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“Jowling” might just save your lifeIn Pitmatic, a dialect of the north-east miners in England, “jowling” is a term that signifies different ways of communicating through a mine, especially after the roof falls. ... More
Ennywun can lern simpl spelling, yoI’m not degenerating into my fourteen-year-old self chatting on AIM, but using a spelling glossary recommended by the Simplified Spelling Society. ... More
Te Wiki o te Reo MāoriIt’s Māori language week in New Zealand, and to get into the spirit, I’ve been spending some quality time over at the interactive quizzes and conversation sections of the Kōrero Māori website. (The fact that my inner Flash geek is amazed at the design and interactivity of the games has nothing to do with it, really.) ... More
PottereseLike many others (is “many others” an understatement, or what?), I spent the weekend devouring the latest Harry Potter book in two sittings. You wouldn’t think I could get a language post out of this, but you’d be very wrong. The Harry Potter series has always been filled with an amazing scope of linguistic enjoyments, some obvious, some deeper beneath the surface.... More
How does one translate “The Deathly Hallows”?Harri Putter: That’s what the famous Harry Potter is jokingly called in India. (A literal translation would mean “Green Son.”) In Arabic, he’s known as “Hari Butor.”... More
“KVNV of Sheba” isn’t as catchyIs KVNV, a Borean word meaning “woman” (the “V” indicates an unknown vowel) the root word for “queen”? Among much controversy, linguists working for the Evolution of Human Languages (EHL) project are trying to trace the common root of all human languages: ... More
Just Like You Learned Your Native Language!!!I was watching TV the other night, and I saw a commercial for language courses that made a promise that I’ve heard far too many times: you can learn [insert language here] just like you learned English! I have a particularly strong wincing reflex when I hear that phrase, because out of college I worked for a well-known language school, where I was habitually called upon to assure potential clients that with the method used by that school, they would pick up a foreign language just like they picked up their native language. I died a little inside every time I had to say that…... More
A Bostonian Grammar VandalWatch your grammar, advertisers! The Boston Globe recently profiled Kate McCulley, who has been fixing bad grammar on business signs around Boston. One wonders what she thinks of the LOLcode phenomenon. Or what her next stop will be. New York, maybe?... More
CelebrationsSo we completely missed celebrating Bastille Day this past Saturday. It’s possible I might have uttered a French phrase or two on the day, and I’m pretty sure I had a glass of Chardonnay, but I didn’t catch the fireworks. ... More
Awa-ohAdvertising is a clever game — often a language game (I certainly pause every time I hear Devo in a dust cloth commercial). ... More
Aakhri KhattaatScott Carney recently wrote about the dying art of Urdu calligraphy, and detailed how a small group of khattaat (calligraphers) who run one of the few handwritten papers in the world, face extinction because of widespread use of the Urdu typeface.... More
A bird is a bird is a birdSometimes even we forget that writing systems are built of the same lines and curves, only in different configurations. We need something like this toy block set to come along and remind us of that fact. Someone needs to do a multi-alphabetic version — Hindi, Russian, Chinese, Latin, Greek, Thai, Arabic, etc. Or maybe that would just be called “string.” (SUZANNE)
Da Zhen! (a.k.a. Touchdown!)From now on, when in China, please refer to American football as “Mei shi gan lan qiu.” Or its translation: “American-style olive-shaped ball.” To make things even more confusing, it could also mean “American-style rugby.”... More
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