I've just finished reading Konrad Paul Liessmann's Theorie der Unbildung. Die Irrtümer der Wissensgesellschaft (Theory of non-education. The errors of the Information Society) - it's a very pessimistic, but also a very wise book ( Read more... )

Part of my job includes checking the English of some articles from Egypt we put on our web (and translating them). Sometimes it's hard to understand what the people are trying to say in these articles. Sometimes, they're just funny. The last one spoke about a deceased tomb. Poor thing ( Read more... )

I've just promised R I would help him with his new patient - an Algerian woman. She speaks Arabic and some French and I'll have to translate in the course of the hour-and-a-half therapy. I'm not that scared about that, once we can see each other, I'll be fine and despite my less than perfect mastery of these two languages, I know enough to manage ( Read more... )

It's actually hard to be the only linguist in a language course. I've already experienced it with Arabic, somehow I could file the information at a far, far greater speed than anyone else. After a year, I got bored. In my eyes, we were stuck. Repeating the same things and everyone doing the same mistakes over and over again. The result, of course, ( Read more... )

I have yet to think about this, but it's intriquing. The thought that the Celts have left a more lasting impression on the land they had once inhabitted doesn't sound all that nonsensical to me.