UCLA Language Materials Project: Main. What concepts do not exist in the English language? Carl Honoré (In Praise of Slow) says Canada's Baffin Island Inuit "use the same word—'uvatiarru'—to mean both 'in the distant past' and 'in the distant future.' Time, in such cultures, is always coming as well as going.
" In an essay by Louise Edrich (Two Languages in Mind, but Just One in the Heart), she writes about learning Ojibwemownin and how "nouns are mainly desginated as alive or dead, animate or inanimate...once I began to think of stones as animate, I started to wonder whether I was picking up a stone or it was putting iteslf in my hand. " I'm fascinated by language reflecting culture and vice versa. Any reference you've run across in passing or even know about as a multi-lingual MeFite is welcome. Moreover, if English isn't your primary language, what words/concepts made you take pause?
Win - Invent Your Own Language In Minutes. From In Other Words. A NOT To Do List for Successful Language Learners. To do lists seem like a good idea in theory, but they have one major disadvantage: there is an infinite number of potential to do items.
With this in mind, Timothy Ferriss, best-selling author of The 4-Hour Workweek (and a speaker of 6 languages), recommends “not to do lists” instead. Since they isolate a finite set of behaviors that are getting between you and your goals, they are far more effective than traditional to do lists. This tool applies perfectly to language learning, where most learners waste a lot of time on ineffective methods and bad materials. Listen to the Podcast To stream the show here on the site, just click the arrow below.
Download the MP3 Subscribe in iTunes Watch the Presentation Lastly, here is a presentation version of the list. Download the PDF Read the Transcript 1. Languages are acquired, not learned. 2. Motivation is one of the greatest keys to success in foreign language learning, and motivation’s favorite fuel is interest. 20 Awesomely Untranslatable Words from Around the World. 20 Obsolete English Words that Should Make a Comeback. Photo: Katherine Hodgson If we all start using them, these words can be resurrected.
DURING MY UNDERGRADUATE studies as a Linguistics major, one of the things that struck me most is the amazing fluidity of language. New words are created; older words go out of style. Words can change meaning over time, vowel sounds shift, consonants are lost or added and one word becomes another. Living languages refuse to be static. The following words have sadly disappeared from modern English, but it’s easy to see how they could be incorporated into everyday conversation.
Takeluma. 01.31.2006 - Language affects half of what we see. UC Berkeley Press Release Language affects half of what we see By William Harms, University of Chicago, and Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley Media Relations | 31 January 2006 BERKELEY – The language we speak affects half of what we see, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago.
Scholars have long debated whether our native language affects how we perceive reality - and whether speakers of different languages might therefore see the world differently. The idea that language affects perception is controversial, and results have conflicted. A paper published this month in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences supports the idea - but with a twist. The paper, "Whorf Hypothesis is Supported in the Right Visual Field but not in the Left," is by Aubrey Gilbert, Richard Ivry and Paul Kay at UC Berkeley and Terry Regier at the University of Chicago.
20+ Ways to Learn a Language Online. Earlier today we mentioned a plugin for AIM that would translate what you type on the fly into another language.
That's an exceptionally useful tool, but the far more fluid and accurate way to speak to people in another language, is to actually learn the language. Thankfully, there are a wide variety of ways to learn languages online, many of them available for free. Below is a list of more than 20 ways you can go from knowing how to say "Hello" to fluency. Language Lessons Now that you've learned the basics, you need to practice. Practice Speaking. The Awful German Language. By Mark Twain A little learning makes the whole world kin. -- Proverbs xxxii, 7.
I went often to look at the collection of curiosities in Heidelberg Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper of it with my German. I spoke entirely in that language. He was greatly interested; and after I had talked a while he said my German was very rare, possibly a "unique"; and wanted to add it to his museum. If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would also have known that it would break any collector to buy it. Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. N. There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. "But when he, upon the street, the (in-satin-and-silk-covered-now-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed) government counselor's wife met," etc., etc. [1] 1.