Many languages have "high" and "low" layers of vocabulary. But in most other languages, the two sets are drawn from the same source. By contrast, contact between Old English and French, Dravidian languages and Sanskrit, Japanese and Chinese, Persian and Arabic, and other pairings around the world have created fascinatingly hybrid languages. These mixed lexicons are, for linguistic and social historians, akin to the layers of fossils that teach paleontologists and archaeologists so much about eras gone by.
Some people even think English is descended from Latin, or Kannada from Sanskrit. That’s frustrating not only because it’s wrong, but also because the reality is far more interesting. -
The Economist, Unlikely parallels (
via)
posted by beisny
on May 15, 2013 -
31 comments
"The internationalized art world relies on a unique language. Its purest articulation is found in the digital press release. This language has everything to do with English, but it is emphatically not English. It is largely an export of the Anglophone world and can thank the global dominance of English for its current reach. But what really matters for this language—what ultimately makes it a language—is the pointed distance from English that it has always cultivated. " -
Triple Canopy magazine on why do artists' statments and press releases sound so utterly odd and confusing.
posted by The Whelk
on Apr 26, 2013 -
45 comments
The
Language Council of Sweden has been the semi-official arbiter of the Swedish language since World War II. It monitors "the development of spoken and written Swedish" and publishes a list of new words each year to ensure consistency of spelling and make sure that Swedish is a "complete language, i.e. [is] possible to use in all areas of society." This year, for the first time, the Council has
taken a word off the list:
ogooglebar, which literally meant "ungoogleable" but was defined as "a thing or person that does not produce relevant results when typed into a search engine."
[more inside]
posted by Etrigan
on Mar 26, 2013 -
43 comments
"The
discovery advances UC Berkeley’s mission to make sense of big data and to use new technology to document and maintain endangered languages as critical resources for preserving cultures and knowledge. [...] it can also provide clues to how languages might change years from now."
posted by batmonkey
on Feb 11, 2013 -
21 comments
"Almost a decade since the end of the hit American TV series
Friends, the show — and, in particular,
the fictitious Central Perk cafe, where much of the action took place — is enjoying an afterlife in China's capital, Beijing. Here, the show that chronicled the exploits of New York City pals Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe and Joey is almost seen as a lifestyle guide."
posted by vidur
on Jan 23, 2013 -
37 comments
The Whole Nine Yards: Seeking a Phrase’s Origin When people talk about “the whole nine yards,” just what are they talking about? For decades the answer to that question has been the Bigfoot of word origins...But now two researchers using high-powered database search tools have delivered a confident “none of the above,” supported by a surprise twist:
Before we were going the whole nine yards, it turns out, we were only going six.
(SLNYT)
posted by anazgnos
on Jan 15, 2013 -
53 comments
I grew up in Minnesota, home of a particular passive-aggressive communication style which is summed up nicely by this
chart and subsequent comments. Of particular import is the difference between "that's different" and "that's sure different" (though there isn't mention of "that's real different," which I think means just about the same thing) and examples of Minnesota Enthusiastic Neutral.
Also worth noting is the classic book by sometime A Prairie Home Companion regular Howard Mohr,
How to Talk Minnesotan.
[more inside]
posted by larrybob
on Jan 13, 2013 -
170 comments
New letter and word frequency counts Peter Norvig has used Google books data to generate new lists of letter frequency, the most common English words and their frequencies, and lots of other fun stuff (though I don't know if
forschungsgemeinschaft is really an English word, unless it means forcing a mine shaft).
[more inside]
posted by hexatron
on Jan 7, 2013 -
42 comments
21 emotions English has no word for . Some things "light us up". Some things "leave us cold". Such dim metaphors only hint at the unspoken universe of feeling, dimensions we can only guess that we share. A new infographic explores "untranslatable" feeling-words from other languages.
posted by Twang
on Jan 6, 2013 -
132 comments
Historically, the
city states of the Malay Peninsula often paid tribute to regional kingdoms such as those
of China and
Siam. Closer relations with China were
established in the early 15th century during the
reign of Parameswara, founder of Melaka,
when Admiral Zheng He (Cheng Ho)
sailed through the Straits of Malacca. Impressed
by the tribute, the
Yongle Emperor of China
is said to have presented Princess Hang Li Po
* as a gift to Mansur Shah,
then Sultan of
Malacca (+/-1459 AD). Tradition
claims the courtiers and servants
who accompanied the princess
settled in Bukit Cina, intermarried
with the locals
and grew into a community known
as the Peranakan.
Colloquially known as Baba-Nyonya, the Peranakan or Straits Chinese, they retained
many of their
ethnic and religious customs, but
assimilated the
language and clothing of
the Malays. They
developed a unique
culture and
distinct foods.
Nyonya cuisine is
one of the most highly rated in the South East Asian
region, considered some of the
most difficult to master but
very easy to
love and
enjoy.
posted by infini
on Dec 24, 2012 -
25 comments
Are you enthusiastic (
"pertaining to possession by a deity," from Gk. enthousiastikos "inspired," from enthousiazein ) about Etymology? (
ethimolegia "facts of the origin and development of a word," from O.Fr. et(h)imologie (14c., Mod.Fr. étymologie), from L. etymologia, from Gk. etymologia, properly "study of the true sense (of a word)," Then why not explore (
1580s, "to investigate, examine," a back formation from exploration, or else from M.Fr. explorer (16c.), from L. explorare ) the vast resources (
1610s, "means of supplying a want or deficiency," from Fr. resourse) of the
ONLINE ETYMOLOGY DICTIONARY [more inside]
posted by The Whelk
on Nov 12, 2012 -
30 comments
Some are strong, and some are weak. The weak, as is well known, are easily mastered—completely regular and, frankly, pathetic. But it doesn't have to be that way! The
Society for the Strengthening of Verbs labors at its noble cause of
strengthening verbs and
nouns (in
English too, though with less Sprachgefühl), increasing the stock of
causatives, and generally
messing around with German (excuse me, with
Neutsch).
posted by kenko
on Oct 31, 2012 -
29 comments
The universe (which others call The Twitter) is composed of
every word in the English language;
Shakespeare's folios, line-by-line-by-line; the
Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, exploded;
Constantine XI, in 140 character chunks;
Sun Tzu's Art of War, in its entirety; the chapter headings
of JG Ballard, in abundance; and definitive
discographies of Every. Artist. Ever...
All this,
I repeat, is true, but one hundred forty characters of inalterable
wwwtext cannot correspond to any language, no matter how dialectical or rudimentary it may be.
[more inside]
posted by 0bvious
on Oct 27, 2012 -
14 comments
The
Global Language Online Support System (or GLOSS), produced by the Defense Language Institute in sunny Monterey, CA, offers over
six thousand free lessons in 38 languages from Albanian to Uzbek, with particular emphasis on Chinese, Persian, Russian, Korean, and various types of Arabic. The lessons include both reading and listening components and are refreshingly based on real local materials (news articles, radio segments, etc.) rather than generic templates.
[more inside]
posted by theodolite
on Oct 11, 2012 -
23 comments
In 2005, Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks produced a 6 episode miniseries that spanned the period of expansion of the United States into the American West, from 1825 to 1890. Through fictional and historical characters, the series used two primary symbols--the wagon wheel and the Lakota medicine wheel -- to join the story of two families: one Native American, one White settlers, as they witnessed many of the 19th century's pivotal historical milestones. The award-winning
Into The West can now be
seen in its entirety on YouTube.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Sep 20, 2012 -
12 comments
