Watch Your Language Blog

“Jowling” might just save your life

In 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


July 31, 2007

 

Ennywun can lern simpl spelling, yo

I’m not degenerating into my fourteen-year-old self chatting on AIM, but using a spelling glossary recommended by the Simplified Spelling Society. ... More


July 27, 2007

 

Te Wiki o te Reo Māori

It’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


July 25, 2007

 

Potterese

Like 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


July 23, 2007

 

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


July 20, 2007

 

“KVNV of Sheba” isn’t as catchy

Is 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


July 19, 2007

 

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


July 18, 2007

 

A Bostonian Grammar Vandal

Watch 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


July 17, 2007

 

Celebrations

So 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


July 16, 2007

 

Awa-oh

Advertising is a clever game — often a language game (I certainly pause every time I hear Devo in a dust cloth commercial). ... More


July 13, 2007

 

Aakhri Khattaat

Scott 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


July 10, 2007

 

A bird is a bird is a bird

Sometimes 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)


July 9, 2007

 

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


July 3, 2007