Watch Your Language Blog

Yamli: A Great Tool for Typing in Arabic

If you’ve ever tried to type in Arabic, you know it’s not necessarily the easiest thing in the world. You can insert Arabic letters using the Insert Symbol menu in Word, but that’s pretty tedious. There are also virtual Arabic keyboards out there, such as this one, which allows you to use your own keyboard, or this one, which allows you to use your mouse to click on virtual keys. In both cases, you can copy the text you produce and paste it somewhere else.... More

Tags: Arabic, Arabic script, learning Arabic, Yamli
July 1, 2009

 

Bilingualism and Tip-Of-The-Tongue Experiences

An article at The New Scientist discusses an experiment on the relationship between speaking more than one language and not being able to remember the word for something.

To provoke tip-of-the-tongue moments, the researchers showed the bilinguals, as well as a control group of 22 English monolinguals, pictures of dozens of different objects and challenged the volunteers to name them in 30 seconds. The viewed objects - which included axes, weathervanes, gyroscopes, nooses and metronomes - were obscure enough to elicit tip-of-the-tongue experiences in all but one participant. As with previous experiments, monolinguals had fewer tip-of-the-tongue experiences than bilinguals, about 7 words versus 12, out of a total of 52 - though Pyers’ team counted only instances where the volunteer knew the word.

Tags: bilingualism
June 12, 2009

 

Does English Have an Infinite Number of Words?

Following up on yesterday’s post about the size of the English lexicon, we think that an argument could be made that English has an infinite number of words. ... More

Tags: English, Global Language Monitor, meaning, recursion, words
June 11, 2009

 

One Million Words? Really?

The idea behind The Global Language Monitor’s Million Word March is certainly compelling, especially if you happen to be a proud native speaker of English. The English lexicon, it claims, has just grown to over 1,000,000 words, far surpassing other languages. ... More

Tags: English, Global Language Monitor, lexicon, Million Word March, word
June 10, 2009

 

Essential Greek Phrases

This is the next installment of essential phrases from the newest additions to our Spoken World series. (Previously: Essential Dutch Phrases, Essential Irish Phrases, Essential Polish Phrases, Essential Croatian Phrases) Finally, let’s round out our essential phrases from the Spoken World series with some essential Greek. Click on the play button below to hear each essential Greek word or phrase.... More

Tags: Greek, Spoken World
June 4, 2009

 

Star Trek and Xenolinguistics

WARNING: We’re about to get really, really nerdy. Anyone with a passion for languages knows that it’s nearly impossible to leave that passion at home. You hear a language on the street, you try to discern what it could be. You hear a word that might be derived from a language you know, and spend a few minutes tracing the route it might have taken to get there. Even sitting in a movie theater with an overpriced bucket of popcorn in your lap watching the most recent Star Trek film will give you something to ponder about language, as I discovered this past Sunday.... More

Tags: Romulan, Star Trek, Swahili, xenolinguistics
June 2, 2009

 

On Speaking English in Bombay

The subtleties of communication in India sometimes require not just a knowledge of a different language, but a different knowledge of your own language as well, as explained by Jil Wheeler in her essay at The Morning News.

The most difficult element of Bombay English to master comes from a tiny syllable—bhi or hi—that is inserted in to Hindi sentences to emphasize the word preceding it. In “red hi hat hai,” it’s the red hat (not the blue), while in “red hat hi hai,” it’s the red hat (not the shirt). The problem—if you consider it a problem, which you probably don’t, unless you tried this morning like me to catch a taxi, only, to the office itself—is that people aren’t content to simply translate bhi and hi as increased stress on the word. They also translate “bhi” or “hi” as “only” or “itself;” e.g., it’s the red hat only. You probably have no idea what I’m talking about, but anyone who has been to India does.

Tags: English, Hindi, India
May 28, 2009

 

Essential Croatian Phrases

This is the next installment of essential phrases from the newest additions to our Spoken World series. (Previously: Essential Dutch Phrases, Essential Irish Phrases, Essential Polish Phrases) Croatian belongs to the South Slavic family of Indo-European languages. It is related to other Slavic languages, such as Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Macedonian, Slovenian, or Bulgarian. With some notable dialectal variations, it is, linguistically, the same as the languages spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia. Click on the play button below to hear each essential Croatian phrase.... More

Tags: Croatian, Spoken World
May 27, 2009

 

Essential Polish Phrases

This is the next installment of essential phrases from the newest additions to our Spoken World series. (Previously: Essential Dutch Phrases, Essential Thai Phrases, Essential Irish Phrases) Polish is the official language of Poland, and since the expansion of the European Union in 2004, also one of the official languages of the EU. It is spoken by more than 40 million people in Poland and neighboring countries, and is the 11th most-spoken language in the United States. Click on the play button below to hear each of the following essential Polish phrases spoken by a native speaker.... More

Tags: Polish, Spoken World
May 22, 2009

 

Essential Irish Phrases

This is the next installment of essential phrases from the newest additions to our Spoken World series. (Previously: Essential Dutch Phrases, Essential Thai Phrases) Irish is an Indo-European language, grouped with Welsh, Breton, Cornish, and Manx on the Celtic branch of the tree. There are many Irish dialects, and there are currently about 260,000 native, fluent speakers of Irish in the Republic of Ireland, with an additional 96,000 speakers living in Northern Ireland. Irish is spoken as the everyday native language of an area of Ireland called Gaeltacht, made up of the counties Donegal, Mayo, Galway, Kerry, Cork, and Waterford. Click on the play button below to hear each of the following essential Irish phrases spoken by a native speaker.... More

Tags: Irish, Spoken World
May 21, 2009