Archive for the 'language' Category

Typical American Expressions

"Whatever it's background, the tape contains no less than 547 of what it calls “Typical American Expressions”, each with an explanation and an example...read by this rather humorless and mechanical sounding announcer."
 

A Brief History of HTML

Brief summary of HTML through the years.
 

The day I had my brain switched off

Discusses new advances in neuroscience, which imply that language is understood using larger portions of the brain than previously thought.
 

The Cosmopolitan Tongue: The Universality of English

"The main loss when a language dies is not cultural but aesthetic. The click sounds in certain African languages are magnificent to hear. In many Amazonian languages, when you say something you have to specify, with a suffix, where you got the information. The Ket language of Siberia is so awesomely irregular as to seem a work of art."
 

Westinghouse Time Capsules

Two time capsules buried at Flushing Meadow, to be uncovered 5000 years after being buried.
 

Word pronunciation in Icelandic (Íslenska)

Icelandic segment of Forvo, tagline: All the words in the world. Pronounced.
 

The Hottest Rhetorical Device of Campaign ‘08

"Your temper is very quick, my friend. But until you learn to master your rage—" "Your rage will become your master? That's what you were gonna say, right? Right?" "...Not necessarily."
 

Babel’s Nobel

A number of statistical approaches to the history of the Nobel Prize, centered on the languages written in by the winners.
 

IMDb Language browser

The result of trying to figure out if there were any movies that I could have watched in High School Latin. The lists include any movie that includes the given language. So it could be more interesting. Also, the >/< 500 division seems sort of silly.
 

List of Latin phrases (full)

Vale! I took Latin in middle school and high school for a total of 5 years, I think. I'd be hard pressed to remember much of it now, but I did manage to test out of it during college. Luckily this list exists of all that can be said in Latin. (dead, bah!)
 

Double-Tongued Dictionary: Slang, jargon, and new words from the fringes of English.