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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] Lost in translation
I was very unsure why I had even gone to Shabbat services this Saturday, but I'm glad I did, as it gave me the inspiration to write this article and to pursue other phenomenon like it.
This past Saturday's Torah reading was in Deuteronomy, and discussed unclean animals.
יב וְזֶה, אֲשֶׁר לֹא-תֹאכְלוּ מֵהֶם: הַנֶּשֶׁר וְהַפֶּרֶס, וְהָעָזְנִיָּה ( Read more... ) -
[Multilingual Monday] Archaic Chinese, Negation, And Mood
Pre-classical Chinese is a curious beast for me. My inexperience with Classical Chinese (outside of various writings I've procured that were written by the Japanese in CC) yet my knowledge that no one spoke the way they wrote in, say, the seventeenth century led me to believe that the language was spoken the way it was written centuries before ( Read more... ) -
Classical Chinese
This is mostly for my own benefit -- you know, for when I wipe all of my bookmarks and want to find this once again -- but for all those who may be interested:
A Concise Grammar Of Chinese Grammar.
Obviously works from the pre-Classical era and the grammars used there aren't included, but it's still a good read. -
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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And now for something totally different ...
草原上升起不落的太阳, Cǎo Yuán Shàng Shēng Qǐ Bú Luò De Tài Yáng. "The Never-Setting Sun Rises Over The Prairie," sung by 郝歌, Hǎo Gē. A beautiful song with a wonderful interpretation by the singer.
No reason for posting this; I just enjoy this. Though I suppose this makes up for no Multilingual Monday... ^o^ -
[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] 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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