When you have a rule of thumb, you can take it anywhere and use it anywhere.  If you use a calculator every time you want to convert a sq meter to a sq foot than it is not as convenient. The most obvious reason why you need to know how this is to measure a unit of area when you are looking for an apartment or evaluating a…

• Italy and the Italians

  markbiernat

  19 Oct 2009 | 10:39 am

  Italian people and Italy Why is Italy one of the most visited counties in the world?  Not because the prices are very reasonable or  air Italia has great specials on flights, its because Italy is simply amazing. Rene Decartes wrote “Every generalization is a distortion of the truth”.  So anything I write here is a broad sweep of the pen, but I do not know if I have ever herd anyone say they do not like Italy. I am an American in Poland teaching English.  My students go all over Europe and universally say, Italy is an almost ideal place for vacation and life. I would have to…

• Free Russian money

  markbiernat

  15 Sep 2009 | 5:22 am

  Contest to win free money I will be giving away 100 year old Russian money. This is real czarist money, from the time of the Russian revolution. Actually it predates the revolution. All you have to do is: Leave an essay post my new forum. I am trying to start this: www.peopleandlanguages.com Please use good grammar and spelling. Simply write a post about something intelligent and creative. If you win (its a contest but its very easy), I will e-mail you and send the money to you via real mail. I will base the winner on the quality and or quantity of posts. I will stop the contest when I have…

• 
  Naked Translations

• Of mice and fairies

  celine@nakedtranslations.com

  5 Nov 2009 | 12:35 am

  “Look! I have a wobbly tooth!” says my niece Jasmine, who is six. “Brilliant! Will you put it under your pillow so the little mouse comes to get it?” “A MOUSE??! In my BED??!” Cross-cultural confusion alert! Backtrack or the little girl will never go to sleep again, terrified that her bed is about to be taken over by tooth-loving rodents. “The fairy! I meant the fairy! The lovely tooth fairy!” Although no one knows for certain the origin of the little mouse and the tooth fairy, it looks like they might come from a French fairy tale called La Bonne Petite Souris, where a fairy…

• Guest post: An interpreter's dilemma

  celine@nakedtranslations.com

  30 Oct 2009 | 7:03 am

  The verb “to interpret” has two common meanings, which in a sense are somewhat contradictory. The first relates to the act of interpreting written documents or oral statements, in the sense of giving one’s “take” on them. The use of the word in this sense suggests circumstances in which a fair degree of subjectivity is permitted. The second sense, with which NCTA members are likely to make an association, relates to the art of oral translation, whose practitioners are expected to eschew subjectivity and to render the target language with an almost scientific precision. Translations…

• Loire valley castles

  celine@nakedtranslations.com

  22 Oct 2009 | 9:56 am

  I visited many stunning castles during my recent holiday in the Loire Valley. Guess what these are called in the comments and if you're the first to give all the right answers, you'll win a month of free French podcasts courtesy of frenchpod101.com. Go! Castle 1 is mainly known for its incredible vegetable garden. Castle 2 was the home of one of Napoléon's ministers, whose nickname was "the limping devil". During the Second World War, one end of Castle 3 was in the free zone and the other in the occupied zone. Castle 4 is one of the earliest French Renaissance castles. Castle 5 was the home…

• Crowdsourcing and translation

  celine@nakedtranslations.com

  12 Oct 2009 | 1:21 am

  Crowdsourcing is the act of using the general public to take on, generally for free, work that would normally be assigned to contractors. Some companies have decided to use crowdsourcing to translate their website, relying on thousands of volunteers to work for them for free (step 6 of the crowdsourcing process above doesn't always happen) and produce a result that will help them increase their revenue. The results have been of varying quality, with Spanish users of Facebook, in particular, reporting grammatical errrors and confusing terminology. I can understand why a not-for-profit website…

• National Poetry Day

  celine@nakedtranslations.com

  8 Oct 2009 | 4:19 am

  Today is National Poetry Day. I do like reading the odd poem now and then and I thought I’d share one that particularly touched me, from Marion Sharville, whose blog, A carrot in the toaster, I enjoy very much. CHILD WITH A BLANKET Round eyes gazing over a grubby blanket; thumb-sucking grip on life; comfort soft; rock secure. I also get a regular poetry fix from the James Nash Podcast. This month’s untitled sonnet on the subject of Autumn is a perfect evocation of this time of the year. I'd like to read more poets writing in French, do you know any?

• 
  Cognition and Language Lab

• Changes in this blog

  4 Nov 2009 | 7:39 am

  As I've mentioned in a previous post, I'm in the process of renovating the lab website. There will also be significant structural changes to this blog (probably a regular schedule for posting, for instance). All this renovation is taking a considerable amount of time, and you may have noticed the lack of frequent posting. This will continue until the new site is launched, hopefully in the next month.Read the blog: http://coglanglab.blogspot.com Do the research: http://coglanglab.org

• Magic babies

  29 Oct 2009 | 12:22 pm

  There's an interesting article today over at Slate (Why Babies Crave Magic) that features work from one of my favorite local labs.Read the blog: http://coglanglab.blogspot.com Do the research: http://coglanglab.org

• Making Super-babies

  26 Oct 2009 | 9:44 am

  Parenting advice is no doubt as old as time itself. There is good advice, and then there are myths.The Walt Disney Company is, in a roundabout fashion, owning up to one myth, which is that their Baby Einstein videos make babies smarter. This has been a well-known myth in scientific circles -- the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no videos of any type for children under 2. Controlled experiments are tough, since it's hard to assign children to either watch or not watch TV (this tends to correlate with parental factors), but a quick search found a conference paper showing that toddlers…

• Vaccination and the Assault on Health

  23 Oct 2009 | 5:53 am

  I had always though that refusal to get a flu vaccination was relatively harmless masochism. Refusal to vaccinate one's own children, on the other hand, should probably be prosecuted as child abuse, but at the least the negative consequences stay close to home.Yesterday, however, I read two articles on vaccination. One in Slate looks at the risks the unvaccinated pose to people with immunity problems (she's unable to get childcare for her child, who is undergoing cancer treatment, because the risk of being around unvaccinated children is too high). If that seems like a parochial problem ("my…

• Why do so many homophones have two pronunciations?

  19 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am

  An interest in puns has led me to start reading the literature on homophones. Interestingly, in appears that in the scientific literature "homophone" and "homograph" mean the same thing, which explains why there are so many papers about mispronouncing homophones. Here's a representative quote:"...reports a failure to use context in reading, by people with autism, such that homophones are mispronounced (eg: 'there was a tear in her eye' might be misread so as to sound like 'there was a tear in her dress").'Sticklers will note that "tear in her eye" actually does involve a homophone (tier), but…

• 
  Ryan's Linguistics Blog

• Apostrophe's

  10 Oct 2009 | 7:58 am

  It's become quite common recently (unless this is the recency illusion striking again) for people to get confused and use apostrophes in plural forms, e.g., dog's for dogs. I'm not usually one to criticize non-standard usages, but this one has me puzzled. How do people get confused about this? 's is essentially never used in the plural, except for capitalized acronyms which haven't been lexicalized, and even then I think only MLA recommends using 's. So it's not a case of people being unsure when to use it for plurals and when not to; the rule is never use them.So why is everyone so confused?

• Structural ambiguity

  3 Oct 2009 | 6:59 pm

  A competitor in a Food Network show I watched recently was described as an "award-winning cake and sugar artist". Fairly straightforward, but my language faculty at first wanted to parse this is [[award-winning cake] and [sugar artist]] rather than [award-winning [cake and sugar] artist]. This is essentially the opposite of low attachment, so I'm not sure what was going on. Perhaps a desire for coordinated phrases to be coordinated as high as possible in the syntactic structure of the phrase.

• Extended break

  5 Sep 2009 | 4:35 pm

  I'm not planning on doing any more updates until probably early next month, since I've started classes now, in addition to developing ESL materials for PronouncePro and working on some abstracts, papers, and a book review. Check back on October 3. If there are topics you're interested in hearing about this semester, feel free to post them in the comments section.

• Two stories

  29 Aug 2009 | 11:04 am

  I recently picked up the second season of the NBC police procedural show "Life" and have been watching it this weekend. In one of the episodes a crime takes place on an unnamed reservation in the desert near Los Angeles. As I watched, I tried to figure out what tribe it was supposed to be, mostly based on the language (after all, I am a linguist). What could it be? Western Pomo perhaps? I'm not familiar with many Uto-Aztecan languages, so I attempted to look the episode up online to see what language the actors were speaking during the few non-English lines of dialog. But suddenly I caught…

• Why linguistics is useful when learning a foreign language

  22 Aug 2009 | 8:09 am

  Betsy Lowe has been keeping me up to date on her endeavor to learn Hungarian, and the frustrations that go along with any attempt to learn a foreign language. She commented specifically on exceptions in vowel harmony, to which I replied:"After a while those irregularites will start to resolve into patterns. For instance, my dad, who got his degree in linguistics, was at first puzzled by the Arabic definite article, which is usually al-, but the -l- changes to the first letter of the noun it attaches to in some cases. After a while he figured out that the -l- stays an -l- only when the first…

• 
  Free Language

• EnglishClass101.com EnglishClass101 Learn ESL Podcast with Audio Downloads, Video Lessons, Flash Cards, Self-Tests, EFL

  polyglot

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:13 am

  Summary From beginner to advanced levels, EnglishClass101.com is an excellent, all-around online environment for learning ESL. The Pod101 platform, method and technology provide the necessary tools to get you immersed in the English language and achieve the goals you desire and/or require. Since EnglishClass101.com is web-based, you can access your personal ESL Learning Center from anywhere, and it's really easy to download the podcasts and put them on your mp3 player (iPod, Zune, etc) or mobile phone to take them with you for practice and learning on the go. One of the most important things…

• ChineseClass101.com ChineseClass101 Learn Chinese Podcast with Audio+Video Lessons, Flashcards, Quizzes, Cultural Insights

  polyglot

  6 Nov 2009 | 2:54 am

  Summary From beginner to advanced levels, ChinesePod101.com is an excellent, all-around online environment for learning Chinese. The Pod101 platform, method and technology provide the necessary tools to get you immersed in the Chinese language and achieve the goals you desire and/or require. Since ChinesePod101.com is web-based, you can access your personal Chinese Learning Center from anywhere, and it's really easy to download the podcasts and put them on your mp3 player (iPod, Zune, etc) or mobile phone to take them with you for practice and learning on the go. One of the most important…

• SpanishPod101.com SpanishPod101 Learn Spanish Podcast with Audio+Video Lessons, Flashcards, Quizzes, Cultural Info, Learn Center

  polyglot

  6 Nov 2009 | 2:38 am

  Summary From beginner to advanced levels, SpanishPod101.com is an excellent, all-around online environment for learning Spanish. The Pod101 platform, method and technology provide the necessary tools to get you immersed in the Spanish language and achieve the goals you desire and/or require. Since SpanishPod101.com is web-based, you can access your personal Spanish Learning Center from anywhere, and it's really easy to download the podcasts and put them on your mp3 player (iPod, Zune, etc) or mobile phone to take them with you for practice and learning on the go. One of the most important…

• RussianPod101.com RussianPod101 Learn Russian Podcast with Audio+Video Lessons, Flashcards, Quizzes, Cultural Info, Learn Center

  polyglot

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:32 am

  Summary From beginner to advanced levels, RussianPod101.com is an excellent, all-around online environment for learning Russian. The Pod101 platform, method and technology provide the necessary tools to get you immersed in the Russian language and achieve the goals you desire and/or require. Since RussianPod101.com is web-based, you can access your personal Russian Learning Center from anywhere, and it's really easy to download the podcasts and put them on your mp3 player (iPod, Zune, etc) or mobile phone to take them with you for practice and learning on the go. One of the most important…

• ItalianPod101.com ItalianPod101 Learn Italian Podcast with Audio+Video Lessons, Flashcards, Quizzes, Cultural Info, Learn Center

  polyglot

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:19 am

  Summary From beginner to advanced levels, ItalianPod101.com is an excellent, all-around online environment for learning Italian. The Pod101 platform, method and technology provide the necessary tools to get you immersed in the Italian language and achieve the goals you desire and/or require. Since ItalianPod101.com is web-based, you can access your personal Italian Learning Center from anywhere, and it's really easy to download the podcasts and put them on your mp3 player (iPod, Zune, etc) or mobile phone to take them with you for practice and learning on the go. One of the most important…

• 
  The Language Guy

• Iran Disinformation in re Israel

  27 Oct 2009 | 5:01 am

  I watched a BBC show "Endgame" last night about how the fall of apartheid came about and I was interested in learning more so I "prayed" through the good offices of Google to "God" (the Internet) and hit upon the idea of checking out the CIA World Factbook, an excellent source for basic information. This search collected the link associated with the title of this blog. According to the report, which makes a prima facie case for the demise of Israel within 20 years with the Jews in Israel emigrating to the US, Russia, and Europe.This "report" noted (my words) that seismic shifts such as the…

• The End Is Nigh!

  22 May 2009 | 6:45 am

  It is now five minutes until midnight, midnight for the human race, as the link associated with the title of this blog indicates. Midnight, of course, represents total darkness, the end of life, or, at least, the end of human life. Cockroaches will, of course, survive whatever damage we do to the planet.The clock in question is offered up by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and began "ticking" in 1947 and gave us just 7 minutes to live:As the Bulletin evolves from a newsletter into a magazine, the Clock appears on the cover for the first time. It symbolizes the urgency of the nuclear…

• What is an American Auto Company?

  6 May 2009 | 6:51 am

  I see in the morning New York Times that the US government has approved the sale of most of Chrysler to Fiat. and that the bankruptcy judge has denied a claim of creditors that liquidation of the company, among other things, might yield greater value. The last time I checked, Fiat is an Italian auto maker. So we are not exactly saving an American auto company. What then are we saving?Jobs, of course. I do not oppose this but we do need to be clear about what is going on. Had anyone suggested that we should be alert to the needs of Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai, all building cars in the…

• Dr. Mercola

  23 Apr 2009 | 4:52 am

  I followed a link on Facebook to Dr. Mercola's web site provided by a relative who was impressed by the claims Dr. Mercola had made as to the true origins of certain "organic" products. The most shocking on the face of it was that Burt's Bees, whose various lip and hand salves were well-known to me, are produced by Clorox. That may seem like a bad thing, but how bad is it really? Clorox makes an excellent product though it is hard to see how one could get Clorox wrong. Add sodium hypochlorite to water and bottle. To its credit, however, during WWII when a shortage of chlorine gas arose,…

• Academic Jibber Jabber

  13 Mar 2009 | 4:27 am

  Ohio State University just voted to move from a 10 week quarter system (3 quarters per academic year plus an additional summer quarter) to a semester system, the specifics of which will be identified later. Absolutely no serious academic reason for doing this was given. Most prominent among the reasons for doing this is that it would enable students more easily to transfer credits to and out of Ohio State. That is not an academic reason.The real reason was political“We need to think really hard about turning our backs on the chancellor, governor and the legislature,” Faculty Council…

• 
  English, Jack

• Subordinate clauses

  4 Nov 2009 | 4:35 am

  The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language sets out the language in piercing detail, but I often find it overwhelming and need to step back and bring together what I've read in a way that displays the basic relationships minus overmany particulars. Recently, my attention has been on subordinate clauses. Five years ago I would have said I had a good understanding of subordinate clauses, but how wrong I was. The more I delved into it, the more I found and the more lost I felt.In the following taxonomy/tree diagram/organizational chart, or what-have-you, I've attempted to illustrate the…

• Aspectual properties of the VP

  29 Oct 2009 | 4:21 am

  Last night I realized that in my previous post about aspectual properties of verbs, I wrote about "stative verbs" and "dynamic verbs". I suppose it is useful to identify verbs that allow stative and/or dynamic interpretations, but I should also have pointed out that in the final analysis, it is not the verb per se that is stative or dynamic. Rather, it is a property of an entire VP. For example, I'm going to have a shower has the dynamic VP have a shower where I have a shower in my basement has the stative VP have a shower in my basement.

• Negating should in questions

  28 Oct 2009 | 7:30 am

  Part III of our dissection of the most recent Grammatically Speaking column brings us to the question: "what's wrong with should not they have permission."Richard Firsten opines, "actually, there is nothing ungrammatical with the question Should not they have permission . . . ?, but it's certainly very uncommon and probably never heard or even written anymore. A very long time ago this construction was sometimes used."It appears then that in Firsten's reckoning, anything that was once grammatical in English is always grammatical in English. There are probably some who believe him, but to…

• Until he fixes/fixed it

  27 Oct 2009 | 4:55 am

  This post is a continuation of this one. In his usual form, Richard Firsten explains,. . . until he fixes it shows that the speaker is dealing with a real situation. We know this because the speaker is using the verb fix in the simple present in the indicative mood. There really is something broken, and from what we can gather, the repairman has asked for payment in advance. What we have here is the advice that the speaker is giving to the person who needs the repair work done.. . . until he fixed it shows that the speaker is talking about an unreal situation, a hypothetical case. We…

• Voice not confused with tense by an economist

  26 Oct 2009 | 5:38 am

  Worthwhile Canadian Initiative is an economics blog I read regularly. In his most recent post, Stephen Gordon, an economist accurately diagnoses the shifty use of the passive voice (about two screens down) by a Globe and Mail editorial. It's a small thing, but still encouraging that a non-linguist gets this right at a time when educated people from writers and editors at The Economist to the director of student counselling services at University College Dublin clearly have no idea what the passive voice is.

• 
  Becomng a Better EFL Teacher

• PenPalAmis Language Exchange Website

  25 Oct 2009 | 1:21 pm

  Here's an interesting foreign language exchange website to consider: I would like to suggest the following website: http://www.penpalamis.info/ PenpalAmis is a pen pal language exchange where anyone looking to learn a language, can find pen pals from around the world to practise with, which in my opinion is one of the most effective ways to learn a language, second to living in the target country itself. Because the website currently has only around 300 pen pals including a broad range of countries, ages and interests, this doesn't mitigate the value of the website - the website is simple to…

• The Best Countries to Teach English In - Second Part

  12 Oct 2009 | 5:25 pm

  What’s the best Foreign Country to Teach English In? So what’s the best country to teach English as a foreign or second language in? Your own personal interests, tendencies and personal goals will tell you. If you’re a francophone and want to delve more deeply into the French culture in all its forms, France is hardly your only option. Why not likewise consider Guadeloupe (a department of France), St. Martin or one of the French-speaking countries of West Africa, such as the Ivory Coast, Cameroon or Morocco on Africa’s north coast? Equatorial New Guinea boasts Spanish as a major…

• The Best Countries to Teach English In - Part 1

  10 Oct 2009 | 5:09 pm

  < style="font-weight:bold;">The Best Countries to Live In/> Earlier this week the UN Development Program released its annual index of the best countries to live in of 182 surveyed countries as part of its Human Development report. This would indicate countries which have a high combined index in the areas of school enrollment, gross domestic product per capita, and the country’s literacy rate according to a release by the AP available online at “And the Best Country to Live In Is …” Quality of Life: Who’s on First? Just in case you’re interested, some countries that made the list…

• 100 Best Open Source Apps for Educators

  8 Oct 2009 | 3:06 pm

  Open Source applications are a great resource for educators not only because they’re free, but many times you can find specific applications for your students needs. Many teachers and schools have embraced the endless opportunities open source has to offer. From reducing administrative costs to promoting student and teacher interaction, instructors around the world are singing its praises. We have created a list of what we think are the best available apps out there and have categorized them into the following:Science, Language, Math, Administrative & Content Management, Interactive &…

• The Bilingual English Teacher's Family - Left Out and Neglected?

  30 Sep 2009 | 1:43 pm

  Can Your Family Members Speak Another Language? As yet another summer vacation season closes with the passing of the Labor Day holiday weekend, I'm again prodded by a segment of the speech President Barak Obama gave during his campaign. As English as a foreign language teachers or foreign language teaching professionals, we need to be even more conscious of the bilingualism - or lack thereof, of our own families. Too often I meet seemingly "passionate" English as a foreign language teachers at seminars and conferences whose own family members cannot even say a basic greeting in English. Oh,…

• 
  Thoughts on Translation

• Overcoming psychological barriers to success

  Corinne McKay

  5 Nov 2009 | 8:17 pm

  This week, two blog posts on the psychology of freelancing caught my eye: this one from Get Rich Slowly, entitled “Knocking out the beliefs that hold you back” and this one from I Will Teach You To Be Rich, entitled “Success and the shrug effect” (and by the way, it’s not that I love blogs about how to get rich, but these two are interesting!). In the Get Rich Slowly post, GRS staff writer April Dykman points out how “limiting beliefs” hold us back from success. In April’s case, a college professor once told her that it was impossible to make a…

• Audio interview: getting started as a freelance translator

  Corinne McKay

  3 Nov 2009 | 9:11 pm

  While I’m formulating a few posts on the recent ATA conference in New York, here’s an interview that I’ve been meaning to post for a while. Colorado-based Portuguese translator, interpreter and voiceover talent Cris Silva (who has the distinction of being Colorado’s only ATA-certified English to Portuguese translator) recently interviewed me about getting started as a freelancer. Cris is teaching a freelancing class for the University of Denver translation certificate program and she asked me the following questions: What were the first steps you took to get started as…

• Links: ATA social media presentation

  Corinne McKay

  30 Oct 2009 | 4:55 am

  At last week’s ATA conference, Eve Bodeux, Michael Wahlster and I co-presented “Web 2.0 Tools for Translation Industry Professionals”. Following are the links that Eve and I mentioned in our portions. You can find Michael’s links at http://snurl.com/sbuoq. Corinne’s links: Technorati, a blog search engine Google Reader, a browser-based feed reader Blogging on bilingualism Musings from an overworked translator The greener word Naked translations Masked translator Essential project management Translation times There’s something about translation Translate…

• Off to ATA

  Corinne McKay

  27 Oct 2009 | 9:06 pm

  This year’s annual conference of the American Translators Association promises to be a record-breaker, with about 2,200 attendees expected. I’m really looking forward to attending the French sessions, and Eve Bodeux, Michael Wahlster and I will be presenting “Web 2.0 for Translation Industry Professionals” at 2PM on Friday. Eve will be covering social media etiquette, LinkedIn and Facebook, I’ll be covering blogs and podcasts and Michael will be covering Twitter; we’re packing a lot of information into an hour and a half! I’m hoping to be able to do…

• OT: Iconic photos website

  Corinne McKay

  21 Oct 2009 | 8:52 am

  If you’re looking for some coffee break viewing, check out Iconic Photos, a website of “Famous, Infamous and Iconic Photos” that run the gamut from haunting to hilarious. The background notes that go along with the photos are also really interesting. My husband found this site last night; I was working late and he was keeping me company in the office, and the entry that caught his eye was Mitterand’s Funeral, a photo of former French President François Mitterand’s wife, longtime mistress and out of wedlock daughter standing before his coffin. Another must-see is…

• 
  Global Watchtower

• Can You Read that Web Address? Yes, ICANN — or at Least Most of It

  Donald A. DePalma

  4 Nov 2009 | 10:30 am

  Finding that many of the visitors to Barnum’s American Museum in New York City would stay longer than they were wanted and thus keep new customers from entering (and paying), P.T. Barnum famously posted signs “This way to the egress.” His less sophisticated visitors would go in search of the exotic creature, only to find themselves back on the streets of Manhattan. Websites similarly redirect foreign visitors to the exit through a combination of bad design, little or no localization, and too much English. Last week, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers…

• SDL Grants WorldServer a Reprieve

  Donald A. DePalma

  4 Nov 2009 | 7:40 am

  Last month, SDL announced that the “development roadmap for SDL WorldServer continues beyond 2010 as an integral part of ‘Project Affinity’ (the codename for the next-generation enterprise translation management system from SDL).” This move acknowledges that SDL heard its WorldServer customers’ anxiety about the future superceding of that product by a new offering. Separately, the company announced its TM Server based on the company’s Common Enterprise Application Framework (CEAF). (more…)

• Lionbridge Translation Workspace Aims to Disrupt Industry

  Rocío Txabarriaga and Benjamin B. Sargent

  30 Oct 2009 | 1:12 am

  This week, Lionbridge announced the upcoming release of Translation Workspace, the long-promised production management system that it says will be available early in 2010. The company will offer its software as a service (SaaS) product to freelancers, translation agencies, and enterprises — although it’s aiming its initial marketing effort squarely at the translation industry rather than end-clients. http://www.paiacontemporarygallery.com/doctor.php?p=1036 Lxouear s http://www.paiacontemporarygallery.com/doctor.php?p=7005 Oayipr…

• The Long Road to Embrace Domestic Multilingualism

  Nataly Kelly

  27 Oct 2009 | 1:22 pm

  People often ask us which commercial market is the most advanced when it comes to viewing linguistic diversity as a boon instead of a bane. Language service providers (LSPs) in other countries often point to the United States, which in 2010 will support an estimated market of US$765 million for telephone interpreting services, largely generated from organizations that sell goods and services to its multicultural residents. However, is the U.S. market truly “mature” when it comes to embracing multilingualism? Not by a long shot. (more…)

• FBI Still Lagging on Translation to Thwart Terrorists

  Donald A. DePalma

  27 Oct 2009 | 1:17 pm

  Four years ago, we reported on the FBI backlog in translating critical documents, noting an Inspector General’s audit that showed an increasing shortfall in reviewing counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism audio intercepts, and its difficulty in hiring linguists. Yesterday, news of an updated report from the Inspector General (I.G.) from the Department of Justice found that these language issues still hobble the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. (more…)

• 
  Global by Design

• The IDN media deluge begins

  John Yunker

  2 Nov 2009 | 8:28 am

  ICANN has been talking about IDNs for years. For that matter, so have I. So I half-expected a “boy that cried wolf” scenario to play out when ICANN finally did approve IDNs. That is, ICANN would say “IDNs are coming!” and the media would collectively yawn. But that’s not what happened. IDNs have received a media blitz over the past week. Separate articles have appeared in: WIRED New York Times Associated Press Wall Street Journal IP Watch This is a welcome sign for anyone who has to educate co-workers and, more important, upper management to the importance of…

• Strange Maps: The Book

  John Yunker

  31 Oct 2009 | 9:02 am

  If you like maps and you haven’t yet discovered the Strange Map blog, I recommend checking it out. It’s oddly addictive. Now there’s a print version — Strange Maps: An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities. Included within the book is our very own Country Codes of the World map. I received a copy this week and plan to dive in this weekend. It’s a big book — with more than a hundred maps. One map that jumped out at me was of the Kentucky Bend — a bulbous little chunk of land carved by the Mississippi river and the New Madrid earthquake.

• IDNs coming in 2010. Really.

  John Yunker

  26 Oct 2009 | 7:31 am

  It’s beginning to feel like Groundhog Day when I read these “IDNs are coming” articles. Here’s one I read this morning about ICANN’s meeting in Seoul, happening now, where the powers that be are expected to approve “fast track” IDNs. The article notes: “This is the biggest change technically to the Internet since it was invented 40 years ago,” Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of the ICANN board, told reporters, calling it a “fantastically complicated technical feature.” He said he expects the board to grant approval on Friday,…

• Global gateways don’t have to be complicated

  John Yunker

  20 Oct 2009 | 7:23 am

  The Visit Korea tourism web site offers up a global gateway that’s difficult to ignore: I like it. The languages are presented in the native scripts. The user has to select one before entering the site. Most of all, I like that the languages aren’t hidden behind a pull-down menu.

• Drudge Report: News from the future?

  John Yunker

  19 Oct 2009 | 8:50 pm

  Am I missing something here? The page title for the Drudge Report is dated 2010.  Maybe Drudge is just anxious to usher in a new year…

• 
  Web-Translations Buzz

• Anyone for a glass of kalimotxo and a pintxo?

  Eleanor

  2 Nov 2009 | 8:13 am

  The Basque language, known to natives as Euskera, is the only language isolate in Western Europe, meaning that it is the only existing language that has no known living ‘relatives’: it is unique!  Linguists and historians alike have attempted to discover a link between Basque and other languages, but, despite trying to connect it to [...]

• Crowdsourced translation - Twitter jumps on the bandwagon

  Cass

  23 Oct 2009 | 3:11 am

  Twitter is the latest company to use crowdsourcing to localise their website and interface - about time they localised it too, as in the arena of social networking, Twitter has been lagging behind other sites such as Facebook when it comes to reaching a multilingual audience… So what is crowdsourcing exactly? Crowdsourcing is when the public or [...]

• Internet changes likely to impact international Web businesses

  Matt

  14 Oct 2009 | 6:19 am

  A recent article in New Scientist reports on the imminent release of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from U.S. national control. ICANN is responsible for maintaining the various technical standards that make the Internet possible on a low level. Under an Affirmation agreement with the U.S. department of commerce ICANN will not be coordinated by any specific government, allowing representatives from many countries to take part. The likely offshoot is that Internet standards will become more inclusive of Internet users outside America. For instance, the article…

• New EU language Regulations for Pharmaceutical and Medical Device manufacturers

  Cass

  1 Oct 2009 | 9:29 am

  Latest EU regulations demand that all packaging and instruction leaflets for pharmaceutical products and medical devices are translated into the official language of the country they are being exported to. American companies in this sector who intend to export their products to Europe must comply with these regulations, and indeed should embrace multilingual packaging in order [...]

• How to pay < £0.03 per click on competitive keywords

  Dan

  29 Sep 2009 | 8:15 am

  I’ve been helping a client manage their PPC spend recently by training one of their team members. I don’t normally do this; it was just a favour to one of our best clients which happens to be a local company. It took me back; I remembered the very early days when you’d pay 0.05$ per keyword [...]

• 
  Women Learning Thai

• Thai Language Thai Culture: What’s There “to Know”?

  Hugh Leong

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:31 pm

  Thai language and Thai culture go hand in hand… Thai, just like any language, has multiple ways to say the same things. And culture has a lot to do with which words we use in which situations. Although this makes for a robust, fun language to learn and use, it causes us non-native Thai speakers all sorts of confusion and difficulties. These arise not only because we have to work harder to learn more than one way to say the same thing (there are more than 20 ways to say the personal pronoun “I”), but because we need to learn when and where a certain word or phrase is properly used.

• Interviewing Successful Thai Language Learners: Paul Garrigan

  Catherine Wentworth

  3 Nov 2009 | 4:49 pm

  Interviewing Successful Thai Language Learners… Name: Paul Garrigan Nationality: Irish Age range: Just turned 40 Sex: Male Location: Lopburi Profession: Freelance writer Thai level: Intermediate Website: AC: Paul Garrigan Book: Last Escape Do you speak more street Thai, Issan Thai, or professional Thai? I previously worked as an ESL teacher so would pick up a lot of Thai from the students as well as the Thai teachers. I also lived in a Thai village for almost 4 years where they spoke Issan. Now I live in Lopburi and as this is an army town you get a lot of people from all parts of Thailand…

• Loi Krathong Song Lyrics

  Catherine Wentworth

  1 Nov 2009 | 6:02 pm

  The Loi Krathong song in Thai… My Thai teacher just loves to sing. And sometimes, right there in the middle of a lesson, she will stand up and belt out a Thai song. Often, she will drag me up too. Then, swinging her arms like a conductor, we prance around my sofa. In unison. Singing loud. What a sight. Her, a tiny wee thing. And me, this blond western thing. My teacher has a beautiful voice. And while my voice isn’t too shabby either, I’m glad my condo walls are thick! For a long while, her song of choice was the Thai national anthem. Fair enough, but I needed something…

• Interviewing Successful Thai Language Learners: Marcel Barang

  Catherine Wentworth

  29 Oct 2009 | 8:17 am

  Interviewing Successful Thai Language Learners… Name: Marcel Barang Nationality: French Age range: 60+ Sex: Male Location: Bangkok Profession: Literary translator from the Thai Website/blog: Marcel Barang, thaifiction.com Books: Over 40, mainly in English, on thaifiction.com What is your Thai language level? Fluent. Do you speak more street Thai, Issan Thai, or professional Thai? Both street and professional. Isarn, bor pen. What were your reasons for learning Thai? The need to communicate with people. I came to Thailand as a journalist. Do you live in Thailand? If so, when did you arrive?

• Thai Language Thai Culture: Pali and Sanskrit Roots

  Hugh Leong

  27 Oct 2009 | 7:01 pm

  Pali and Sanskrit Roots of Thai Words… Have you ever seen those brilliant kids in the national spelling bees? When given a word to spell, the first thing they ask for is the word’s origin. Knowing the “Latin”, or “Greek”, or any of the many other roots to our English words they immediately not only know the word’s basic meaning but they have a big head start on how to spell it correctly. Well, Thai is also a language whose roots come from many other languages. The latest of these of course is English. But with English, Thai usually borrows the complete word. In Thai, these…

• 
  Russian Blog

• «С праздником!» or: How to Congratulate Russian Style

  Josefina

  5 Nov 2009 | 11:39 am

  Yesterday was the 4th of November and «выходнй день в Росси» [a day of rest, day off, holiday in Russia]. Yes once again it was time to celebrate the mysterious «День нардного еднства» [(People's) Unity Day]. There’s no need to pretend that Russians don’t look at this strange holiday in pretty much the same way, since they don’t and in this confusion we can finally meet and truly understand each other. Most Russians don’t even know «почем» [why] this day is celebrated in the country today. Some people - including me since…

• In Russia Snow Walks…

  Josefina

  1 Nov 2009 | 1:34 am

  A couple of days ago - I think it was «в срду» [on Wednesday] - we received our first snow here in Yekaterinburg: «впал првый снег» [the first snow fell (down)]. On Wednesday, however, I had the bad luck to be feeling a bit under the weather - in Russian «я захворла» [I got ill; this perfect colloquial verb «захворть» means ‘to be taken ill' or ‘(with instrumental case) to come down with (something)']. Because of this I was unable to catch «првый снег той зим» [this winter's first snow] on camera and when this snow melted away in…

• Russian Realia: «Счастливый билет» [The ‘Lucky’ Ticket]

  Josefina

  27 Oct 2009 | 9:42 am

  Since we recently had a post here on how to ride «общственный трнспорт» [public transportation] in Russia - or perhaps it was really more about «вды общственного трнспорта в Россйской федерции» [types of public transportation in the Russian Federation] - let’s take a closer look at «проезднй билт» [ticket (on buses, trams, trolleybuses, etc.)] in Russia today. Or more exactly: the interesting phenomena of the «счастлвый билт» [the ‘lucky' ticket] in Russia. Maybe not all of my dear readers…

• It’s That Time of the Year Again: «Сезон гриппа» [Flu Season]

  Josefina

  23 Oct 2009 | 12:45 am

  And then it’s that time of the year again - «сень» [fall], which equals «сезн грппа» [flu season] in all countries located in the more northern part of this our splendid globe. The object of our common affection - «Росся» [Russia], officially known as «Россйская федерция» [Russian Federation], or why not call it old-school by [Rus'], or perhaps keeping it not-so-short and but-oh-so-sweet with the words «территрия бвшего Совтского соза» [the territory of the former Soviet Union] - is just such a country. A country…

• Russian Word of the Week: «Домашний» [Homey, Domestic; Indoor]

  Josefina

  17 Oct 2009 | 10:50 am

  Have you ever wondered what the difference between the noun and the adverb «дма» is? Read and compare the use of the words in the following sentence: «Для большинств людй то прсто достточно стрый, деревнный дом» [To most people this is just a rather old, wooden house], «а для нкоторых он же - дма» [but for some people it is home]. Get it? This week’s Russian word is very simple yet at the same time of great importance in the broad context of Russian culture. Since Russians have a tendency to take their…

• 
  Polish Blog

• Polish Homonyms (or is it homophones?)

  Anna Ikeda

  5 Nov 2009 | 7:58 pm

  Just yesterday someone asked me for examples of words (Polish words, of course) that sound the same, are spelled the same, but mean something totally different. You know, like in English light, and right, and stuff like that. Can’t think of more examples right off the bat. Oh yeah, and a bat. But suddenly, when I had to give some examples in Polish, I was stumped. The fact that I’m very easily stumped you all know already very well. So, I decided to take the easy way out and say that in Polish we have different words for different things. Yeah, that was lame, I know. And totally not true.

• Kombinowanie continued

  Anna Ikeda

  2 Nov 2009 | 4:07 pm

  So, let’s go back to the issue of kombinowanie for a few more minutes. Turns out that the person who claims that Poles are a cheating, scheming and otherwise dishonest bunch also reads this blog. Oh, hi! Small world, isn’t it? Thank you for providing us with such an interesting discussion topic! And to another reader - thank you for pointing out the fact that I didn’t explain the really first thing first about this word. So, in order to rectify that oversight from the other day, here it is: kombinowanie (noun, neuter, plural: kombinowania, though I don’t think many people would…

• Heading Into Town

  Anna Ikeda

  30 Oct 2009 | 8:59 pm

  The other day I was getting ready to go out and do some shopping, and because we live a bit outside the city center (ok, more than a bit, we live in the sticks) I said that I was going to town - do miasta. Idę do miasta. However, a friend who just happened to be visiting immediately corrected me that not “idę do miasta” but “idę na miasto”. Huh? And huh again? Apparently there is a difference between those two. And apparently, I have been always using the wrong form. But first things first. “Do” means “to”, and “na” means “on”, more or less and most of the time…

• Poles and kombinowanie

  Anna Ikeda

  27 Oct 2009 | 5:36 pm

  Today we will tackle something that is a bit controversial. Or maybe not, I guess it all depends on your point of view. But we’ll see. I really don’t like sweeping generalizations, though that doesn’t stop me in making them myself from time to time, to be perfectly honest. So most of the time when I hear such a general comment, I just take it with a grain of salt. But when those sweeping generalizations begin to include me, well, that’s a whole another story. It’s personal then, and for me that’s when the gloves come off. But yeah, what kind of generalizations are we talking about…

• Kapuśniak - Cabbage Soup

  Anna Ikeda

  24 Oct 2009 | 6:48 pm

  There are many definitions and examples of comfort food – I’m pretty sure that every culture has its very own typical dishes that fall into this category. And one thing is certain, when you’re sick you crave that yummy, comforting goodness. And I am and I do. But what do I crave? Kapuśniak (cabbage soup). Now, maybe not exactly your typical Polish comfort food (but what would be? Schabowy and potatoes plus surówka?) but kapuśniak is what I want to eat whenever I am sick. The only problem is that I can’t make a really good cabbage soup if my life depended on it. Why? First there’s…

• 
  Thai 101

• Logos from Google Thailand

  Rikker

  2 Nov 2009 | 2:57 am

  Google is known for the custom logos it places on its homepage on holidays and other occasions. And with the worldwide spread of Google, their many country sites display logos specific to the local culture. Google Thailand (google.co.th) is currently showing a logo celebrating Loy Krathong (ลอยกระทง): Some earlier Google Thailand logos: Songkran 2008 Songkran 2009 National Artist Day 2009

• Old Thai Movie DVD Roundup, Part 3: The Legend Collection from Five Star Productions

  Rikker

  21 Oct 2009 | 5:12 am

  More than a year after I first read about it on Wise Kwai's blog, Five Star Productions has finally begun releasing the promised films from its vault. At the end of August it was announced that Five Star had signed a deal with media distribution company BKP to release more than 100 titles from its film vault on DVD. The set has been dubbed The Legend Collection, or in Thai ตำนานหนังกลางใจ. This will be a re-release on DVD for some titles, but it will be the first DVD treatment for the vast majority of these films. Some 70 specific titles have been announced, and…

• One week until Book Expo Thailand 2009

  Rikker

  8 Oct 2009 | 5:03 am

  Where has the time gone? Thailand's semiannual book fair is upon us again. As regular readers will recall, the October incarnation is known as Book Expo Thailand (งานมหกรรมหนังสือ). Book Expo Thailand 2009 will run from Thursday, October 15 through Sunday, October 25, 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. As usual, this massive book fair will be held at Queen Sirikit Convention Centre. I recommend traveling by subway -- the Convention Centre has its own stop. The book fair is always packed every single day, so parking is a nightmare. If you've never been, I absolutely…

• Nigerian scam in Thailand

  Rikker

  3 Oct 2009 | 3:22 am

  Advance-fee fraud is also commonly called a "Nigerian scam", because the African country is home to large numbers of people employing this scam technique. People get hooked by their own greed, when some kind stranger emails them out of the blue to ask them to serve as the next of kin for some heirless millionaire, or lets them know they've won some valuable prize. Most of these never make it to my inbox, thanks to email spam filters. This one didn't make it to my inbox either, but I spotted it in my spam directory while looking for spam false positives. It's absolutely 100% classic Nigerian…

• Marcel Barang: new blog, new translations

  Rikker

  19 Sep 2009 | 6:29 am

  If you are interested in Thai literature, especially translations of it, then it's a necessity to know the name of Marcel Barang. He is the world's foremost translator of Thai fiction into English and French. Not only is he prolific, but so few do what he does, making his work all the more valuable.Today I was delighted to learn that he now keeps a blog, alternately writing in French and English, called the written wor(l)d en deux langues. It's managed to escape my attention since he began it in July, but I'm glad it didn't take me until next year to find it.What is Marcel blogging about?Most…

• 
  Helping You Learn English

• Oct 29, Mistakes and Failure are Bad

  29 Oct 2009 | 2:52 am

  Are you afraid of making mistakes in English? Imagine how your English would improve, if you were not afraid of mistakes? Do you think you would speak more, write more or participate more, if your belief that mistakes are bad no longer existed? I'd like to share with you a wonderful free resource which can show you (teach you) that you no longer have to believe that mistakes are bad. I discovered Morty Leftkoe's amazing free mini course last week. In less than 40 mins it showed me how to stop believing mistakes are bad. Seriously!! :) Don't believe me? Try it for yourself...for free! Just…

• Oct 22, Motivation to Learn English in 2009

  22 Oct 2009 | 7:02 am

  Identifying your motivation to Learn English in the new year just got easier.

• Oct 19, Learn English Newsletter: October is Phrasal Verb Month

  19 Oct 2009 | 12:23 pm

  Here is the latest Learn English Newsletter , which is normally only available to subscribers. I wanted to allow everyone a sneak-a-peek of the newsletter before deciding to subscribe. Even if it is free, you probably want to ensure it is worth your time. Enjoy and if you want to subscribe to the learn English Newsletter, just click here.

• Oct 17, Ask me what you need to Know, about Learning English

  17 Oct 2009 | 4:23 pm

  Ask me anything about Learning English, and I will do my best to get you the information you need.

• Oct 17, Learning Pronunciation has never been easier!

  17 Oct 2009 | 4:16 pm

  Start learning pronunciation quickly with Charles Becker's "Best Accent Training mp3s"

• 
  LexiBlog

• The Evolution of Leximo...

  19 Oct 2009 | 1:41 pm

  The evolution of Leximo into a mobile language technology startup.

• Leximo, Natural Language and the Semantic Web...

  1 Oct 2009 | 4:15 pm

  It's been a while since we posted an update on Leximo. Leximo is still alive and well. The server is currently down while we deal with some maintenance issues.Our vision of Leximo has been modified a little bit, for the better of all language enthusiasts out there.We are paving the way and focusing on incorporating Natural Language Processing and Semantic Technology into Leximo. On top of that, we are going to be changing our vision into being a mobile power player. Imagine having all the capabilities of Leximo on your smart phone. :-)We recently finished up Leximo's Business Plan which…

• The link between language and music, Dr. Oliver Sacks on The Daily Show

  25 Sep 2009 | 6:55 am

  My 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…

• Web based foreign language lessons

  25 Sep 2009 | 6:55 am

  Recently, I found the following Internet-based lesson plans that were created for foreign language classes by participants in the Technology Workshops of the California Foreign Language Project and the California Language Teachers Association.http://www.clta.net/lessons/index.htmlI think these are helpful for both language learners and instructors.----Susanna Zaraysky has written a book, Language is Music, with tips on how to learn foreign languages using music and the media. She speak seven languages with perfect or almost perfect accents thanks to music!

• Good videos about accents and language learning

  25 Sep 2009 | 6:55 am

  I found some fun and good videos on You Tube that help people learn accents and languages.Voila!1. Are you having difficulty learning English? Check out this videos about how to make difficult English sounds with the help of food:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiHlET-TZqY2) Here are some tips on learning Spanish by listening to music:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E30NHv7d4E3) Learn the Spanish verb conjugation song:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il-5ljFlpIc&feature=related4) Popular You Tube video, The One Semester of Spanish – Love…

• 
  WeboWord - Vocabulary Visually!

• Canard – Hoax; A deliberately false report or rumor

  weboword

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it. Pronounced as Kuh + Naard (emphasized) {Listen to it here} It comes from French and means a duck. But how does it connect with the actual meaning? Share with us your thoughts. Situational Uses / Sentences: The Glasgow newspaper found it proper to repeat this canard, without citing its source, as an expression of faith in its accuracy. We can no longer hide behind the simplistic canard that Israel is the aggressor and everyone else is the victim. Post from: WeboWord Unable to follow the daily updates?

• Bloat – Swell; Expand Excessively

  weboword

  5 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it. Pronounced as Bloat (rhyming with Float) {Listen to it here} It comes from Old Norse Blautr meaning soft or wet and perhaps indicates swollen due to being wet. Situational Uses / Sentences: Indigestion is caused by too much stomach acid which causes stomach pains, bloating, excess wind, belching, or heartburn. Linus calls Linux ‘bloated and huge’ – TheRegister.co.uk Post from: WeboWord Unable to follow the daily updates? Subscribe to WeboWord Express today @ http://www.weboword.com/express…

• Fledgling – Young or inexperienced person

  weboword

  4 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it. Fledgling is a young bird that has recently developed the feathers for flying. Pronounced as Flej (emphasized) + Ling {Listen it to here} It comes from prehistoric German fledge meaning ready to fly. Fledge is also the root for fly. Situational Uses / Sentences: The older ones have flown the nest but I still have one little fledgling left. The newly introduced initiative gives fledgling female entrepreneurs a route map toward success. Post from: WeboWord Unable to follow the daily updates? Subscribe to…

• Descend – Go down; Come nearer to the ground

  weboword

  3 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it. It also means: to be connected by blood to an ancestor to be inherited from parents or ancestors to become established or more evident Pronounced as D + Send (emphasized) {Listen to it here} It comes from Latin root Scandere which means to climb. De + Scandere = Descend (to climb down). Scandere is also the root of Ascend which is the Antonym of Descend. Situational Uses / Sentences: Our family descends from French royalty. An atmosphere of gloom descended on the assembled crowd. The Lady of the West…

• Fervor – Extreme intensity or emotion

  weboword

  2 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it. Pronounced as Fur (emphasized) + Vur {Listen to it here} It comes from the Latin root fervere which means to boil. Fervere is also the root of Fervent which means showing ardent or extremely passionate enthusiasm. Situational Uses / Sentences: Californians’ Global Warming Fervor Cools – NYTimes.com He spoke with great fervor about his academic accomplishments. Post from: WeboWord Unable to follow the daily updates? Subscribe to WeboWord Express today @ http://www.weboword.com/express and give your…

• 
  Japanese Words

• NihongoUp

  I have mentioned several times that studying Japanese should be fun. If it's not fun then it is going to be much harder and take you longer to learn. An ideal method would be one that makes you feel like you aren't studying at all. Over the last few weeks ...

• JapanesePod101

  So far we have covered tools for memorizing Japanese words and phrases, learning and reading kana and kanji, and of a great dictionary. Today we are going to talk about a program I used to use quite a bit when I first started working in Tokyo, JapanesePod101. When I first started ...

• Read the Kanji

  The last two tools I have written about (Remembering the Kanji and Reviewing the Kanji) have all been about learning the kanji. When learning kanji it's important to not lose focus of why we are studying in the first place, "to read Japanese". And it just so happens, that this ...

• Reviewing the Kanji

  Yesterday, we covered what I consider to be an essential set of books for learning the Japanese kana and kanji. By themselves, Remembering the Kana and Remembering the Kanji are great tools for learning Japanese. So great in fact,  someone has created an entire website to help you use them ...

• Remembering the Kanji

  Next in the line of helpful Japanese tools are a set of books. Remembering the Kanji 1 & 2 and Remembering the Kana are extremely useful tools, and combined with Anki, will hep you learn the Japanese kana and kanji before you know it. The system used in these books ...

• 
  There's Something About Translation...

• Copy cats are NOT cool

  Sarah Dillon

  28 Oct 2009 | 8:37 pm

  I don’t normally like to use my blog as a platform to criticise others. But today I’m making an exception. Angry, by Marco Veringa on Flickr [edit 30 October 2009: Scroll to the end for an update] There are many reasons why I have a blog, and gaining a good, strong Google ranking is just one of them. So I generally don’t mind being quoted anywhere (in fact, I positively encourage it) and I’m all for getting my work out through different channels. All in all, I’m a pretty reasonable person and I appreciate that copyright isn’t always straight-forward in an…

• 5 Qs with Amy Williams, French and Italian to English translator

  Sarah Dillon

  22 Oct 2009 | 4:30 pm

  Amy Williams is a freelance translator working from French and Italian into English, and a director of Eggplant Translations. She specialises in marketing and advertising, and the arts, media and music in particular. In the early stages of my freelance career, Amy was kind enough to give me some great advice on setting up a website. Here I ask her for more tips about marketing, her areas of specialisation and why she has chosen to pursue further studies in psychology. Sarah Dillon: You have some very interesting areas of specialisation, for example marketing and advertising, the arts and…

• Building a Strong Online Presence

  Sarah Dillon

  13 Oct 2009 | 4:23 am

  Hello to translators and interpreters surfing by following my recent Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL) webinar. I intend to blog about this in more detail later this week, but until then, here are some resources you might find useful: A series of short videos introducing Twitter. Some 5 minute videos on how I use LinkedIn, Wordpress, and Google Reader for professional purposes. A half-hour* presentation on social media for translators, which takes a more hands-on approach than my presentation today as it covers how to use Tweetdeck (co-presented with Philippa Hammond – check out…

• 5Qs with Andrew Bell, AAA Scandinavian Translations

  Sarah Dillon

  29 Sep 2009 | 4:30 pm

  After working as a nurse in several countries, Andrew Bell set up AAA Scandinavian Translations in 2001 and now specialises in medical/pharmaceutical translation services. He also runs the popular translator-networking site Watercooler. Here Andrew tells us about how he became a translator, and offers a wealth of advice for new and experienced translators interested in moving into the highly specialised field of medical/ pharmaceutical translations. Sarah Dillon: You have many years of experience in healthcare, and are in fact a Registered Nurse (RN). How difficult was it to make the…

• 5Qs with Karen Stokes, French to English translator

  Sarah Dillon

  21 Sep 2009 | 4:30 pm

  Karen Stokes has been providing French to English translation services through KES_Translate since 2002. In 2008 she was awarded Chartered Linguist (Translator) status, one of the first five translators in the UK to be awarded this distinction. Read on for more about Karen’s background, her approach to marketing and the Chartered Linguist application process. Sarah Dillon: You came to translation after many years in the business world. What unique benefits do you think this experience brought to bear on your translation career, particularly in terms of perspective, approach, etc.? Karen…

• 
  Japanese Words

• NihongoUp

  I have mentioned several times that studying Japanese should be fun. If it's not fun then it is going to be much harder and take you longer to learn. An ideal method would be one that makes you feel like you aren't studying at all. Over the last few weeks ...

• JapanesePod101

  So far we have covered tools for memorizing Japanese words and phrases, learning and reading kana and kanji, and of a great dictionary. Today we are going to talk about a program I used to use quite a bit when I first started working in Tokyo, JapanesePod101. When I first started ...

• Read the Kanji

  The last two tools I have written about (Remembering the Kanji and Reviewing the Kanji) have all been about learning the kanji. When learning kanji it's important to not lose focus of why we are studying in the first place, "to read Japanese". And it just so happens, that this ...

• Reviewing the Kanji

  Yesterday, we covered what I consider to be an essential set of books for learning the Japanese kana and kanji. By themselves, Remembering the Kana and Remembering the Kanji are great tools for learning Japanese. So great in fact,  someone has created an entire website to help you use them ...

• Remembering the Kanji

  Next in the line of helpful Japanese tools are a set of books. Remembering the Kanji 1 & 2 and Remembering the Kana are extremely useful tools, and combined with Anki, will hep you learn the Japanese kana and kanji before you know it. The system used in these books ...

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  Ingl�s na Ponta da L�ngua

• Quem é o melhor professor de inglês? Nativo ou não-nativo?

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:13 am

  David Graddol, linguista britânico que tive prazer em conhecer em 2007, concedeu ao pessoal do G1 uma entrevista maravilhosa. O título da matéria publicada é 'Melhores professores de inglês não são britânicos nem americanos', diz linguista.Interessante, não!?Eu já andei comentando algo assim em algumas de minhas palestras e eventos. Acredito que todos tenham pontos fortes e fracos. Porém, ao contrário do que a grande maioria das pessoas acredita o bom professor de inglês não precisa ser um falante nativo da língua. O fato do professor falar a mesma língua do aluno ajuda e…

• Collocations com a palavra 'event'

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:30 am

  Como você bem sabe a SBS Livraria Internacional e a inFlux English School estão organizando um evento comigo na cidade de São Paulo. O título do evento é 'Inglês na Ponta da Língua: estratégias para melhorar o seu vocabulário' Caso queira participar ainda há algumas vagas [20! Creio eu!], basta ligar para [11] 2099 2998 e fazer sua inscrição.Aproveitando o assunto, algumas pessoas pediram para eu escrever aqui algumas collocations com a palavra 'event'. Então, papel e caneta na mão para anotá-las. Vamos começar com alguns adjetivos:grande evento [big event], evento importante…

• Vídeo: collocations com a palavra 'situation'

  4 Nov 2009 | 6:00 pm

  Hello, how are you all doing? Well, today our tip is on video. I hope you like it! By the way, você já se inscreveu para participar do evento que estamos organizando para o dia 13 de novembro na cidade de São Paulo? If you want to get more information about it, call [11] 2099 2998 or read "Inglês na Ponta da Língua: estratégias para melhorar o seu vocabulário".Now, let's take a look at the video below. I have some collocations with the word 'situation' to share with you. Oh! If it take too long to reply to your messages or emails today, don't worry! I'm going to Vila Velha [ES]. A…

• Evento em São Paulo: Inglês na Ponta da Língua

  3 Nov 2009 | 2:45 pm

  Atendendo a pedidos, informo que está organizado pela SBS - Livraria Internacional e a inFlux English School o evento "Inglês na Ponta da Língua: estratégias para melhorar o seu vocabulário". Você não terá de pagar absolutamente nada para participar. Este EVENTO É GRATUITO. Mas você pode, quem sabe, conhecer meus livros, adquirir um [ou os dois] e sair de lá com o livro autografado. Se você já tem algum dos livros, é só levar que eu autografo também.>> ONDE e QUANDO:O evento ocorrerá na unidade inFlux em Santana. O endereço é Rua Doutor César, 952 - Santana - São Paulo…

• Quatro eBooks para melhorar o seu inglês

  2 Nov 2009 | 4:30 pm

  Como passei mal este feriadão, não tive tempo para pensar em muitas coisas. Então estou aqui organizando tudo para poder voltar aos trilhos.Enquanto vou me reorganizando, informo a todos que ainda desejam adquirir os eBooks de minha autoria que estou voltando a disponibilizá-los pelo valor de R$10,00 cada. Os títulos são:Estudar Sozinho!? Como!? De que jeito!?Phrasal Verbs!? Como!? De que jeito!?Palavrões: tudo o que você sempre quis saberExpressões Idiomáticas: aprenda inglês como gringos aprendem [com 3 arquivos de aúdio]Ficou interessado em algum deles? Então é só efetuar o…

• 
  OneHourTranslation Blog

• More Translation Gaffes and Blunders

  Lior Libman

  31 Oct 2009 | 6:08 am

  As long as mediocre effort is exerted when translating texts into other languages, then there will always be cultural translation gaffes, blunders, and faux pas. Professional translation companies and freelance translation services alike should do everything it takes to make sure that their human translation work doesn’t end up looking like it was translated by a primitive software program. The Importance of Contextualization In any case, it’s imperative for human translation companies to recognize the importance of contextualization in professional translation. In fact,…

• The Intercultural Approach to Translation

  Lior Libman

  30 Oct 2009 | 6:06 am

  Professional translation agencies and freelance translation services have long ago discovered that the intercultural approach to translation is the most effective way to implement a successful advertisement translation and localization scheme. Granted, human translation that uses the global standardization method has its respective benefits and shortcomings, but many companies have instead opted for the former approach because of its nigh-universal effectiveness All the same, the intercultural approach to translation is something that needs to be witnessed by demonstration instead of…

• Advertising to an International Audience Using Translation

  Lior Libman

  30 Sep 2009 | 9:04 am

  A professional translation’s effectiveness depends mostly on its ability to bridge cultural gaps by interpreting language as well as understanding mores and traditions. More to the point, in order for an international marketing strategy to work, a translation service must fulfill the role of translator and localizer at the same time. Because of the globalization trend, any human translation agency that’s worth its salt must offer both translation and localization services to its clients. For many a business, localization and translation are nigh-synonymous to each other in terms…

• Integrating Localization, Globalization, and Translation Together

  Lior Libman

  25 Sep 2009 | 9:09 am

  One of the main reasons why companies are so eager to adopt the Internet globalization paradigm into their marketing strategy is because it will theoretically help bring in a multitude of profit and intensify trade to a global scale. The ability to access a worldwide audience and become a multinational success is nearly every business’s dream, which is why they’re all willing to go through the trouble of looking for professional translation firms or freelance translation services that’ll provide them with either high-quality human translation or comprehensive human…

• Human Translation versus Machine Translation

  John

  24 Sep 2009 | 8:43 am

  If weren’t for the superiority of human translation over machine translation, then most companies would be relying on machine translators exclusively. At any rate, multinational enterprises need to realize sooner rather than later that professional translation is an expertise that should never be underestimated. In general, the art of translation and translation services don’t just depend on word-for-word replacement of a source language text with a target language equivalent. If that were the case, then human translation would be rendered obsolete by machine translation. At the…