Miscellaneous
Language cartoons
Tweet Here is a link with a series of cartoons about language. Any one of them would go well on a teacher’s door……. http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/clpp/images/cartoons/cartoons.html
The Value of Multilingualism
Tweet This post is excerpted from an article which appeared on www.freshbusinessthinking.com. The information was harvested in the UK — a similar study in the U.S. would be welcome. Why wait for the studies though? In our hunt for greater exports, this could be important: Cardiff University’s 2007 ‘Costing Babel’ research revealed that UK businesses miss […]
Idiom translator
Tweet For people studying other languages, there is a new site which translates idioms, www.idiomizer.com/idioms/. I find that reviewing the literal translations of idioms in other languages curls the mind. I entered, “You can’t have it both ways” and got the following responses: Meaning in English: you cannot achieve inherently contradictory goals Chinese: 魚和熊掌不可兼得 Literal […]
Song lyrics as a language form
Tweet The students in my English as a Second Language (ESL) class will be writing an essay about their “immigrant experience.” I put that in quotation marks because a student is not really an immigrant, but he or she experiences the same culture shocks as an immigrant does, the same homesickness, and the same rebellion […]
English is too easy
Tweet The Hungarian government is suggesting that Hungarians should not study English because it is too easy. As a native speaker of English, I disagree. Its fluid syntax, muddled history (which continues to influence the language today), weird spelling, and many dialects makes it a tapestry of great complexity. The Hungarians, however, have a language […]
Linguistics Olympiad
Tweet The Linguistics Olympiad is an opportunity for students interested in computational linguistics to compete internationally. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Linguistics_Olympiad I took a look at the sample problems. They were too challenging for me, which is a good sign. I am not focused on computational linguistics, so I should not have been able to solve them. If I […]
It pays to know another language
Tweet When I was young, my ability to speak French, Italian, and Spanish was pretty useless professionally, unless I wanted to teach. Businesses made the assumption that “Everybody speaks English.” In Europe at that time, I was routinely expected to speak at least two languages, and most people spoke more than that, so speaking another […]
Teaching linguistics in U.S. high school
Tweet Teacher Suzi Loosen taught linguistics in her high school last year, and has provided a full, detailed report to the Linguistlist. She gives not only exercises and activities, but also reports on their success, and the student reaction. The top rated activity was a “pidgin dinner” during which it was forbidden to speak English. […]
The Web of Language blog
Tweet U. of Illinois professor Dennis Baron publishes an occasional blog called The Web of Language (http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage) which is well worth following. His latest posting (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/clpp/images/cartoons/cartoons.html) contains cartoons about various language policy issues, including one in Hungarian, and one which points out that the first publication of the Declaration of Independence was in German. He […]
New book: Grammar Matters: The Social Significance of How We Use Language
Tweet Jila Ghomeshi writes about many aspects of language from a social and historical point of view. We have a tendency, for example, to judge as unintelligent those people who don’t use language in the same way we do. Ghomeshi helps us understand why this is an unproductive way to evaluate others. She writes of […]