Harmanz ha haz b bargan ahn za MMARBG Ahban Bahb [brahbazazzah ] ar zambahz. Zambahz haz AAGHZ g!bz gab azzar zambahz: a, b, g, h, m, n, r, z. Zambahz maz hab gab, za Zambahz zgrabbarh Zamgrh, a gab grh a gab bag, a grammah, n zhranzazzaz. Habganna barbaga zaarz grh za bra!nz?
posted on May 8, 2008 - View this thread

Art curators explain (on youtube) Luc Tuymans art and suggest how people on the street would respond to it. How correct are they?
posted on May 7, 2008 - View this thread

Blue, green and grey must have a calming effect. Elsewhere, discussions can be...ignited. Flame Warriors. via
posted on May 4, 2008 - View this thread

Some residents of Lesbos are filing suit, claiming only they have the right to be called lesbians.
posted on May 1, 2008 - View this thread

Social Class in the US and UK Lynne Murphy, a linguist from the US living in the UK, looks at the differences in class distinctions through the lens of the language we use to talk about them.
posted on Apr 30, 2008 - View this thread

Computer languages and facial hair
posted on Apr 30, 2008 - View this thread

Native Names Projects by the Coeur d'Alene Tribe GIS Program and the Hawaii Board on Geographic Names are adding audio pronunciation guides to geospatial place-name datasets in several on-line mapping formats.
posted on Apr 3, 2008 - View this thread

[He] kept his one copy of this book safe,... under his sleeping area so that no one could destroy it. He would just look at pictures of his New York City family, and himself, over and over again.

The Most Horrible English Words
posted on Mar 28, 2008 - View this thread

Polyglot Michel Thomas came to prominence through his work for the French resistance and the successful interrogation of Nazis (who had formerly imprisoned him). After the war he started to develop (and eventually patent) a method for teaching languages that eschewed notes, books, writing, memorisation and homework. Instead, words and phrases would be built up in lego-like constructions to provide “confidence in hours not years”. He gave private lessons to a long list of A-list celebrities including Woody Allen, Natasha Kinsky, Tony Curtis and Grace Kelly. A BBC documentary from 1997 told his story and tested him out with the less exalted audience of 16 year old London school kids pre-selected to be “incapable of learning a foreign language” by their teachers [YT pt 1, 2, 3, 4]. He was secretive about how his methods worked until the end of his life when he finally made his courses available as audiobooks.
posted on Mar 20, 2008 - View this thread

"Speak English" sign at cheesesteak shop not discriminatory. A split three-member panel of the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations ruled that a sign in Genos Steaks the South Philadelphia cheesesteak shop did not convey a message that service would be refused to non-English speakers.
posted on Mar 20, 2008 - View this thread

A troop of putty-nosed monkeys in west Africa has been found to use a rudimentary language.
posted on Mar 11, 2008 - View this thread

The Dictionary of Coming to Terms with the Past (Wörterbuch der 'Vergangenheitsbewältigung') examines over 1,000 German words that have Nazi connotations, such as Endlösung (Final Solution) and Selektion, It is featured in a review by der Spiegel. Such loaded words still constitute a minefield for Germans today, as the Archbishop of Cologne discovered last year in a situation analogized to Senator Biden's use of the term "articulate" when referring to Senator Obama.
posted on Feb 17, 2008 - View this thread

The History of Visual Communication
posted on Jan 29, 2008 - View this thread

Snowclones (as you may know) are "some-assembly-required adaptable cliché frames": for example, "X is the new Y," "He's a few Xs short of a Y," or "If Eskimos have N words for snow, X surely have Y words for Z." The Snowclones Database collects and traces the origins of lots of these.
posted on Dec 17, 2007 - View this thread

Over the years millions of children have been introduced to a foreign language by Big Muzzy ^[wiki], a friendly, green, clock-eating monster. Here's the complete British English version of Muzzy in Gondoland on YouTube: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.
posted on Dec 16, 2007 - View this thread

The Four Essential Travel Phrases in 435 languages + 242 dialects + 49 conlangs!
Including Popculture English and more!
See also: I Can Eat Glass...it does not hurt me.
posted on Dec 10, 2007 - View this thread

Reflection's Edge, a monthly fiction zine (back issues), has many resources for writers, including slang/dialect (don't miss the links to Texas Talk, the Internet Guide to Jazz Age Slang, or the 1736 Canting Dictionary), writing advice and interviews, and advice on how to sell your story.
posted on Dec 10, 2007 - View this thread

"Hundreds of thousands of Americans have endured tours of duty in Iraq. They are returning home with a new word on their lips. It will have an impact on the American Experiment, inshallah."
posted on Dec 7, 2007 - View this thread

"In terms of language, it is also the most offensive official Major League baseball document that we have ever seen." An auction house obtains a one page letter sent to baseball players in 1898, outlining the league's new anti-cursing policy. Includes lots of examples of the kind of language that is not allowed. Nervous auctioneers not sure how to exhibit it. Purely of historical interest, naturally.
posted on Dec 2, 2007 - View this thread

Theory of Humor. A scientific paper, written by Tom Veatch, describes his Theory of Humor. When is something funny? When is it not funny? When does it cross the line? Why are puns generally shitty? And the mysterious and magical powers elephant jokes have on children, revealed! A great data set to use for practice in applying the theories presented in the paper can be found here.
posted on Nov 20, 2007 - View this thread

Mango is a new beta service offering free online language lessons. 11 languages available (each with 100 lessons). For English speakers there are lessons in French, German, Italian, Greek, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese and Pig Latin. For Polish and Spanish speakers, lessons in English.
posted on Nov 7, 2007 - View this thread

Don Berto’s Garden. "The plants of the ancient Maya whisper their secrets to those who speak a shared language."
posted on Oct 28, 2007 - View this thread

How The Edwardians Spoke :: BBC documentary via Google Video, about an hour
posted on Oct 19, 2007 - View this thread

Blackburn makes manifest a propensity for turgid language. Not content with foisting “cockalorum” (meaning, boastful talk), “froward” (willfully disobedient) and “mordaciously” (bitingly) on the reader, he may be the first judge to use both “contumelious” (scornful) and “contumacious” (pigheaded) in the same opinion. Judge Robert E. Blackburn's ruling [pdf] granting a motion for a new trial based on attorney misconduct is an interesting read for those who enjoy the use of uncommon, flowery and "big" words.
posted on Oct 14, 2007 - View this thread

Language Log is a great linguistics blog I have been reading, and I thought that Metafilter might be interested in these posts about sex differences in language use. The (less-technical) articles to which the bloggers are responding are all within the responses, so I didn't link to them. The Barry White Effect (voice pitch seems to correlate with reproduction) - Gabby Guys (men talk more than women) - Young Men Talk Like Old Women (usage of certain words) - Gender and Tags ("Certainly we don't seem to find real women and men as sums of the characteristics attributed to them") Are any of these differences actually caused by the speakers sex? The really fascinating thing, to me, is how unbelievably hard it is to study such a distinction.
posted on Oct 1, 2007 - View this thread

A Wicked Deception (youtube). A fun look at (multi) round-trip machine translation. Sadly, it is a simple fattening of Verbindungsyoutube. Of course, humans, as Jules Verne might tell you, can have problems with translations too.
posted on Sep 27, 2007 - View this thread

Increase your pronunciation skills and your vocabulary by checking out 6000 English words recorded by a native speaker. Not enough for you? Then would you believe 20,000 English words recorded by a native speaker?
posted on Sep 25, 2007 - View this thread

Sumerian is the first language for which we have written evidence and its literature the earliest known. The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, a project of the University of Oxford, comprises a selection of nearly 400 translated literary compositions recorded on sources which come from ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and date to the late third and early second millennia BCE. Not enough for you? Why not impress your friends (and confuse your enemies) by translating some english words into Sumerian?
posted on Sep 20, 2007 - View this thread

every two weeks a language becomes extinct. there are ~7,000 human languages on earth, but that number is estimated to halve by the end of the century. swarthmore hosts extensive information about endangered languages, and the mission of the living tongues organization is to preserve and revitalize such languages.
posted on Sep 19, 2007 - View this thread

Multicultural toasting as an accoutrement for Gunther Anderson's guide to making liqueurs at home [ Principles | Science | Materials | Example recipe | and more... ]
posted on Sep 19, 2007 - View this thread

Tips for expressing gender in Japanese. Or, how to avoid becoming a "gaijin peto". Plus: obligatory wikage.
posted on Sep 17, 2007 - View this thread

§7. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

I appreciate you for reading this article. I resent you for snarking in the thread without reading it.
posted on Sep 5, 2007 - View this thread

Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den (See also: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo). Via this thread about the opening to William Gibson's new book.
posted on Sep 2, 2007 - View this thread

Ventiçello is a miniature ceramic village sculpted and photographed by Steven Travis, who also invented a language and script called Tapissary, inspired by American Sign Language, which appears on the images.
posted on Aug 24, 2007 - View this thread

pronunciationguide - for aspiring classical radio announcers
posted on Aug 16, 2007 - View this thread

Similar Diversity is a data visualization of a textual analysis of various religious books spanning several religions, showing the overlap in words, ideas, and meaning. Other infovis religion goodness includes a 90 second geographic history of the world's major religions (previously), a a map gallery of USAian religious adherance (also previously), and a timeline mashup of Jewish and Christian histories.
posted on Aug 5, 2007 - View this thread

American Sign Language Flash Video Dictionary is a high quality, free dictionary with a huge number of signs. It includes specialized dictionaries of religious signs, conversational phrases, and ASL for babies. Unfortunately it's not possible to link to specific signs, but if you look inside you'll find words from "Abbreviate" to "Zoom" and phrases such as "I cannot fasten my belt," "has he been neutered?" "I already took a bath," "are you married?" and "I need a better firewall."
posted on Jul 25, 2007 - View this thread

Translating poetry is really really hard.
posted on Jul 21, 2007 - View this thread

So you want to learn Japanese . . . (Also, a more serious look at the question from a 2005 AskMe)
posted on Jul 10, 2007 - View this thread

Essential tones of music rooted in human speech. Original Duke University paper by Deborah Ross, Jonathan Choi and Dale Purves [pdf].
posted on Jun 28, 2007 - View this thread

Essentalist explanations. Maintained by John Cowan, this list boils down dozens of languages, real, invented, and imaginary, to their pithy essences. "Japanese is essentially 16th-century Chinese, 17th-century Portuguese, 18th-century Dutch, 19th-century French and 20th-century English with an abhorrence of consonant clusters." "Esperanto is essentially Spanish with extra 'x's and 'k's." "Klingon is essentially Arabic spoken through a set of bulky false teeth." "English is essentially a half dozen other languages locked in a small room. They fight."
posted on Jun 25, 2007 - View this thread

Judge bans the word "rape" from a rape trial. Jeffre Cheuvront, a Nebraska judge, "granted a motion by defense attorneys barring the use of the words rape, sexual assault, victim, assailant, and sexual assault kit from the trial of Pamir Safi—accused of raping Tory Bowen in October 2004." This move follows some tightening of language during trials meant to avoid unnecessarily swaying jury members. But has it gone too far this time?
posted on Jun 24, 2007 - View this thread

The story of the strange language of the Pirahã is just as much a story about the state of the field of linguistics. Professor Dan Everett of Illinois State University, who lived for decades with the Pirahã, first as a missionary, then as a linguist, believes Pirahã casts serious doubt upon Chomsky's theory of universal grammar. Chomskyites have started to fight back with a reassessment of Everett's famous paper on the Pirahã, where he claimed that the Pirahã "have no numbers, no fixed color terms, no perfect tense, no deep memory, no tradition of art or drawing, and no words for “all,” “each,” “every,” “most,” or “few”—terms of quantification believed by some linguists to be among the common building blocks of human cognition." He also claims that it doesn't have recursion, a feature of language Chomsky recently claimed was the defining feature of human speech. Dan Everett has rebutted the Chomskyite reassessment of his work. Video interview with Professor Everett. [Pirahã previously covered on MetaFilter in 2004 and 2006]
posted on Jun 18, 2007 - View this thread

Recursion and Human Thought - Why the Piraha don't have numbers
posted on Jun 13, 2007 - View this thread

100 words every high school graduate should know (according to the editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries).
posted on Jun 13, 2007 - View this thread

"50,000 Years of Resilience May Not Save Tribe." A deal to provide a member of the UAE royal family with a personal Tanzanian playground may be the final nail in the coffin for the remaining 1,500 members of the ancient Hadzabe people and their unique language. Read a Westerner's account of living among the Hadzabe here.
posted on Jun 11, 2007 - View this thread

Evan M. O'Dorney, a 13-year-old speller from Danville, Calif., won the 2007 Scripps National Spelling Bee, with the final word "serrefine". Here is an interesting interview with the winner. Did you say my name wrong?
posted on Jun 7, 2007 - View this thread

Super French Web Sites.
posted on Jun 2, 2007 - View this thread