Archive for Languages
As I’ve been slowly learning Spanish via Duolingo, I’ve found the large number of cognates between Spanish and English very useful. Sometimes, false cognates get in the way; the most common example I see of that is the word embarazada, which English monoglots may assume means “embarrassed,” but which instead means “pregnant.” But setting aside […]
From Vanity Fair: “Alicia Vikander Teaches You Swedish Slang,” a 4-minute video. I initially assumed this was a straight-faced joke, with Vikander (the Swedish actress who’s playing Lara Croft in the new Tomb Raider movie) making stuff up; but no, apparently these are real Swedish slang phrases. Though some commenters suggest that some of her […]
Why do we have more days set aside to honor stuff than things?
Interesting article: “Understand Why [the Spanish pronoun] ‘Usted’ Is Sometimes Abbreviated ‘Vd.’” (Originally published in 2006.)
Article from 2012 about Sweden’s new gender-neutral pronoun.
Some common exceptions to the usual rule in Spanish that words that end in -o are grammatically masculine-gendered and words that end in -a are grammatically feminine-gendered.
Two reference sites that provide conjugations for verbs in many languages: bab.la Verbix
The Asian Art Museum’s online collection includes a dish labeled as Foliated dish with bird, deer, wasps, and monkey, from the Ming dynasty (specifically the period corresponding to 1567-1572). The images on the plate turn out to be a rebus. (See also column YY.) The images include, among other elements, a bird, a deer, some […]
Lovely, long, fascinating, thought-provoking article about languages going dormant/extinct, and languages being revived, and colonialism, and more, from a Marxist or at least Leftist perspective: “Salvaging the Dormant: On Language,” by Sarah Grey. Includes discussion of updating languages for modern use; of appropriate terminology around the death or dormancy of languages; of forcing Native American […]
Back in March, I watched an episode of the original Mission: Impossible TV series, which led me to look the show up on Wikipedia. I was amused by the paragraph...