Surviving the Language Jungle
Languages evolve with new words added to our daily word set and others disappearing completely. Most words that have emerged in the past 5 years or so are technology-related with phenomena, job titles and gadgets not known before that. Especially the increased communication that is happening online can take credit for a few ‘words’ that have emerged from it. Acronyms and abbreviations are nowadays very popular among the young population mainly because of saving time when emailing and texting with friends.
Here is a list of words that have recently …
Your path to learning a new language with tips, tools, study guides and resources.
This week just a quick pick from Failblog.org. Life as a translator can be hard – just watch the video:
Image Credit: Failblog.org/Dailymotion
Google just announced on their translate blog that they have added pronunciation to a couple of languages – including Icelandic. Cool, finally we can pronounce our most favorite volcano Eyjafjalla the correct way. Sounds kind of funny but it’s the next step to their babel phone. Just wondering when they add more animal languages to their speech output. Oh, that reminds me of an ad that I just saw the other day – TomTom has just released a Darth Vader voice for their navigation system. Here’s the video:
Image credit: Wikimedia …
Just stumbled across a website called admongo.gov. It’s an American intiative helping kids understand what ads really mean. As ads are part of our everday life (in fact when I look around my computer right now I can see three different ads) it is important for children to understand the ad lingo. So teaching them how advertising works, what advertising is trying you to do etc. will help them make better judgements. They have quite a cool flash-based game that goes through ads (where they are placed, what they try …
I just came back from a couple of days of air travel. Every time I have the same problem: Overweight. I dread the check-in counter as my suitcase feels overweight but I am not entirely sure. I have oftetimes tried to weigh my suitcase on a pair of scales but either I can’t see the weight display or half the suitcase touches the ground. And yes, I have had to repack in front of a super long line-up. Nice to let people see your underwear. So, before you have to …
While half of Europe is covered in ashes (OK, it is just a big ash cloud but nonetheless) air traffic has basically broken down. Apparently airplanes shouldn’t fly through the ashes as the engines might get destroyed. That got me curious of how the engineers know this. As (almost) always, it’s a proven fact: One of the most famous flights through volcano ashes was British Airways flight 9. Within minutes, all four engines stopped working, forcing the pilot to start a gliding flight. While he was trying to restart …
