MetaFilter posts tagged with language

Python + C = Go. Google's Programming Language

FusiveResonance — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:06:37 -0800

Say hello to googles new concurrent programming language Compiles faster than c/c++ and runs just as fast. Garbage collection + concurrency included

Voices from WWI speak again in British Library

jefficator — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:04:33 -0800

"It is the business of educated people to speak so that no-one may be able to tell in what county their childhood was passed." Despite efforts by Victorians to eradicate them, dialects of English in Great Britain continue to vary greatly, much to the consternation of many traditionalists. But a recently acquired archive is giving new insight into old dialects--some of which no longer exist. Recorded in a WWI prisoner of war camp on shellac disks, the archive was part of an effort by German linguists to study regional variation in the English language. A report by PRI's The World includes a brief synopsis--and a powerful rendition of a beloved Scottish ballad by a homesick soldier.

Is this survey OK by you?

escabeche — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:12:22 -0800

The Survey of American Jewish Language and Identity reports on the results of an online survey of 25,179 American Jews and 4,874 American Gentiles. Non-Jews say "klutz" but not "schmutz." The more Orthodox you are, the more likely you are to say "Good Shabbos" instead of "Shabbat Shalom." And so much more you'll plotz.

Flatpots, Fire Corals, and Four Blasters

Iridic — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:39:44 -0800

A Common Nomenclature for Lego Families.

I say potato, you say...potato!

Gyan — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:46:09 -0800

Would it be inherently evil if there were not 6,000 spoken languages but one?

Hasta la vista, Gertrude Chataway.

goodnewsfortheinsane — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 07:56:54 -0800

Veto is a four-letter word (google quickview, here's the PDF):.Governor Schwarzenegger of California, at odds with the state legislature but ever the poet, vetoes Assembly Bill 1176 with a nice little acrostic.

Goodbye, "Leih Hou Ma," Hello "Ni Hao Ma!"

zarq — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:57:09 -0800

"Chinatown" communities across the United States (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco) are undergoing a shift in linguistic identity, as recent immigrants are more likely to natively speak Mandarin (the official spoken language of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan,) instead of Cantonese. Also see these anecdotal reports about similar changes in Vancouver and Oakland, CA. Good news for the tri-literate: signs like this may soon become commonplace. :) The Language Atlas of China The PopUp Chinese Podcast and Arch Chinese site provide basic Mandarin lessons. Also see: Mango, ZhongWen and LiveMocha

Hen Kerlien

Greg Nog — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:49:36 -0800

Hen Kerlien (or, hěn kě lián). For when an anglophone needs a phrase that suggests a child walking alone in the world.

With a little persistence... and Verner's Law!... you can tackle most any problem.

languagehat — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:12:43 -0800

Verner's Law. Ari Hoptman (his website) explains early Germanic sound laws to his young friend Frankie, who has tossed aside his copy of Braune’s Gothic grammar in disgust. If you want to know what makes historical linguists tick, this is a great way to find out. Warning: links to seven-minute YouTube with two sequels; disclaimer: I myself have a copy of Braune’s Gotische Grammatik within arm’s reach and I have spent time reading the Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung, so I may be especially susceptible to jokes about William Jones, the Brothers Grimm, and Danish linguists. (Via Wordorigins.org, and I will quote Dave Wilton's warning about the third segment: "This last video gets pretty dry, so unless you are really interested in the mechanisms of consonant shifts in early Germanic languages, you may want to skip ahead to the last two minutes.")

감사합니다, 세종대왕!

bardic — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 03:55:04 -0800

October 9th is 한글날, or Hangul Day. Hangul is the Korean alphabet, and it has a fascinating history, so let's celebrate! (YT). Better yet, here are some videos that will help you learn Hangul for yourself: [Introduction] [Advanced] [Hangul Rap!] [Beginner's Vocabulary]

INFORMATION; SEASPEAK

TheophileEscargot — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:11:28 -0800

INFORMATION; SEASPEAK IS A RESTRICTED LANGUAGE USING SIMPLE STANDARD PHRASES FOR CLEAR COMMUNICATION AT SEA; OVER.
ADVICE; BEGIN EACH PHRASE WITH MESSAGE MARKERS SUCH AS INSTRUCTION, ADVICE, WARNING, INFORMATION, QUESTION, ANSWER, REQUEST, INTENTION; OVER.
QUESTION; ARE THERE RELATED LANGUAGES; OVER.
ANSWER; YES AIR SPEAK, TUNNELSPEAK; OUT.

Please Call Me Hararie

netbros — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:54:40 -0800

Japanese Element Symbols is an introduction for non-Japanese to the Japanese language through Kanji symbols, its alphabet, elements of Japan's culture, and what to expect on the culinary front.

Rebranding Redux

Ruthless Bunny — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 08:05:49 -0800

Pecsi, or Pepsi it doesn't matter, as long as you drink our sugar water. Want to sound like a native? Which one? This article can help you achieve that. That's the quick version, if you want something more academic, try this.

You say poe-TAY-toe.

not_on_display — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:03:53 -0800

Forvo: All the words in the world, pronounced by native speakers. At the time of this post, the tally stands at: 327,492 words; 239,165 pronunciations; in 220 languages; with 25,040 users submitting.

The Lithuanian Press Ban, 1864-1904

mdonley — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 12:17:27 -0800

From 1864 to 1904, the Russian Empire tried to quelch the nationalism of Lithuanians by ordering all Lithuanian texts to be printed with Cyrillic characters instead of in the Latin-derived Lithuanian or Polish alphabets. But they didn't count on the Knygnešiai - the Booksmugglers. Working in Lithuanian-speaking areas of East Prussia, now the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and parts of the Polish voivodeship of Warmia and Masuria, and with texts printed locally and sometimes from as far away as the United States, many thousands of people over the decades worked to transmit books, leaflets, journals, and other written works over the heavily guarded border, risking imprisonment and exile to Siberia; over three thousand people were caught. A harrowing recollection of what it was like to dodge the military patrols can be found here. The movement also was assisted by a network of clandestine "village" lessons in the language outside the school system, organized through local churches and civic organizations. The Lithuanian National Movement, active before independence, used the language to resist Russification and, later, promote the cause for an independent state. When Lithuania became independent again in the early 1990s, the back of the 5-lita banknote featured an image of a sculpture of a woman teaching a child to read Lithuanian in defiance of the press ban. The anti-Lithuanian language effort had been part of Tsar Alexander II's Russification campaign across all of the lands Russia had absorbed through the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the Uprising of 1863, St. Petersburg attempted to create a divide between the Polonized Catholic nobility, the szlachta, and the Lithuanian-speaking rural populations in order to allow Russian language and culture to supplant the Catholic, Latin heritage left behind by the Commonwealth. Today, Lithuanian is spoken by between four and five million people, has made a cameo appearance on CSI: New York, and, like everyone these days, has a podcast. Lithuanian has also been the focus of much attention in linguistics circles for its links to Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the theoretical progenitor to all the Indo-European languages. Some early texts in Lithuanian can be found at the University of Texas at Austin's Linguistics Research Center here. Check out some Indo-European roots yourself with this Google Books preview of the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. And this year, Vilnius hosts the European Capital of Culture title together with Linz, Austria. It's a quick hop from most of Europe and an amazing destination for anyone into the culture and history of the region.

500 constructed languages.

escabeche — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:03:14 -0800

Amabil amico, Con grand satisfaction mi ha lect tei letter de le mundolingue. Arika Okrent, author of the new book In The Land of Invented Languages, lists 500 constructed languages, from the well-known (Esperanto, Volapuk, Loglan) to the utterly obscure (Neulatein, Rosentalographia, Mundolingue.) MetaFilter's own languagehat reviews the book. Okrent writes about Klingonophones in Slate. Alternatively, you might choose to learn not to speak Esperanto. Previously on MetaFilter, all you wanted to know about Loglan/Lojban but were too syntactically ambiguous to ask.

languages and thought

dhruva — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:52:10 -0800

How does our language shape our thinking? :"What we have learned is that people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world."

"It's a Secret to Everybody"

empath — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 19:26:00 -0800

"It's a secret to everybody" -- an unbelievably comprehensive blog post about the etymologies of the names of famous (and not-so-famous) video game characters.

The Linguists

idiomatika — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:22:21 -0800

A film (1 hour) about disappearing languages: The Linguists "Like modern-day explorers, the two academics featured in The Linguists travel to forgotten places around the globe to unearth rare treasures—in this case, endangered languages. On a shoestring budget, professors David Harrison and Gregory Anderson navigate difficult terrain, searching for speakers of these forgotten and mostly hidden languages. While more than 7,000 different languages are currently spoken around the world, many are rapidly disappearing. Language diversity is shrinking as colonialism and economic unrest destroy traditional tribal tongues. When young people abandon their ancestral language, the passive suppression of their culture begins, and soon those languages will cease to exist. Joining a traditional ceremony in a remote village in India, observing a Kallawaya healing ritual in Bolivia, and completing an arduous journey into Siberia are all part and parcel of heeding the urgent call. The word connoisseurs are well suited for the monumental task of researching and documenting native tongues; they speak 25 languages between them. These humble ethnographers are in a race against time to preserve the increasingly rare words, which are intricately linked to the vanishing traditions and heritage of Indigenous populations. Well-paced and laced with humor, The Linguists serves as an insightful, contemporary adventure film with a strong emphasis on cultural history." Note: Link doesn't seem to work in Opera.

Base 26

hortense — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:17:06 -0800

Java Demo: "four-letter words have a special status in the english language and culture. counting in at over 1650 words,...this small project is an attempt to give a spacial overview of the entirety of this part of english language heritage, as well as to explore and visualize relations between all those words."

'Critique' is a noun. If you want a verb, try 'criticise'.

blasdelf — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:07:01 -0800

Some common solecisms (grammatical absurdities) from the Style Guide of The Economist

Mi Vida Loca

skoosh — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:32:08 -0800

Courtesy of the BBC, an award-winning mystery masquerading as a language education program. Mi Vida Loca is a rather interesting series of interactive, self-guided Spanish conversation exercises for English-speaking users; what's novel about them is that they are embedded within a "you are there" story about a woman whose job as a journalist has apparently earned her some shady enemies. Simple tasks like paying for a meal or buying a bus ticket take on a heightened urgency as you struggle not only to learn the language and make your way around a foreign country, but also to catch up with your mysterious new friend and find out what's really going on. The series recently (as in about a week ago) won a BAFTA TV Craft Award for Interactive Innovation - Service Platform.

Glyphs...in...spaaaaaaace!

googly — Fri, 22 May 2009 08:40:35 -0800

What 13,500 pages micro-etched into nickel looks like. The Long Now Blog presents some fantastic photos of the data side of the Rosetta Disk, which archives more than 1500 languages on 13000+ pages. Bit of eye strain? No problem: the Rosetta Project offers an interactive version that allows you to browse the text. [previously]

O! Mesopotamia!

lolichka — Mon, 18 May 2009 10:58:09 -0800

Rev. George Whitefield, an 18th century preacher much admired by Benjamin Franklin, was an astonishing orator. According to a contemporary source, he "could make his audiences weep or tremble merely by varying his pronunciation of the word Mesopotamia. Garrick once said, 'I would give a hundred guineas if I could only say 'O!' like Mr. Whitefield.'"

Look at all the pretty words

Dumsnill — Tue, 12 May 2009 07:58:56 -0800

A few weeks from now, English will have it's millionth word. Or will it? Probably not.