Archive for the ‘Language’ Category

Words of the decade

22 February 2010

I’m just reading the paper by the American Dialect Society (PDF) about the word of the year (2009) and the word of the decade (2000–2009).

The word of the decade was google. The word of the year was tweet. But there are some other interesting winners. […]

Tongue-twisters

25 January 2010

I was thinking about tongue-twisters the other day. I think the most effective ones are two or three words long. Also, there are a lot of tricky two-word phrases—it’s not just a small few that are hard to say. […]

Introduction to translation

14 January 2010

I’ve been doing a lot of reading recently on the subject of translation and, more specifically, Bible translation. So I thought I would talk about the things I’ve been reading about. I’ll also be giving some links to some good reading materials.

I expect to be writing rather often on this subject over a period of time, so I’ll start now with some introductory remarks. […]

Happy Zamenhof Day!

15 December 2009

Today is the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the birth of L. L. Zamenhof.

Zamenhof is known as the ‘initiator’ of the constructed language Esperanto; after working on it extensively, he presented its basic grammar and vocabulary in 1887. He is known as the ‘initiator’ because although he laid the foundation for the language, he did not invent the language in its entirety. No language can be described completely; the language we now call ‘Esperanto’ developed over the past century of constant use, based on the principles that Zamenhof laid out. […]

Twenty-one accents

16 June 2009

This is an interesting video I first saw yesterday of Seattle-born actress Amy Walker speaking in twenty-one different accents. Part of what her aim is is to replicate not only the consonant and vowel sounds of the people who live in the region, but also the tone and mannerisms. […]

Greek and Latin resources

26 May 2009

Friends of ours recently emailed about Textkit. This is a website devoted to learners of Latin and Greek that makes public-domain texts available, including textbooks, literal translations and answer keys.
Among these are two books on Latin prose composition (including an answer key for one) and five on Greek composition (including three keys). There is also [...]