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Language issue being used to serve vested interests: RSS chief - Daily News & Analysis

Language issue being used to serve vested interests: RSS chief
Daily News & Analysis
PTI Bangalore: Hitting out at the recent violence over language during oath-taking ceremony in Maharashtra, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat today said the issue was ...
RSS chief raps MNS for fuelling language rowThaindian.com

all 12 news articles »

Entrevista virtual de Emprego

Acabei de participar de uma entrevista virtual de emprego em inglês. Se você gostou do nosso simulado de entrevista provavelmente também vai gostar da indicação de hoje. A seção GoGetIt do site da BBC apresenta uma séria de dicas para aumentar a empregabilidade. O site aborda desde habilidades chaves para obter sucesso na vida profissional até [...]

Atenção: Não responda este email, envie um comentário aqui: Entrevista virtual de Emprego.

Livros e dicionários para aprender Inglês

Siga o English Experts no twitter - O que é twitter?

Desconto para leitores do EE: Digite o código "ST20EE09" no momento da compra.

Learn to Podcast – A Mini-Guide

I’ve noted before that podcasts are among my Top 5 Web Learning Tools, and I also recently highlighted 10 Killer Killer Content Sources for Your iPod Learning Mix, but learning from podcasts is not just about consuming content. In fact, producing content may be an even more effective way to leverage podcasting for learning. To [...] Related posts:

The Sarkozys on The Simpsons

Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy recently made a (very brief) guest appearance on The Simpsons. Note the cheese and wine. It's reassuring to know that those French stereotypes are still so popular. Nicolas Sarkozy et Carla B dans...

Learn a language with children’s songs on YouTube

Can you learn a language with children’s songs on YouTube? Yes, if you are a child. It will help if you expose your child to sounds of different languages starting from age zero to two years old. In fact, parents that say at seven they will start their child with Spanish lessons for example, well, its [...]

Cartoon: E.U. Reka

This cartoon by Gerald Scarfe from The Sunday Times is a comment on the election of Belgium PM Herman Van Rompuy and EU Trade Commissioner Lady Ashton respectively as EU President and EU foreign policy chief. COMMENTARY The caption 'E.U.REKA!!!'...

Galeria Bonarka

Galeria Bonarka Kraków Why is Galeria Bonarka Kraków important? Let me explain. I am an American living in Kraków Poland. When I came here over five years ago, I was the richest guy riding on the tram. Now I look around me and I ask myself, am I even average? I do not think so. Polish [...]

Push for English, in a legal sense - Sioux Falls Argus Leader

Push for English, in a legal sense
Sioux Falls Argus Leader
Voters in Sioux Falls could have the chance to make English the common language of city government in next spring's municipal elections. ...

and more »

Video: It's like Peaches like

Peaches Geldof proves that you don't need a wide vocabulary to communicate in English. Thanks to Frogsmoke for the tip. FOOTNOTE See here for a discussion of the various modern English slang uses of like.

Why can’t chimps speak? Study links evolution of single gene to human capacity for language

If humans are genetically related to chimps, why did our brains develop the innate ability for language and speech while theirs did not? Scientists suspect that part of the answer to the mystery lies in a gene called FOXP2. When mutated, FOXP2 can disrupt speech and language in humans. Now, a UCLA–Emory University study reveals major differences [...]

Words, Gestures Are Translated by Same Brain Regions, Says New Research: Findings May Further Our Understanding of How Language Evolved

Your ability to make sense of Groucho’s words and Harpo’s pantomimes in an old Marx Brothers movie takes place in the same regions of your brain, says new research funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), one of the National Institutes of Health. Full article: National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication [...]

Picture Gallery: People and Signs

When celebrities and signs are juxtaposed in the same photo, the results can be amusing or ironic (or amusingly ironic, or even ironically amusing) as this picture gallery from Telegraph.co.uk shows. Here, Labour's hard man John Prescott makes a point...

Words in the News: Blunder

The Sunday Telegraph has obtained leaked government reports which say Britain was ill-prepared and under-equipped for the Iraq war. Full story >> VOCABULARY A blunder is a stupid or careless mistake. • In 2005 a tie between Uzbekistan and Bahrain...

Institute on Chinese culture, language to debut Monday - Kalamazoo Gazette - MLive.com

Institute on Chinese culture, language to debut Monday
Kalamazoo Gazette - MLive.com
WMU's Confucius Institute is intended to ramp up Chinese studies at WMU as well as bring language instruction and cultural knowledge to area K-12 schools ...
Georgia's Pre-K Program introduces Mandarin languageWALB-TV
2 schools to offer Mandarin ChineseMontgomery Advertiser
Ga. Pre-K To Offer Chinese ClassesGPB

all 14 news articles »

Shining a light on unpolished language - Washington Post

Shining a light on unpolished language
Washington Post
By How to Deal Q I've been the manager of a small team for about four years, and they are usually low-maintenance, so I haven't yet had to deal with many ...

11/22/09 - blain

1. An inflammatory sore or welt, a swelling on the skin. 2. A blister, blotch, or pustule of a rash.

Safety same in any language: Hispanic parents embrace car seats - Knoxville News Sentinel

Safety same in any language: Hispanic parents embrace car seats
Knoxville News Sentinel
Cook had to tweak her routine because of the language barrier. She obtained videos and instruction manuals in Spanish. And she began purchasing infant seats ...

and more »

Updates and Links

Updates: Since my GFW Android Market rant, it looks like the Android Market may no longer be blocked. I’ve been able to access it again for the past few days on my HTC Hero here in Shanghai. Not sure if this will last, but it’s certainly a welcome development! Pleco for iPhone (beta) just went [...]

MUSEUM OF CHARACTERS.

Anyang, one of the ancient capitals of China, is now home to the National Museum of Chinese Written Language, as reported in a story by Xing Daiqi:

According to Xinhua, the museum, with an initial investment of 400 million yuan ($58 million), covers an area of 54,000 square meters. A combination of the old and new, the building has drawn inspiration from palaces of the Shang Dynasty (C. 1600-1100BC) and post-modern architecture. The five-story facility has a striking embossed golden roof and grand red columns.[...]

Divided into eight exhibition halls, the museum illustrates the history and evolution of Chinese characters through different dynasties and various ethnic groups in China.

Now, that's my kind of museum. Thanks for the link, Bathrobe!

Cultura Norte-Americana: A Bandeira dos Estados Unidos

Você sabia que a American Flag [bandeira americana] é também conhecida como 'Stars and Stripes', 'Old Glory' ou 'The Star-Spangled Banner'? São apelidos [nicknames] pelos quais os americanos conhecem sua bandeira.

'Stars and Stripes' é apenas uma referência às estrelas e listras que compõem a bandeira americana. Toda aquela área azul na qual estãos as estrelas é conhecida como union. Ao todo são 50 estrelas que representam os 50 estados norte-americanos.

Já as 13 listras representam as 13 colônias que se rebelaram contra o império britânico e lutaram pela independência. Aliás, é por causa da união destas 13 colônias que o país é conhecido como Estados Unidos da América.

Você certamente já deve ter visto em inúmeros filmes o modo como a bandeira americana é tratada. Pois saiba que assim como a Bandeira do Brasil há todo um protocolo a ser seguido com respeito à American Flag. Abaixo você encontrará algumas curiosidades com relação a este assunto e também um vídeo com mais dicas. Veja aí!

A bandeira deve ser hasteada ao amanhecer [raised at dawn] e retirada ao entardecer [lowered at dusk]. Se permanecer hasteada à noite, ela deve estar sempre iluminada [it must always be iluminated];
Nenhuma outra bandeira pode ser colocada na mesma altura ou à direita da bandeira americana;
A parte azul - the union - deve ficar sempre do lado superior esquerdo. Caso seja colocada de cabeça para baixo representará sinal de perigo à vida ou à uma propriedade;
Quando ela estiver bastante usada, desfiando, gasta, rasgada, suja etc não pode ser mostrada. Nestas condições ela deverá ser incinerada apropriadamente. No Brasil, o protocolo é o mesmo. A bandeira deve ser recolhida, entregue em um quartel militar, para que seja incinerada no dia da bandeira, 19 de novembro;
A bandeira ou qualquer coisa que faça alusão à bandeira [toalha de mesa, toalha de banho, toalha de rosto, tapete, carpete, etc] não pode ser usada como decoração. Também não pode ser usada como logomarcas em chinelos, sandálias, guardanapos de papel, caixas, ou qualquer outro produto descartável ou não. Além disto, não pode ser usada como vestimenta [camisas, camisetas, biquinis, peças íntimas, saídas de banho, etc].

Caso não esteja vendo o vídeo abaixo, clique aqui

How do you type € again?

It’s not easy having an American English keyboard when you frequently need to input characters like è or ä or ç. Or ¥. Or €. Maybe it’s because I switch between Mac and Windows so frequently. Or maybe I’m just too lazy to remember the keyboard shortcuts. Fortunately, I just discovered: CopyPasteCharacter.com. Give it a shot and you’ll see [...]

Ben Yagoda on Language

Having just written a post questioning the value of taking on a century-old usage book, I turn to a number of columns written by author, critic, and teacher Ben Yagoda, one of which is more than twenty years old.

Even though they've been around for a long time, they're new to me. I had previously read and quite enjoyed The Sound on the Page and a number of his essays, including a collection of cliches in the voice of Mr. Arbuthnot, so I was pleased to stumble on his web site. Through a happy series of links that began with a blog post by Ben Zimmer and passed through the Wikipedia entry on Michiko Kakutani, I ended up looking at his list of On Language articles. These I also enjoyed, but the grammatical analysis bothered me.

Before going on, you should read "Tense talk".

Welcome back!

The column begins with a quote from Slobodan Zivojinovic to introduce the idea of the sports present. "If I'm in the crowd, I'd be on Jimmy's side." Indeed, this is ungrammatical in English, but as you note, he's not a native speaker. You continue, "its purest form can be seen in this comment, made by Indiana University coach Bob Knight, after a game was won by his team with the particular help of one of his players: 'If we don't have Daryl Thomas, we lose.'" This, however, strikes me as a different construction, grammatical, and completely unremarkable (if you'll pardon the lack of parallelism).

In both constructions, the protasis (the if clause) is in the simple present, but the apodoses (the main clauses) differ, with Zivojinovic (as a non-native speaker) shifting to the past-tense modal would but Knight sticking to the simple present.

The most common use of the simple present tense in English is, unintuitively, to state general facts rather than the particulars of the moment. Thus, it seems Knight was simply saying something like, "It is generally true that when Daryl Thomas is not playing, we lose," (and conversely that when he plays, they win.) Grammatically, it's like, "If we don't have tomatoes, we don't make Bolognese sauce," or in the affirmative, "If Ed is your cousin, we're related."

Knight's use seems quite different from Jerry Rice's "It's a different game if we score," which appears to be a counterfactual assertion about the completed game, but could still be a general statement. Not so Lawrence Taylor's ''If they score on that one, they lose 49-10." Obviously, he's talking about a the NFC Divisional playoff.

Here, I'll grant Yagoda his "sports present". I would have said, "It would have been a different game if we had scored," and "If they had scored on that one, they would have lost 49-10." But what's happening grammatically?

Yagoda's take on it is somewhat dismissive: "The hypothetical conditional is a complicated tense, one that requires an awful lot of words." Dumb jocks!

The backshifted form isn't so much longer though:

It's a different game if we score, (8 words)
It would have been a different game if we had scored, (11 words)
It would have been a different game had we scored, (10 words)

If they score on that one, they lose 49-10. (9 words)
If they'd scored on that one, they'd've lost 49-10. (12 words)

I don't think it's a matter of constrained processing power limiting the number of words. The present tense is used in running commentaries to lend an immediacy to the event ("We were just sitting there having a beer and suddenly the waiter starts screaming."), but here it's in conflict with the use of the past tense to suggest some factual distance, a certain hypotheticality. But contrary to Yagoda's assertion, I don't see the past tense as mandatory in such cases. He burdens Quirk et al with the job of setting out "the proper way to construct such a sentence." But I think the authors would be more comfortable explaining the possible ways. Generally, there is a choice between past and present with the past tense indicating less likelihood: "If you go, I'll go." vs. "If you went, I'd go."

Clearly, a contrafactual statement about the past is about as unlikely as things get, but I can still see the present tense being used for immediacy. It's the normal way to do it, but I don't think it's mandatory.

Speaking of mandatory, I also read his article in Slate, "You need to read this." Here Yagoda says,

"In the battle for pre-eminence among verbs of compulsion or requirement, need to has won a bloodless and overwhelming victory over must, ought to, should, and the former and longtime champion, have to, which yields only about a billion Google hits compared to two billion for need to."

Yagoda's ear for language proves note perfect here. A search of the Time corpus shows the use of need to accelerating from about 16 instances per million words in the 1920s to 70 pmw in the 80s to over 200 pmw today.

At the same time, use of must is dropping, though not quite as quickly.

But then he stumbles.

"The ascendance of need to dovetails perfectly with the long and sad decline of the traditional imperative mood. Sad, because it's a great mood. Without it, the Ten Commandments would be the Ten Suggestions."

Much as I like "the Ten Suggestions", only two of the Ten Commandments, in their traditional English form at least, are imperative. The other eight are indicative. Most are rhetorically mandative, but mood is a morphosyntactic category. If the commandments were imperative, they would all start with do not instead of thou shalt not. His next example, no smoking also fails to illustrate the imperative mood, which would be don't smoke. In fact, no smoking is arguably just a noun phrase with no mood, tense, or aspect at all. The pop songs he lists, though, are all impeccably imperative.

(This is an edited version of an e-mail I dashed off to the author. Embarrassingly, my e-mail had a number of fairly serious errors, which later caught and have corrected here. Please, let me know if there are others I've missed.)

Questions and conditionals

Decades ago, when I was little, I read this joke in Mad Magazine: Do your feet smell? Does your nose run? You may be built upside-down. I giggled for a short time — just a couple of days, I think — at the surprising coincidence of the two verb senses, [...]

Linguistic Equivalence in Translation

Equivalence will always be an important part of human translation as long as the latter exists. To be more specific, equivalence is one of the most important considerations of professional translation agents and freelance translation service experts alike when it comes to localizing a website or straightforwardly translating textual material. Therefore, regardless of whether your professional [...]

Keep Your Tail Over the Dashboard (full episode)

This week, McGimpers, geetus, and other underworld lingo from the 1930s. Crime novelist James Ellroy stops by to talk slang terms and reveals his own favorite. Also, is the expression Hear, hear! or Here, here!? Is it bran-new or brand-new? The spooky, creepy story behind the flat hat called a tam. And what does it [...]

Copula contraction

I ran across an interesting instance of contraction on the Moviefone web site a while back, in the headline of a feature about some group of 80's stars or another: "Where They're Now". I found this interesting because you can't do this in English. Generally speaking, you can contract a copula onto the subject in English in an existential construction ("He is a good guitarist", "She is at the hospital") or when be is acting as an auxiliary verb ("They are going to the store"). This is reflected by a google search of "where they're now", which turns up millions of examples of constructions like "where they're now inside the city", but none of the Moviefone type.

This seems to be a function of wh-movement in this case. Note that the corresponding declarative "they are __ now" is perfectly happy to contract to "they're __ now". So why can't we do it after wh-movement? After all, we can say "they're happy" and "where they're happy". In all likelihood, this isn't a syntactic issue, but a phonological one, since contraction doesn't affect the syntactic status of the verb, only the phonological status. In a phrase like "He is a good guitarist", "is" is unstressed. Out of the blue, I have primary stress on "guiTARist", and secondary stress probably on "good". In "where they are now", on the other hand, "are" received some kind of secondary stress. I place primary stress on "now", but "where" and "are" both received secondary stress. It's for this reason that we (nominally) can't contract the copula onto the subject, because we can't get rid of secondary stress in that fashion. When there isn't stress on the copula, it can contract (or delete in ICE). I'm not sure if the Moviefone headline was written by a non-native speaker or just an overly efficient copy editor, but it's not well-formed in English, at least in my dialect.

Large Chinese presence at ACTFL language show

ACFTL second day. A few impressions before I walk into the morning fog for my daily 45 minute walk to the Convention site from my hotel (while listening to Russian) The presence of Chinese teachers, Chinese exhibitors, Chinese seminars etc....

How things have changed…

In today's Stone Soup, Val tries to catch up: The previous few strips sketch her motivation: But even among young people, texting became popular in the U.S. only a couple of years ago, more than five years after it became widespread in Europe and Japan. See "What's the difference?" (3/10/2008), and some of the links there, e.g. [...]

Most? How much is that? - Times of India

Most? How much is that?
Times of India
When most people say "most", they mean 80-95 percent, no more and no less, a researcher in linguistics has found. Mira Ariel, professor at the Tel Aviv ...

and more »

Active hearing process in mosquitoes

A mathematical model has explained some of the remarkable features of mosquito hearing. In particular, the male can hear the faintest beats of the female's wings and yet is not deafened by loud noises.

Polyglot – learn a language like a Polyglott

What is a Polyglot A polyglot is a person who learns language to the point of high level of fluency. There have been famous and non famous polyglots in history. There was Cardinal Mezzofanti who learned some 38 languages, by studying morning to evening his whole life. On the other hand my grandmother Anna [...]

Registration of Foreign Birth Certificate in Poland, part 2

Here Barb tells us what to do in order to register birth certificates of minors born abroad. Registering the births of minors (osób małoletnich): Birth certificates of minors, born abroad, are registered on the basis of a written application, submitted by one of the parents to the Office of Vital Statistic (Urząd Stanu Cywilnego), along with [...]

owt

...

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

11/21/09 - offbeat

1. [Noun] An unaccented beat in a musical measure, the upbeat. 2. [Adjective] Unusual, not conforming to conventions, oddball.

Knox a Fulbright leader - Galesburg Register-Mail

Knox a Fulbright leader
Galesburg Register-Mail
Meanwhile, Day-O'Connell, a professor of music at Knox since 2004, will do musicology and linguistics research at the University of Edinburgh. ...
Knox College makes good Fulbright showingChicago Tribune
Knox Among Top Colleges for Fulbright Scholar Awards in 2009-10Knox College

all 17 news articles »

A book day, every day, including Forgetting English

There is a woman who set out to read (and review) a book a day for a year. Not Moby-Dick, mind you. Books of a certain length. And she did it. A book a day for a year. But she kept going. She’s still reading! And, as luck would have it, she just read our own Midge Raymond’s book. And [...]

788 – Plaque d’immatriculation catholique (Christian car plate)

Learning Guide | PDF Transcript Un juge américain a ordonné à la Caroline du sud de ne pas délivrer de plaque d’immatriculation avec une image ou… Learn French now ! Listen to today’s lesson :

USC professor creates an entire alien language for 'Avatar' - Los Angeles Times

USC professor creates an entire alien language for 'Avatar'
Los Angeles Times
Frommer, a linguistics specialist, was brought in by "Avatar" writer-director James Cameron to create an entire functioning language for the tribe of ...

and more »

Sounds can penetrate deep sleep and enhance associated memories upon waking

They were in a deep sleep, yet sounds, such as a teakettle whistle, somehow penetrated their slumber. The 25 sounds were reminders of earlier spatial learning, though the research participants were unaware of the sounds as they slept. Yet, upon waking, memory tests showed that spatial memories had changed. Deep sleep, then, is actually is a key time for memory processing, the study suggests.

Study: Teacher Exchanges Are Pipeline for Bilingual Teachers

Some school districts are helping to fill a shortage of bilingual teachers through international teacher exchanges.

BROTHER-IN-LAW.

Is the husband of your wife's sister your brother-in-law?

I would have said "no" and been pretty sure I was reflecting standard usage, but it turns out I would have been wrong. Bill Poser at the Log has a post about this, sparked by "a news item in which men in this situation (one of whom is accused of trying to hire an assassin to kill the other) were described as brothers-in-law"; he was surprised to see it, because to him "there is no named relationship" between such men. I agreed with him, but he and I are in a distinct minority; most of the (so far) 74 comments say things like (to take the first two) "I use brother-in-law in that context, as does my wife" and "It never occurred to me not to use 'brother-in-law' to refer to my wife's sister's husband." I thought perhaps it was a generational thing, since Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary has the definition "broadly : the husband of one's spouse's sister," whereas the entry in the newest (eleventh) edition drops the "broadly" and just includes "the husband of one's spouse's sister" as one of the basic senses, but I asked my wife and she has no problem with the broad sense. Furthermore, in the Log thread, Jerry Friedman (November 20, 2009 @ 3:14 am) said, "This has come up on alt.usage.english a few times, and the results are much like those here—everything from people who've never heard the extended sense to people who thought everyone used it. I don't recall any regional pattern ever showing up."

So I thought I'd ask you all the question I began with; you might add, for scientific purposes, where you're from (or, if different, what dialect you speak), and (if, of course, you feel like it) your approximate age.

Continue reading "BROTHER-IN-LAW."

Barra de Español 1.2 is now available!

The latest version of Barra de Español is now available from addons.mozilla.org! Those of you who already have an older version installed should see an update notification in Firefox soon, if you haven’t already. What’s new in 1.2? The biggest new feature is the ability to find pronunciations of Spanish words. You can select a word [...]

Halftime Show

In honor of Big Game weekend, a couple of football-related items. You've heard of the Rose Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl. (Gooooo, naming rights!) But you may not have known—I didn't—that some two-year colleges have bowl games, too. In the Bay Area, we have the Eagle...

Three of a kind: Revealing language's universal essence - PhysOrg.com

PhysOrg.com

Three of a kind: Revealing language's universal essence
PhysOrg.com
is a significant contribution to comparative linguistics. “What I particularly liked is the three-way comparison,” says Mark Baker, a professor of ...

and more »

Japanese dialect mirrors suspected PIE development of sibilantization between two dental stops

So I was looking on the internet for something else, and as it often happens, I came across something unrelated to what I was looking for but which nonetheless had value for another problem that I pondered on several moons ago, the origin of the intervening PIE sibilant in a sequence of adjacent dental plosives *-TT- (eg. *h₁ḗdti [ʔé:d̰ˢtʰi] 'he eats')[1]. My instinct has always been to attribute

Website Localization and Translation Increases Profit

You want your business to cater to in international consumers and your website is still mono-lingual? Well this is a paradox. More than 100 million people use language other than English to access Internet and more than half of the internet users are not native English. So how can you aspire for a global business [...]

Movement and universality

This release was just passed along by a contributor and ultimately comes from an esteemed colleague (so HT to AS). The basic news is about a new MIT Press book, by Shigeru Miyagawa, Why Agree? Why Move? He examines agreement and movement data from Japanese, English and Kinkande.

Some things aren't quite clear from the release, like this:

The existence of similar structures in such otherwise disparate languages, Miyagawa asserts, provides strong evidence that all human languages have a common origin.

Common origin in human cognition, sure, but is the assertion one about monogenesis?

I guess we'll have to read this one ... .

Why language students drop out. Demotivation.

Apparently the greatest drop off in language courses at university occurs from the first year to the second year. In a Chinese program at a US university, the professor asked the students why. The answer was that many were disappointed...

Language learning research

Day one at the ACTFL Conference in San Diego. Over 5,000 delegates, mostly teachers and professors of languages. But these people do not only teach, they do research. Yesterday I sat through a presentation by the head of the Chinese...

The implications of excessive praise

Yesterday's Sally Forth: One of the standard cases of Gricean implicature is the interpretation of irrelevant praise. Thus in "Logic and Conversation", Grice's first example of "flouting the first maxim of quantity" is this: A is writing a testimonial about a pupil who is a candidate for a philosophy job, and his letter reads as follows: "Dear [...]

Tractable – Docile; Easy to control

DiggSubmit Pronounced as Trak (Emphasized) + Tuhbl {Listen to it here} It comes from Latin root Tractabilis which means to handle. Situational Uses / Sentences: The computation time to perform a complete search is not tractable. The organism can be cultured under defined conditions. It is genetically tractable. Post from: WeboWord Unable to follow the daily updates? Subscribe to WeboWord Express today [...]

Post from: WeboWord Unable to follow the daily updates? Subscribe to WeboWord Express today @ http://www.weboword.com/express and give your vocab building a boost!

Part 2 - What does it Really Take to Learn a Foreign Language?

Use Additional Foreign Language Learning Resources

Yes, most certainmly you can still use additional resources to fine-tune a linguistic point, clear up a bit of confusion, add on an expression or two and push your vocabulary a bit higher if you’d like. I recommend supplementing your immersion experiences with a bilingual dictionary, a phrase book, a foreign language only dictionary, a CD, DVD or audio-cassette-based foreign language course of the tongue or dialect you’re actively immersed in and working on. For that matter, you can even contract a tutor in your foreign language to help get and keep you on track. Use any or all the added language learning resources you like. Just bear in mind, language learning methods number one, two and three are:

Get out there, do things, immerse yourself in the language and talk, talk, talk.

“But I’ll sound like an idiot.”

Well maybe a bit at first, but even when you botch something – and you probably will at times – the little old ladies, the vendor or the mechanic, among throngs of other native speakers of the foreign language you’ll engage, will answer your question, give you the information you want, and then likely correct your speech (after a chuckle or two, naturally). This is opposed to your sounding like an idiot while “practicing” with a classmate, who doesn’t know either, and their answering back – sounding like an idiot too. Neither of you knowing what you’re doing “wrong”. It happens so often it’s almost passe. Get off the foreign language learning merry-go-round and go for total immersion as soon as you can.

Foreign Language Learning Errors are Not Fatal

Hey, wanna hear a good one? Once, years ago on a brutally hot afternoon, I confused “Tengo calor” (I’m hot - from the weather) with “Estoy caliente” (I’m horny) while talking with a female co-worker. While this could also possibly mean I'm hot from a fever or illness, the look on her face was priceless. It also immediately told me I’d committed a serious faux pas. She immediately corrected me and explained the difference in the two sentences (which both can be translated to mean I’m hot, but are culturally different)– before a good laugh by both of us. Quite possibly, in a foreign language class, this “mistake” could have gone unnoticed and uncorrected. Foreign language learning errors are not fatal, at least the overwhelmingly vast majority of the time they’re not. By far and large they’re more humorous and occassionally a bit embarrassing, but you’ll live, to screw up yet another day.

Again, “The more you immerse yourself in it, the faster and more easily you will become fluent in any foreign language.” That’s my down-to-earth, hard and fast rule. Anything else you might say, do or be is just added icing on the cake.

Now suck up your courage, start packing your bags and get ready to make some dramatic foreign language learning progress.

Prof. Larry M. Lynch is an EFL Teacher Trainer, Intellectual Development Specialist, author and speaker. He has written ESP, foreign language learning, English language teaching texts and hundreds of articles used in more than 135 countries. Get your FREE E-book, “If you Want to Teach English Abroad, Here's What You Need to Know" by requesting the title at: lynchlarrym@gmail.com Need a blogger or copywriter to promote your school, institution, service or business or an experienced writer and vibrant SEO content for your website, blog or newsletter? Then E-mail me for further information.

Nov 20, How can I improve my oral English?

Hi , I can never express my ideas fluently in oral English. Would you give me some advice? Thank you. Answer:Hi Blair,Thanks for asking your

Avatar

While reading PoPCo, by Scarlett Thomas, I learnt that the word “avatar”, which refers to an Internet user’s alter ego in online forums and other communities, comes from a Sanskrit word meaning “descent of a deity to the Earth in incarnate form”.

According to Wikipedia, it was popularised by Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992):

While Stephenson was not the first to apply the Sanskrit term avatar to online virtual bodies (the video game Habitat did that), the success of Snow Crash popularized the term to the extent that avatar is now the accepted term for this concept in computer games and on the World Wide Web.

I think I know what my next book will be.

Image: Vishnu with his 10 avatars (incarnations): Matsya, Kûrma, Varâha, Narasimha, Vâmana, Parashurâma, Râma with the Ax, Râma, Krishna, Bouddha and Kalki.

Dell Hymes, 82 Linguistics, anthropology scholar - Washington Post

Washington Post

Dell Hymes, 82 Linguistics, anthropology scholar
Washington Post
Dell Hymes, an influential scholar of linguistics and anthropology who helped pioneer the study of how people use language in their everyday ...

naughts

...

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

11/20/09 - pernickety

[Slangy] 1. (US) Fussy or exacting about details, fastidious, 2. (UK) Snobbish, supercilious, pretentious.

787 – Parachute de guerre (War parachute)

Learning Guide | PDF Transcript La famille d’un soldat de l’armée de l’air de la 2ème guerre mondiale qui a été abattu au dessus de la Belgique… Learn French now ! Listen to today’s lesson :

786 – Real Life French: un marché

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 :

Co-brothers-in-law

Suppose that Edward is married to Susan and Michael is married to Susan's sister Judith. Edward is therefore Judith's brother-in-law, and Michael is Susan's brother-in-law. In my usage, and what I think is standard English usage, there is no named relationship between Edward and Michael. In particular, they are not brothers-in-law. I was therefore surprised [...]

GABO AND THE DICTIONARY.

Someone at MetaFilter linked to "In the Shadow of the Patriarch," a long, long New Republic article by Enrique Krauze on "Gabriel García Márquez and the demons of his time." I'll confess up front that I've only read the first of its nine pages, and furthermore that I may very well not get any farther; I've enjoyed most of the García Márquez I've read, but I've already read more than I really need about his life, times, and politics. However, the article begins with a reflection on his relations with the dictionary, which seemed like obvious LH material:

Many years later, in the course of writing his memoirs, Gabriel García Márquez was to remember that distant afternoon in Aracataca, in Colombia, when his grandfather set a dictionary in his lap and said, "Not only does this book know everything, it’s the only one that’s never wrong." The boy asked, "How many words are in it?" "All of them," his grandfather replied.

Anywhere in the world, if a grandfather presents his grandson with a dictionary, he is giving him a great instrument of knowledge; but Colombia was not just anywhere. It was a republic of grammarians. During the youth of García Márquez’s grandfather, Colonel Nicolás Márquez Mejía, who was born in 1864 and died in 1936, a number of presidents and government ministers—almost all of them lawyers from the conservative camp—published dictionaries, language textbooks, and treatises (in prose and verse) on orthology, orthography, philology, lexicography, meter, prosody, and Castilian grammar. Malcolm Deas, a scholar of Colombian history who has studied this singular phenomenon, claims that the obsession with language that was expressed by the cultivation of these sciences—their practitioners, Deas notes, insisted on calling them "sciences"—had its origin in the urge for continuity with the cultural heritage of Spain. By claiming "Spain’s eternal presence in the language," Colombians sought to possess its traditions, its history, its classic authors, its Latin roots. This appropriation, preceded by the foundation in 1871 of the Colombian Academy of Language, the first offshoot in America of the Royal Spanish Academy, was one of the keys to the long period of conservative hegemony—it lasted from 1886 to 1930—in Colombian political history.
Continue reading "GABO AND THE DICTIONARY."

Thai Language Thai Culture: And the Honor goes to…

Is it Kun, Pêe, Aa-jaann, or Pôo yài Moo?… There used to be a time in the west when calling a person by their first name was something you didn’t do until you had known them for a considerable length of time, and then only when you had become very close. Nowadays, the new generation is [...]

O que significam 'real McCoy' e 'run away'?

Em 1995, quando comecei a 'dar aulas de inglês', havia uma banda alemã conhecida como Real McCoy. Uma das músicas que lembro até hoje, devido ao sucesso na época, é 'Run Away'. Esta música foi sucesso em quase todo mundo. No final deste post fiz questão de incluir o vídeo para que vocês saibam do que estou falando [e para o pessoal que já passou dos 28 relembre este grande hit].

O fato é que naquela época eu achava que McCoy era o nome do sujeito que liderava a banda. Um belo dia aprendi que em inglês 'real McCoy' era [e ainda é] uma expressão usada para dizer que algo é 'autêntico', 'genuíno', 'verdadeiro', 'o próprio', 'o dito cujo'. Na verdade a expressão em inglês é 'the real McCoy', que era o nome da banda originalmente [Mc Sar and The Real McCoy]. Para entender o uso desta expressão, anote aí alguns exemplos:

In the movie, the two thieves try to discover whether the banknotes are fakes or the real McCoy. [No filme, os dois assaltantes tentam descobrir se as notas bancárias são falsas ou verdadeiras.]
It's a Brazilian feijoada, the real McCoy. [É uma feijoada legitimamente brasileira.]
Believe me, this thing is the real McCoy. [Podes crê aí, este troço é autêntico.]

Já o título da música que mencionei acima, 'run away', significa 'fugir'. No refrão da música podemos ouvir o seguinte:

Run away, run away, run away and save your life
[Fuja, fuja, fuja e salve a sua vida]
Run away, run away, run away if you want to survive
[Fuja, fuja, fuja se você quer sobreviver]

Além do refrão é possível ainda escutarmos o phrasal verb 'run away' sendo usado em outros momentos. Em um deles temos 'it's time to break free... run away' [é hora de se libertar... fuja]. Para não ficar só na música, anote ainda outros exemplos:

He ran away from home when he was only thirteen. [Ele fugiu de casa quando tinha só treze anos.]
Rafael and my sister are planning to run away together to get married. [Rafael e minha irmã estão pensando em fugir para se casar.]
You can't just run away from your responsibilities. [Você não pode simplesmente fugir das suas responsabilidades.]

Devo terminar dizendo que 'run away' pode ter outros usos e significados. Algo bem característicos dos famosos phrasal verbs. Para encerrar a semana, vejam aí o vídeo da música 'Run Away' com a banda 'Real McCoy', the real McCoy [a própria]. Espero que isto ajude vocês a lembrarem das duas dicas dadas neste post. Divirtam-se e tenham um excelente final de semana. Caso não gostem da música, just run away from here.

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When we say Madison is 'wild' ...

we mean wild.

‘Wolf or wolf hybrid’ captured near Monroe Street

Monroe Street ends by the University of Wisconsin and is an increasingly upscale business district further away.

From here.

Just one word after another…

Yesterday's Get Fuzzy: And today's: Personally, I find that I get better results with a contingency table. A nice solid oak one, for example.

But Enough About Me

Let's talk about you. Ad for HTC mobile phone, bus stop, San Francisco, Nov. 14. Yahoo ad, MUNI bus, same bus stop, same day. Advertising directed at "you" is nothing new, of course. "The most famous poster in the world," originally published as the cover of Leslie's Weekly, July 16,...

13 frases em inglês com expressões inéditas

Olá Pessoal! Hoje temos mais treze frases pesquisadas e preparadas para ajudar a realizar o sonho de quem quer falar inglês fluentemente. Algumas expressões chegam a ser inéditas na internet por ainda não terem sido ensinadas claramente. Espero que aproveitem e bons estudos a todos! 1. Encher, satisfazer(comida): Fill sb up Ex: Junk food doesn´t fill you [...]

Atenção: Não responda este email, envie um comentário aqui: 13 frases em inglês com expressões inéditas.

Livros e dicionários para aprender Inglês

Siga o English Experts no twitter - O que é twitter?

Desconto para leitores do EE: Digite o código "ST20EE09" no momento da compra.

On Be Look Professional

Many years ago (1967 or so), I bought a wonderful Yamaha 250 cc motorcycle, the manual for which had this instruction for shifting gears:

Tachometer tells the moment to do.

Unfortunately, the RPMs given for gear shiftng kept this very fast motorcycle operating a little slower than a motor scooter. One evening, I told a friend who had ridden behind the original owner that the instructions couldn't be right and he offered to ride behind me and tell me when to shift. He did not look at the tachometer. He used his ears. I suppose the manual could have said.

Ears tell the moment to do.

Once I got the pitch right, I was golden. I suspect that some junior executive at Yahama persuaded his bosses that his English was excellent and he could ably translate the manual. On balance he didn't do badly.

Today, I happend across a web site while hunting for information as to what might be down the line for Blackberry phones given the buzz surrounding the iPhone and the new Androd phones. I came across this paragraph.

The Blackberry mobile phones are looking professionals and stylish mobile phone with can peoples are attract to this phone. Blackberry is the smart phones which is the most popular in the world with its charming features. It offers accessibility to an extensive variety of applications many wireless instruments across the world. It provides accessibility to an extensive variety of applications on several wireless instruments across the globe. by data and other services.

This piece of prose shocked me even more than that Yamaha manual.

This articale comes from Weblineindia, a link to which is associated with the blog title. That's what's shocking. If I have prejudices in regard to India, they are (1) Indians are very smart and very well-educated; (2) Many if not most Indians know English either natively or fluently; and (3) India has a bunch of great cuisines.

I clicked on the link and the first paragraph that popped up was this one:

Now a day ecommerce is a very popular among the internet users, so what is Ecommerce? People are habituated to sell and purchase their products or any types of items on the internet, its called ecommerce, and to online sell products you need ecommerce web...

So, it only gets worse. It is possible that these articles were written in some regional Indian language and run through some bad translating program. More likely, we are dealing with people who have big brains (see prejudice 1 above) but smal English language centers (see apparently false prejudice 2).

These articles are represented as "free content for your website or blog," which further confirms the axiom that you get what you pay for. I know that what I am writing is rather snobish, possibly even mean-spirited, for I would seem to be making fun of people who are, after all, doing their best. To that, I say, "bullshit." If I planned to publish something in German or Spanish I sure as hell wouldn't translate it myself.

Surely, if you are actually trying to inform people, to say nothing of sell things to them, you will want to do better than this:

The Blackberry Solution is used to access mobile email and personal information. Also other of the self applications are also used. But the development Blackberr software for the solution of Blackberry. Also Blackberry application, for assistance if issues arise.

This reads as if they are offering some sort of spyware ("access personal information"). If that isn't true, then they are very engaging in linguistic self-abuse.

The Linguistic Approach to Translation

Different languages give different ways to look at the world but translation provides us the opportunity to explore and interact with these different views of the world. Translation refers to carrying the meaning of a text from one language to another. This process involves interpretation of meaning of the text and producing the same meaning [...]

Jan Freeman's new book

I may be betraying my lack of education, but I'd never heard of Ambrose Bierce before Jan Freeman offered to send me her book, Ambrose Bierce's Write it Right: The Celebrated Cynic's Language Peeves Deciphered, Appraised, and Annotated for 21st-Century Readers. Or at least I thought I hadn't heard of him. Doing some background reading, I found that I'd actually read some of his short stories in high school or perhaps university. It made me feel somewhat better that only one person in the office here had heard of him at all.

Freeman, who writes The word column for the Boston Globe, is one of the most sensible journalists writing about language. Sensible, not as in sensible shoes, but as in a friend who makes sense out of confusion and makes you smile while doing it. Her language change-ometer is sensitive to shifts that I have to dig through corpora to find, and only once they've been pointed out to me.

All this word sense is brought to bear in Write it Right, a republishing of Bierce's slim volume from a century ago augmented by Freeman's deciphering, debating, and debunking of Bierce's pronouncements. A typical entry is as follows with Bierce's rule on top followed by Freeman's discussion:

All of. "He gave all of his property." The words are contradictory: an entire thing cannot be of itself. Omit the preposition.

. . .

All of had only recently become a usage issue, and Bierce may have been following Vizetelly 1906, who used the same reasoning to demonstrate that all of was nonsensical: "You may say 'ship some, or any definite number, say ten of them,' or 'ship them all,' but not 'ship all of them.'" That is, you can take "some of them"--some part of a whole--but once you take "all," there's no "them" remaining, and so "of them" is meaningless.

Neither man mentions that Shakespeare, Addison, and Austen used all of, nor that Abraham Lincoln supposedly said you couldn't fool all of the people all of the time. This rule didn't fool any of the people any of the time; everybody went right on writing, "all his property" or "all of his property," as idiom and rhythm demanded. People with nothing better to do may tell you that all of is wordy, but at least these days they won't claim that it's logically impossible.

Mostly Freeman concerns herself with matters of usage. These make me think about the underlying grammar. For example, in the passage above, all is participating in a partitive construction, something most determinatives can do. It differs from NPs such as a kilo in that it requires the before the final noun.

a kilo of (the) apples
all of the apples

The entry for got married compares it to got dead and suggests simply married as an alternative. Freeman replies that "Bierce pretends to believe that if some past participles pair up with get, all past participles must be allowed to do so." Clearly, though, from a grammatical viewpoint, got dead differs from got married in that dead is an adjective, not a past participle.

I have dipped into the volume and found something to entertain and interest me in every entry I've read, but I'm not sure I'd really want to read the whole thing. The purpose of the endeavour is somewhat lost on me. If it were a contemporary book by an important author, then I'd be behind it. As far as I can tell, though, the original volume has no force today. But then, I didn't even know who Bierce was.

A fantast.ic new country code

Last week I wrote about the coming of IDNs (internationalized domain names). But IDNs aren’t the only new country codes to keep your eyes on. There is also the occasional new Latin-based ccTLD. Like .IC. The Canary Islands is looking to get a country code to raise its visibility. That, and also to bring in a few million dollars in [...]

Linear A treatment of consonant clusters

I just discovered Minoan language blog by Andras Zeke, and in particular an intelligent post called Treatment of consonantal clusters in Linear A and B. Here, Zeke goes into excellent detail about his observations of Linear B's handling of consonant clusters and what impact that may have on rules implicit in Linear A. I've been lately thinking along the same lines so it's great to not feel alone.

Insipid – Dull; Lacking in character; Flavorless

Pronounced as In + Sip (emphasized) + Pid {Listen to it here} It comes from Latin insipidus which means tasteless from the root Sapidus which means having a flavor. Situational Uses / Sentences: He has quite a good voice, it’s just a shame they gave him a rather insipid song to sing. I was surprised to find that the [...]

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Como dizer 'ralar' em inglês?

Se a pergunta estivesse relacionada ao ato de ralar algo, por exemplo, batatas, cenouras, mandiocas, beterrabas, queijo etc, a resposta seria 'grate'. Assim teríamos as seguintes sentenças:

Peel and grate the potatoes. [Descasque e rale as batatas.]
Why did you grate the cheese? [Por que você ralou o queijo?]

Acontece que o 'ralar' ao qual me refiro no título deste post é aquele no sentido de 'dar um duro danado', 'trabalhar duro', 'trabalhar em excesso' e similares. Neste caso o melhor a dizer em inglês é 'work hard'. Afinal, não há bem uma expressão na língua inglesa que transmita esta ideia. Vamos aos exemplos.

He worked really hard day and night to give all the best to his family. [Ele ralava dia e noite para dar do bom e do melhor à sua família.]
My father worked very hard at a job he didn't enjoy. [Meu pai ralava muito em um trabalho que ele não gostava.]

Para não ficar só nisto, devo acrescentar que há em inglês a expressão 'bust a gut', que dependendo do contexto pode ser traduzida como 'ralar' ou ainda 'matar-se'. No geral a expressão refere-se ao fato da pessoa esforçar-se ao máximo para conseguir algo. Acredito que com exemplos vai ficar mais fácil de entender:

He was busting a gut trying to please his wife. [Ele estava ralando muito para agradar a esposa.]
I really bust a gut to get that report finished on time. [Eu ralei bastante para conseguir terminar este relatório a tempo.]
We busted a gut trying to learn something new every day... [A gente se mata tentando aprender algo novo todos os dias...]

Com a ajuda de um dicionário [ou do Google mesmo] você poderá encontrar mais exemplos de como esta expressão é usada. Caso encontre, que tal deixar registrado na área de comentários clicando aqui. Assim, todo mundo aprende junto!

See ya! Take care!

Nov 19, Pronunciation Blues

I was speaking with one of my students today during our tutorial class and he told me a story which was funny (now) but very frustrating at the time.

Picture it.

Nacho, from Spain, has just flown over 10 hours to reach sunny Miami and he would like to have some chocolate milk.

Sitting down at a table with some colleagues he eagerly waits for the waitress to come by and take his order. The waitress is now walking over to them and he is ready with his order.

The waitress arrives and says, "What can I get ya?" to which Nacho replies "chowkit please."

The waitress lookes confused. She asks him to repeat his order but she just hears the same thing over and over again.

"Chowkit, some chowkit! I'd like some chowkit".

After a minute or two Nacho decides to change his order.

"I'd like a coffee please".

The waitress smiles and walks away.

What was Nacho trying to order?

Nacho thought he was saying it perfectly. All he wanted was some chocolate milk. How hard is that to understand?

In this case, pretty difficult because he wasn't pronouncing chocolate properly.

Has this ever happened to you? Do you find yourself repeating words over and over again when people just don't seem to understand you?

You know what you want to say, you just don't know how to pronounce it properly.

It's time to get it right and say goodbye to the pronunciation blues.

not haps

...

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

11/19/09 - umbrageous

1. Affording or forming shade; shady. 2. Easily offended, likely to take offense, sensitive to insult.

Homework revolt in Canada.

Some parents are in revolt about the amount of homework their kids have to do according to the Globe and Mail. I do not know how useful homework is. I know only that I resent most of the kinds of...

785 – Éléphants indiens (Indian elephants)

Learning Guide | PDF Transcript L’autorité du Zoo central en Inde a confirmé que les zoos et cirques du pays ne seront plus autorisés à garder… Learn French now ! Listen to today’s lesson :

Bigger not necessarily better, when it comes to brains

Tiny insects could be as intelligent as much bigger animals, despite only having a brain the size of a pinhead, say scientists. Animals with bigger brains are not necessarily more intelligent. This begs the important question: what are they for?

Aspect, not Tense

You often hear people saying that Chinese has simple grammar, and the most often cited reason is that “Chinese has no tenses.” It’s true that Chinese verbs do not have tenses, but Chinese grammar does have a formal system for marking aspect. What is aspect? Most English speakers don’t even know. I’ll quote [...]

Translating Hebrew Literature

I learned about this website and newsletter on translating Hebrew literature from Erika Dreifus, who learned about it from the Jewish Council Book Blog.

"Write It Right," Revisited

If you're familiar with Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), it's most likely because you've read his most famous short story, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," or his satiric and widely quoted Devil's Dictionary.* But like many journalists and fiction writers, Bierce also considered himself a usage maven. He collected several hundred...

Aprender inglês com ou sem Sotaque?

João Henrique comenta: “É a variedade de sotaques que enriquece o nosso vocabulário e também a fluência. Convivo no trabalho com um escocês por 28 dias e depois com um sul-africano por mais 28 dias. O resultado tem sido a melhora no meu entendimento da palavra ouvida e também no meu falar. Quanto ao sotaque, [...]

Atenção: Não responda este email, envie um comentário aqui: Aprender inglês com ou sem Sotaque?.

Livros e dicionários para aprender Inglês

Siga o English Experts no twitter - O que é twitter?

Desconto para leitores do EE: Digite o código "ST20EE09" no momento da compra.

Tennessee Will Let ELLs Take Tests in 'Simplified English'

This coming spring, Tennessee will give its state assessment to English-language learners for the first time in 'simplified English.'

Learn a language by making mistakes

You learn a language by making mistakes There is no way you can learn a language without blood, sweat and tears. This is one of my how to learn a language mantras. Why? The way your brain remembers things is through a series of mistakes and failures until it self corrects. Learning a language is not much [...]

The Word of the Year and How to Translate It

This week, “unfriend” was chosen as the New Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year. In multilingual circles, this quickly prompted many — including us — to ask the question, “How do you translate that?” According to major media outlets (including the Telegraph, MSNBC, and many others), the term originated with Facebook. So, we went [...]

CRM Provider Partners for Multilingual Customer Care

In a February 2005 report on multicultural marketing, we highlighted the importance of customer relationship management (CRM) software in improving the quality of interactions with multilingual clients and prospects. Last month, machine translation supplier Language Weaver and newly-minted translation management system (TMS) provider Sajan announced multilingual support for RightNow Technologies’ CRM solution at the latter’s [...]

VOLTA.

Volta: A Multilingual Anthology "contains seventy-five poems in seventy-five languages. Seventy-four of these poems are translations of one poem, the seventy-fifth." You can read the English poem (the original) at wood s lot for November 18, 2009, where I got the link; it and all the translations (in, among many others, Maltese, Mongolian, Nepali, Nigerian Pidgin, North Eastern English, and Norwegian) are available in pdf form via the first link. Here's an etymological passage from the long introduction by the poem's author, Richard Berengarten:

The title ‘Volta’ itself comes from Modern Greek. The noun βόλτα is a noun meaning ‘turn’ and also ‘walk’, ‘stroll’. The Greek expression πάμε βόλτα [pame volta] means literally *let’s go a turn,⁶ i.e. ‘let’s take a turn,’ ‘let’s go for a walk/ stroll,’ ‘let’s stretch our legs.’ The word βόλτα is also used to mean, more precisely, ‘evening promenade’, βραδινή βόλτα [vrathini volta]. The custom of the evening promenade is expressed in Italian by the word passeggiata and in Serbian, Czech and Slovak by the common word korzo. During certain hours of the early evening, around dusk, everyone in the town who might feel like going for a walk takes a saunter or stroll up and down the main street. The custom used to exist in widely different cultures, including for example, in Portugal. A version of it exists among Jewish communities on the Sabbath.⁷

The idea of ‘turning’ is embedded in the Modern Greek word and usage: βόλτα is a word of Latin origin (volgere [actually volvere—LH], to turn). So a volta in this sense is a ‘turn’, up and down and back again, in the pleasurable presence of an indeterminate number of other people who, for whatever reasons of their own, happen to be engaged in the same activity. The word volta also exists in Catalan, Galician and Portuguese, and is cognate with Spanish vuelta.⁸ In all these Romance languages the word has the primary idea of ‘turn’, ‘return’, and more or less the same idiomatic meaning of ‘taking a turn’ as in Greek.
Continue reading "VOLTA."

Linguistic and Cultural Equivalence in Translation

Language is said to be the vehicle of our ideas, thoughts and perspectives of our world. While translation, simply is carrying the meaning or the idea from one language to another. Yet it is difficult to find a corresponding word for every word in two languages. It thus becomes a duty of translator to keep [...]

Erudite – Having or showing great knowledge through study and reading

Pronounced as Eruh (Emphasized) + Dite (rhyming with Light) {Listen to it here} or Eryuh (Emphasized) + Dite {Listen to it here} It comes from the Latin root erudire which means to instruct. Situational Uses / Sentences: My parents tend to opt for very erudite books which some of my friends find unreadable. It goes way beyond what even [...]

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Registration of Foreign Birth Certificate in Poland

Today we have a guest post by our favorite guest blogger, Barbara, about how to register your foreign birth certificate in Poland. All explained very clearly step by step in an easy to follow manner. This process is very important if you are planning to confirm your Polish citizenship. So, read on and take notes (or [...]

Vídeo: collocations com a palavra 'problem'

Hoje compartilho com vocês mais um vídeo com dicas de collocations. A palavra da vez é 'problem' [problem]. Depois de ver o vídeo abaixo, que tal ver também as dicas do Prof. Adrian Underhill sobre como pronunciar os sons da língua inglesa? Para acessar este vídeo basta ir até o post 'Pronúncia em Inglês: Os Sons da Língua Inglesa'.

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Veja também os vídeos abaixo:

Where to Find Free Computer Programming Education Online

With so many people looking to pick up new skills in a tough job market, now seems like a good time to offer guidance on where to find valuable training for free. Here’s a post from Karen Schweitzer with 10 places to find computer programming education. Computer programmers are employed by every industry imaginable. If you [...] Related posts:

Bonarka city center

Bonarka city center Kraków This post is not about languages, but about galeria Bonarka city center opening in Kraków. I am an American in Kraków and sometimes get off the subject of langauges. I can not believe all the Galeria’s that have opened in Krakow. It is a good thing, I guess. I am not complaining, [...]

Lévi Strauss and structural linguistics

We haven't noted the passing of Claude Lévi Strauss here yet (nor that of Dell Hymes). For a piece that talks about Lévi Strauss in connection to linguistics, check out this obituary, including these quotes:

he came into contact with structural linguistics, a behaviouristic amalgam of European and American theories, and particularly the more imaginative work of Roman Jacobson, the Russian theoretician of language who was also at the New School at the time.

…

For him anthropology was scientific and naturalistic, that is scientific in the way that structural linguistics had become scientific. By looking at the transformations of language that occur as new utterances are generated, by using the tools that a particular language makes available, structural linguistics was able, so Lévi-Strauss believed, to understand not only the irreducible specificities of a particular language, but also the principles that made their production possible. In this way, linguistics, as he understood it, was a branch of the humanities and a natural science that is able to connect directly with psychology and neurology.

Any reactions to that?

twankie

...

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

11/18/09 - squamulose

Covered with very small scales (squamules).

Minimalism in global gateways

A global gateway doesn’t have to be fancy. In fact, it shouldn’t be fancy. It should be as easy to understand as a stop sign. Form and function and nothing else. You don’t want people getting confused, waiting for animation to load, or just missing it altogether. This happens all the time. The fashion house Céline sure keeps [...]

Nova on Human Origins

PBS spent three hours describing human origins and maybe thirty seconds to language.