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[Multilingual Monday] The Google Translate Chronicles
So I was in Bolingbrook for a Hallowe'en party, and I ran into, among other people, muckefuck, and of course we had to start talking about languages. Someone who was part of our conversation made reference to automatic machine translation. "Well I understand there are pretty good ones these days!" he said, and I could only laugh, especially given my ( Read more... ) -
[Multilingual Monday] Family Ties
I'm amazed I haven't covered this topic yet! Today we talk about terms for family members, and how such terms are used differently in English and make distinctions that would take further elaboration in English as well ...
JAPANESE: We'll start with Japanese, where there is a differentiation between older and younger siblings -- an older brother ( Read more... ) -
On Toronto, IV
- 新方舟 is quite an ingenious rendering of "Newark," I must say.
- So the whole time I was there Daniel and Bill kept saying, "Roger, do you know Bruce?" "You've never met Bruce??" "Why don't you know Bruce???" They were, of course, discussing brunorepublic, who is just amazingly hot and a very very sweet man. He was my "date" of sorts to a Korean barbeque where we ( Read more... )
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[Multilingual Monday Music] Lydia
One of my fave tunes from the Chinese group FIR, called "Lydia". I like their mix of rock and more traditional classical instruments, and hey -- I didn't realize that this was the theme to a TV show! For those who can read traditional characters: sing along, as the lyrics are in the video! And be amused how random English words like "gypsy' crop ( Read more... ) -
[Multilingual Monday] IDK, My BFF Jill?
You're reading this right now, which means you're online. And since you're online, it means that, at some point in time, you've seen the infamous "Netspeak", which has now branched off into abbreviations for text messaging. This is, of course, not confined to English This past weekend, I chatted with another cute man from France (who, sadly, had ( Read more... ) -
[Multilingual Monday] Semantic Shifts
It's somewhat well-known that the English word awful had a far different meaning about 300 years ago or so. At that point in time, it meant "majestic" -- being full of awe (awe having gone from "something that provides terror" and gradually shifted due to interpratations of the wonders of God, the original source of "fear" from the original ( Read more... ) -
[Multilingual Monday] Language Nerd Olympics
So, yeah, I sat through the parade of nations during the Olympics this year. Why? Just to hear the country names ratttled off one by one in French, English, and Mandarin Chinese. I admit, the transliteration system fascinates me, mainly in part because of its cumbersomeness, causing a writer to slam multiple characters together that really have ( Read more... ) -
[Multilingual Monday] Old hanzi, Missing you
Okay, a quick Multilingual Monday as I'm majorly sleep deprived:
- Okay, this Chinese character etymology page is VERY cool -- put in all sorts of hanzi (by either typing or pasting it into the window) and -- usually -- you will get pictures of the character's variants, in seal script to earlier bone script and earlier still oracle script. It's ( Read more... )
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[Multilingual Monday] The Direction Chronicles, and More Idioms
Again, direction in written Chinese taunts me ( Read more... ) -
Map Junkie
Hey, I just thought this was cool.The link above is to a zoomable portion of the Kūnyú Quántú, 坤輿全圖 , a Chinese map produced in the 1600s. I just adore these things, and this combines my love of old maps and languages. Here not only do we get to see the concept of the world as it was known in the 1600's, but with known (and possibly imaginary!) ( Read more... )
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