Posted by Mike on May 5, 2010 under Language Study | 
Uncle Sam can now teach you Czech, or any other major language you’d like to learn. A group of volunteers recently put all of the US Government’s language learning materials (which are in the public domain) online where they can be accessed, for free, by anyone interested. The site boasts over forty languages, and while not affiliated with the government, the site contains the same materials used by the Foreign Service Institute.
Of course, no online course is a replacement for being immersed in the culture, or even taking an intensive class at your local university. But it could provide a valuable head start, and hey, it’s free. When the site first went live, traffic overwhelmed the servers, so be prepared for slow loading.
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Posted by Alex on March 19, 2010 under Language Study |
“My pen is in my hand.”
Understanding Afrikaans is not terribly hard for a native English speaker (the above example is in Afrikaans). Lowland Scots does not prove much of a challenge to an English speaker, either: “D’ye see yon hoose ower yonder?” English is said to have a high degree of mutual intelligibility with these two languages. 
Mutual intelligibility describes the degree to which speakers of two different languages could understand one another without previous knowledge of the other language. For example, Norwegian has a high degree of mutual intelligibility with Swedish and Danish, as does Bosnian with Croatian and Serbian. However, intelligibility is not always the same for both speakers – sometimes, the conversation can be rather one-sided.
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Posted by Mike on October 15, 2009 under Language Study, Translation News |
We’ve blogged before about the French Academie, a group that purports to preserve and protect the French language, particularly against encroaching Anglicisms.
This week, the Wall Street Journal reports on the Academie’s attempts to come up with French equivalents for English-language computing terms such as cloud computing (which, for those not in the know, consists of accessing remote data over a network, so as to preserve the resources of the computers on the receiving end). The suggested phrase was “informatique en nuage,” literally “computing in cloud,” a phrase which left the board of the Academie cold.
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Posted by Alex on September 25, 2009 under Language Study, Translation News |
On the Island of Miyako in Japan, there is a smaller island that connects to Miyako called Ikema. This island is known for its isolation and it once flourishing bonito fishing.
There are about 800 inhabitants and a majority of them are elderly individuals. The inhabitants of this island have their own specific dialect that a native, standard-Japanese speaker would consider unintelligible. The dialect is called Ikema…
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Posted by Mike on September 18, 2009 under Language Study, Translation |
Okay, so maybe there’s no such thing as “inter-language translation,” but that hasn’t stopped Lucy Tobin from writing a “dictionary of teenage language” to help parents understand their children.
The UK’s Telegraph has recently reported on her new book, Pimp Your Vocab, which “aims to demystify the jargon adopted by British youngsters.”
What’s most interesting when reading the some of the examples of colorful and varied slang words and phrases contained within is that the slang used may be as foreign and baffling to American ears (of all ages!) as they do to the British parents for whom the book is intended. Take for example…
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Posted by Alex on August 28, 2009 under Language Study |
In the European Union, English is the most widespread language, but that is soon to change. Surprisingly, the future for the European Union me lie with Latin because of its practicality and convenience. According to Wolfgang Jenniges, a Latin word can be pronounced and mean something in all 23 languages that are used in the European Union. Latin is the only politically neutral language because it doesn’t belong to one nation. Latin could always be found in the root of many technical, scientific, religious and legal terms in Europe. It is a welcomed mixture between the ancient world and the modern world. In its efforts to utilize Latin, the EU has adopted Latin titles for some of its high ranking internet sites. The EU is also trying to include Latin in the names of their projects which is bringing back classical names for EU military missions such as Althea or Themis. The decision to extend the use of Latin on a larger scale would bring forth the teaching of Latin in schools and universities.
Posted by Alex on August 11, 2009 under Language Study |
Not only is language specific to the human race but also to the animal kingdom. New research done by the journal Biology letters involving tamarin’s monkeys have shown that the monkeys were able to spot “bad grammar.” The team working on the research experiments familiarized the monkeys with two syllable terms and recorded the monkeys reaction to words that did not follow the syllable pattern. The monkeys were not trained but were familiarized with patters as opposed to specific words. Researchers were particularly focused on a particular prefix or suffix. The researchers wanted the monkeys to get accustomed the pattern and the next day the monkeys were tested again. The monkeys were tested with new words that were still consistent with the pattern that had heard the previous day. The researchers monitored the monkeys as they heard the words and measure how many times the monkeys looked at the speaker. If the monkeys got bored by the pattern they would be interested in things that are inconsistent with the pattern. The end result showed how memory processes are not language-specific in human language.
Posted by Mike on July 27, 2009 under Language Study |
The new edition of the Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger has branded Cornish and Manx Gaelic extinct. The Atlas is published by Unesco, the cultural section of the United Nations.
The thirty linguists who worked on the Atlas believe that Cornish died out as a first language in 1777. This news was not welcomed by the Cornish Language Partnership, who says the number of speakers has risen in the past 20 years. They want a new section for revitalized languages to be added to the atlas for languages such as theirs.
At the moment, there are 300 fluent speakers of the Cornish language. Last year, the Partnership agreed on a single form of Cornish, which brought together other languages. Christopher Moseley, editor-in-chief of the Atlas, responded: “[Cornish] is among a group of languages that turned out not to be extinct, but merely sleeping.”
Read the full story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cornwall/7900972.stm
Posted by Alex on July 23, 2009 under Language Study |
BBC news has just reported that there have been 5,000 new words added to the German language. The new words are being incorporated into the latest edition Duden, the most-respected German dictionary.
Duden, which was first published in 1880 and consisted of just 27,000 words, has included many English phrases such as “After-show-party” and “It Girl” to its already 135,000 word dictionary. The German Language is well-known for its exceptionally long compound words, such as “Vorratsdatenspeicherung,” which means the saving of data relating to supplies.
Read the full article here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8163541.stm
Posted by Alex on July 7, 2009 under Language Study |
Found an interesting post on the history and spread of the Armenian language today. To sum it up:
Some individuals will argue that the Armenian descended from Iranian. It is believed that the language was produced by an error, so to speak, as a result of the vast number of loan words from that language. Even so, Armenian is an independent branch of the Indo-European family. The Armenian language is spoken by 5 million people in Armenia, Georgia and parts of the ex-Soviet Union. Armenian has also spread to some countries in the Middle East. In every region there are different varieties of the language. It is broken up into two denominations “western” and “eastern.” In the eastern portion there are various complex dialects, while the western portion is mostly spoken by small communities in Turkey and emigrant communities.
More here: http://translation-blog.trustedtranslations.com/armenian-an-independent-branch-of-the-indo-european-language-family-2009-07-06.html
