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Do your question words move or stay put?Take a look at these Japanese and English examples of a question and its answer.... More Tags: newsletter, syntax, wh-fronting, wh-in-situ, wh-movement
The g-word and finding patternsThe days of the so-called “grammar-translation method” for learning foreign languages are long gone. This method was mostly devised to teach classical, dead languages, like Latin and Ancient Greek, when they were still taught to many children in the course of elementary or secondary education. It consisted of memorizing grammatical rules, reciting paradigms ad nauseam, and painstakingly translating famous, and often boring, sentences and paragraphs.... More Tags: grammar-translation method, language learning methods, newsletter, patterns
Lost in interpretationMany years ago, I traveled to Brazil to give a keynote speech in São Paulo before about 200 people. It was for a conference on computer-aided design (CAD) and I was going to talk about “strategic technology planning.” Since I don’t speak Portuguese (and I most definitely couldn’t give a detailed business talk in the language), the venue provided an interpreter.... More Tags: Brazil, interpreter, newsletter, Portuguese, story
The Atlas of True NamesSome folks have glossed a good number of the place names of the world in plain English and created The Atlas of True Names. Spiegel Online has a photo gallery featuring various pieces of the map. (via kottke) According to Language Log, however, many of the names come from folk etymologies that aren’t necessarily accurate. Some of the etymological glosses given in The Atlas of True Names are misleading in other ways. “New York” is given as “New Wild Boar Village.” That’s based on the idea that York in England derives from Old English eofor “wild boar” + Latin vicus village. But the Anglo-Saxon name Eoferwic was evidently a folk etymology of sorts, reinterpreting the earlier toponym Eboracum, a Latinization of Celtic Eborakon, said to mean “place of yew trees.” So should the “true” name of (New) York relate to boars or yews?(SUZANNE) Tags: maps, translation
Il Bay-Watch: English Words in Foreign ContextI recently came across a reference in an English sentence written by an Italian to a “bay-watch,” where she meant to say “lifeguard.” I asked my co-workers if they’d ever heard of a lifeguard being referred to in English as a “bay-watch,” and no one had ever heard it used in such a way. We decided that this must be a term adopted in Italian from the internationally successful David Hasselhof/Pamela Anderson lifeguarding show, and used as a slang term to mean “lifeguard.” Someone else brought up the fact that the French use “la pom-pom girl” to mean “cheerleader.” I went searching for more examples, and found that in Austria, where “das Oldtimer” is an antique car and “das Handy” is a cell phone, the words “dressman, photoshooting, showmaster, beamer, popper, twen and sunnyboy” are all used to a different end than they might be in English, if they’re ever used in English at all. Know of any other examples of an English phrase used to mean something different in a foreign language? E-mail us: watchyourlanguage@randomhouse.com (SUZANNE) Tags: French, German, Italian, loanwords, slang
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