Heh, since I've been learning Indonesian at UBC lately (which I've been enjoying), my linguistic life is getting ever more confusing ( Read more... )

Well, I had to resign my job at the college yesterday ( Read more... )

I've been listening to The World In Words podcast lately, which, aside from some occasional UK obliviousness in reporting, has been feeding me lots of interesting news clips about world languages ( Read more... )

Huh?
I was just stuffing some envelopes here at work, and I noticed on one of the pamphlets listing things that children can do at the library, one of the things they boast is Clavarder sur MSN Chat.. That's a neologism I hadn't heard before. It seems to be Clavier(Keyboard) + Bavarder(Gabbing or "Chattering" if you will). Heh, not too bad ( Read more... )

Oh, I found a woman online a few weeks ago who was looking to do a language exchange of vocabulary and pronunciation between Spanish and English. I did meet her once and she was pretty nice, we just read aloud to each other and received each other's corrections ( Read more... )

Phewf what a crazy fog there is today on account of the drastic jump in temperature. I swear a lot of the snow on the ground is just fizzling into a low-lying fog that has spread into a giant cloud by nighttime. I was at a minimall @ Bank and Altavista and it was eerie. A fog is so comforting in a way that it even flatters a giant parking lot. ( Read more... )

I went to a demonstration for a bit before work yesterday, it was organized by a coalition of First Nations in Canada which are all having their language funding slashed by more than 2/3. They were also bemoaning that as always their living conditions are ridiculously poor. I just think it's pitiful that our government is always cutting some ( Read more... )

I was reading in a book recently about Ottoman Turkish -- the official government language of the Ottoman Empire.

Here were the 3 levels of Turkish, from the wikipedia article about Ottoman Turkish:
- Fasih Türkçe (Eloquent Turkish): Language of poetry and administration.
- Orta Türkçe (Mediocre Turkish): Language of higher classes and trade ( Read more... )

Hullo, sadly I'm a little under the weather, even my typing is sluggish and weak!

It's interesting, the other day my dad was mentioning his mother's family which I know little about, aside from the fact that they ran a mill in Chesterville, Ontario when she was young.

He said that they (the Barrie family) came over from Scotland to work on the ( Read more... )