Archive for the ‘Language-Sites’ Category
Saturday, September 15th, 2007
If you like traditional folktales, Digital EHON is the site for you. You can read folktales from Japan and elsewhere in the original language and translations into various other languages. Not only that, you can also download and listen to some of them in Japanese and English with pictures and text.
The audio picture-book players are only about 3MB each and download in seconds via DSL, but I get gibberish for the Japanese text. However, the Japanese text renders fine on the Web site itself.
Right now they have (at least in Japanese) tales with paintings from:
- Japan (including some original stories)
- Taiwan
- Korea
- Papua New Guinea
- Mongolia
- Mexico
- Peru
- Brazil
- Bolivia
- Sweden
- Indonesia and
- China.
The site has an index and at least some content in:
- English
- Japanese
- Indonesian
- Spanish
- Norwegian
- Swedish
- Chinese
- Korean
- German
- Italian
- French and
- Ami (a language of Taiwan’s indigenous Ami people).
EHON is a great place for multicultural/multilingual/translation fun.
Language note:
EHON is probably a play on words. Hon 本 is the Japanese word for “book.” Ehon 絵本 is “picture book” but could also be “E-book” (electronic book) with a change in pronunciation from “eh” to English “ee.”
Posted in Foreign Languages, LANGUAGE, Language Technology, Language-Sites | No Comments »
Friday, August 31st, 2007
Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of the book Freakonomics, wants to find an aptronym (or aptonym) of a real person better than Paige Worthy (page worthy) the magazine researcher. The top three submissions earn a signed copy of his book or a Freakonomics yo-yo for their submitters (via Away with Words).
I’m familiar with the aptness of the name of former White House spokesperson Larry Speakes (and the presumed inaptness of clergyman Cardinal Sin of the Philippines), but there are many more such people, as Timothy Noah of Slate is showing.
See also:
Canadian Aptonym Centre
Posted in LANGUAGE, Language-Sites, Words / Dictionaries | No Comments »
Friday, August 17th, 2007
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) seeks to include all English words that are used frequently, including historical citations of their uses. Science fiction works and sci fi/SF criticism/fandom are no exceptions, and you can help with earlier, later, and intermediate examples of use (newest additions).
Now Oxford University Press has come out with a book:
Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher (UK publisher site, US publisher site).
Words now used by the mainstream sometimes come from science fiction. Did anyone use the word cyberspace before author William Gibson in 1982? The OED wants to know.
Posted in LANGUAGE, Language Media, Language-Sites, Words / Dictionaries | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007
American dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster has added their medical dictionary to Merriam-Webster Online, which also has their collegiate English dictionary, Spanish-English dictionary, and English thesaurus. Entries also have links to relevant parts of physician-reviewed articles on Healthline.
It’s amazing what you can get for free online nowadays.
Posted in LANGUAGE, Language-Sites, Words / Dictionaries | No Comments »
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
Happy UNESCO International Mother Language Day / La journée internationale de la langue maternelle.
Here’s what UNESCO says (portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=12871&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html) [EDIT (6/4/10): dead link]:
International Mother Language Day (21 February 2007)
The theme of International Mother Language Day in 2007 is the linkages betweenmother [sic] tongue and multilingualism.
Languages play an important role in the integration process in all aspects of public life but especially education. However, thousands of the world’s 6,000 languages are absent from the public arena and fifty per cent are in danger of disappearing altogether.
Here’s more information:
Posted in Foreign Languages, LANGUAGE, Language-Sites | No Comments »
Monday, February 19th, 2007
Happy New Year! Today, February 18, 2007, is Chinese New Year.
Chinese New Year:
- Traditional , simplified characters: 農曆新年 , 农历新年
- Mandarin: Nong2li4 Xin1nian2
- Cantonese: Nung4lik6 San1nin4
- English: Chinese New Year (somewhat literally: “Lunar Calendar New Year,” literally: “Agricultural Calendar New Year”)
or
- 春節 , 春节
- Mandarin: Chun1jie2
- Cantonese: Ceon1zit3
- English: Chinese New Year; also, literally: “the Spring Festival” [of Chinese New Year]
You can wish people the traditional greeting:
- 恭喜發財 , 恭喜发财
- Mandarin: Gong1xi3fa1cai2! (Gung shee fa tsie!)
- Cantonese: Gung1hei2faat3coi4! (Gung hay fat choy!)
- English: I wish you happiness and prosperity (somewhat literally: “Congratulations! Get rich!,” literally: “Respectful Happy! Bring-into-existence Wealth!”).
It’s the Year of the Boar/Pig.
Chinese zodiac (in Mandarin):
Animal Character/Sign Character
- 鼠 shu3 / 子 zi3 (“rat” or “mouse”) 2008
- 牛 niu2 / 丑 chou3 (“ox” or “cow”) 2009
- 虎 hu3 / 寅 yin2 (“tiger”) 2010
- 兔 tu4 / 卯 mao3 (“hare” or “rabbit”) 2011
- 龍 , 龙 long2 / 辰 chen2 (“dragon”) 2012
- 蛇 she2 / 巳 si4 (“serpent” or “snake”) 2013
- 馬 , 马 ma3 / 午 wu3 (“horse”) 2014
- 羊 yang2 / 未 wei4 (“ram” or “sheep”) 2015
- 猴 hou2 / 申 shen1 (“monkey”) 2016
- 雞 , 鸡 ji1 / 酉 you3 (“rooster” or “chicken”) 2017
- 狗 gou3 / 戌 xu1 (“dog”) 2018
- 豬 , 猪 zhu1 / 亥 hai4 (“boar” or “pig”) 2007, 2019
Chinese zodiac (in Cantonese):
Animal Character/Sign Character
- 鼠 syu2 / 子 zi2 (“rat” or “mouse”) 2008
- 牛 ngau4 / 丑 cau2 (“ox” or “cow”) 2009
- 虎 fu3 / 寅 jan4 (“tiger”) 2010
- 兔 tou3 / 卯 maau5 (“hare” or “rabbit”) 2011
- 龍 , 龙 lung4 / 辰 san4 (“dragon”) 2012
- 蛇 se4 / 巳 zi6 (“serpent” or “snake”) 2013
- 馬 , 马 maa5 / 午 ng5 (“horse”) 2014
- 羊 joeng4 / 未 mei6 (“ram” or “sheep”) 2015
- 猴 hau4 / 申 san1 (“monkey”) 2016
- 雞 , 鸡 gai1 / 酉 jau5 (“rooster” or “chicken”) 2017
- 狗 gau2 / 戌 seot1 (“dog”) 2018
- 豬 , 猪 zyu1 / 亥 hoi6 (“boar” or “pig”) 2007, 2019
If your solar year hasn’t been going so well these last seven weeks, here’s hoping the beginning of the Chinese lunar year brings you lots of 福 (M. fu2, C. fuk1), “good luck,” “happiness.”
Mandarin dictionaries:
Cantonese dictionaries:
Character Dictionary
Posted in Foreign Languages, LANGUAGE, Language-Sites, Words / Dictionaries | No Comments »
Sunday, February 4th, 2007
Do you want to know what a linguist/name analyst thinks of brand names and company names? If so, head on over to The Name Inspector blog from linguist Christopher Johnson [via John Cook's Venture Blog].
Here’s part of the entry for Youtube:
Like many good names, YouTube evokes sound-alike phrases that activate appropriate associations in our minds. First, of course, it’s built on the pattern of boob tube, and sets up an implicit contrast with this comically derisive term (“This isn’t the boob tube, this is the YOU tube!”). The use of tube to refer to video is a little retro and ironic, which makes it kind of fun. YouTube also suggests the phrase you too, as in, for example, “You too can be a star!”. These expressions and their meanings resonate in the background, making this an excellent name for a video service featuring user-generated content.
YouTube is also strong phonetically. It has no consonant clusters, so it’s very easy and pleasant to say . . . .
I thought of the you too, but not the “we’re better than the boob tube” implication. There are increasing numbers of people watching lots of videos on Youtube and its ilk instead of watching TV. “O brave new world . . . .”
Posted in LANGUAGE, Language-Sites, Linguistics, Words / Dictionaries | No Comments »
Saturday, January 6th, 2007
The second series of Balderdash & Piffle, from the Oxford English Dictionary and BBC Two television network, will be on in the UK this spring. Now they’re soliciting help for origins or earlier uses of 40, mostly British, terms (BBC word list with explanations; OED word list with links to dictionary entries).
The show is especially useful to the OED lexicographers in the realm of slang—the kind of words they don’t always find during their constant reading of periodicals. John Simpson, chief editor of the OED, said about the first series last year: “[Wordhunters] found evidence tucked away in football [soccer] fanzines, LPs, school newspapers: just the sort of sources we can’t easily get our hands on.”
Happy hunting. Perhaps you can be like the woman from the first series who had an earlier use of Phwoar! (“Wow!”) in her diary, which is now an OED citation.
See also my post:
Oxford English Dictionary, Icon of England
Posted in LANGUAGE, Language-Sites, Words / Dictionaries | No Comments »
Saturday, November 18th, 2006
If you’re Australian and using MS Word or other MS Office products, you’ll soon get fewer words marked as spelling errors. After a recent online word-survey with over 24,000 voters, Microsoft Office 2007 will include more Australianisms like sickie and trackies (“sick day” and “track suit”).
It’s nice to see Microsoft trying to make its products less America-centric. It’s silly to have an “English (Australian)” version that doesn’t recognize (or recognise) common words for that language variety.
The Australian expression chuck a sickie is certainly shorter than “play hooky from work by calling in sick” or “take a sick day when you’re not sick.” Does it have a shorter form in Australia because it’s a much more common practice there? (I kid.)
I remember watching a TV show in Japan and hearing the word 仮病 kebyou. My Japanese-English dictionary said “sham illness.” I thought, it’s so common that you have a word for this? I don’t think “sham illness” gets tossed around too much by us English speakers. We’d more likely say “he’s pretending to be sick” or “she’s feigning illness.”
See also: Australian Slang Dictionary
Posted in Dialects, Foreign Languages, LANGUAGE, Language Technology, Language-Sites, Words / Dictionaries | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 10th, 2006
If you saw the 1992 movie Chaplin, you heard Charlie Chaplin (played by Robert Downey, Jr.) refer to his suit as a “whistle” and explain that whistle and flute rhymes with suit. That’s (old-time) Cockney rhyming slang, a slang style originally limited to the Cockney English dialect of working-class people in London’s East End. (The character Eliza Doolittle of My Fair Lady was a Cockney speaker, but I don’t know if she used rhyming slang.)
Celebrities are also used in rhyming slang and the new book Shame about the Boat Race: Guide to Rhyming Slang from Collins (ISBN 0007241135) gives examples of modern celebrities finding their way into the lingo. The title refers to “Nice legs shame about the face” (metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=23975&in_page_id=34) [EDIT (5/30/10): dead link] turned into rhyming slang.
Assuming the expressions are common enough to be shortened, some people might drink too many Britneys (Britney Spears rhymes with beer) and then Wallace (Wallace and Gromit rhymes with vomit).
We’ll have to see if any of these become ordinary words like giving someone a “raspberry” (making a derisive breaking-wind noise with your mouth on your hand, also called a Bronx cheer). Raspberry tart rhymes with fart.
See also: Web’s Greatest Dick’n'arry of Cockney Rhyming Slang
Posted in Dialects, LANGUAGE, Language Media, Language-Sites, Words / Dictionaries | No Comments »
![[LINK IMAGE: site logo]](http://languageandhumor.com/blog/images/lahlogoicon.png "[LINK IMAGE: site logo]")