Take This Sign to the I.C.U. – Stat!
So I’m sitting at the Virginia Hospital Center, waiting as my poor hubby undergoes back surgery for a herniated disk, and I decided to pay a visit to the ladies’ room before heading to get some lunch. I was saddened — no, embarrassed — no, horrified — no, ASHAMED when I saw this sign above the toilet. Even if you only took some high school Spanish back in the last Ice Age, you probably know that “please” in Spanish is “por favor”. It’s NOT “for favor”. The English says sanitary napkins OR paper towels. The Spanish leaves off all mention …read more
If You Think Dictionaries Are Boring, You’re Sorely Mistaken.
When I was doing my M.A. in Spanish Linguistics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, I took a class called “Spanish-Catalan-French-English Lexicography”. It was about writing multilingual dictionaries in those languages. The professor, a man who was probably no younger than 80, taught the class all in Catalan. There were four students, and two didn’t speak Catalan. They dropped out after the first class. I don’t remember much else about that class except that I was seriously bored. So when I saw an article entitled “Even Dictionary Writers Have Souls“, published in yesterday’s Business Insider, I almost skipped it. I’m …read more
Dancing for Charity
It is time for the Big Dance. I’m not talking about some sort of prom or recital. Nor am I talking about those ballroom lessons you’ve long since forgotten. It’s NCAA Tournament Time! Okay, so you probably aren’t as excited about it as I am, but you’ll have to forgive me. I may have spent the last 19 years of my life in the DC area (with a few breaks here and there for my M.A. in Spain and sundry foreign and domestic travel), but I was raised in Indiana, and you know what that means: Hoops Hoopla. I’m not …read more
Inmate to British Columbia Corrections Department: Bite Me!
Poor Reza Eshghabadi. He’s been languishing as an inmate at Fraser Regional Correctional Centre for opium smuggling. He’s also 52 and has no teeth. None. Why? Well, it appears he used to have 10, but back in November 2009, the prison dentist pulled them because they were rotting. And ever since then, he’s had to barter chocolate for soft foods like mashed potatoes and soup and jello because he has no means to chew. Mr. Eshghabadi was not provided with an interpreter when the dentist asked him if he could pull those ten rotten teeth, and Mr. Eshghabadi consented without …read more
There’s an old joke…
… that says: “What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual. How about three languages? Trilingual. What about one language? American.” I know I won’t be hitting the comedy club circuit anytime soon, but the point is that Americans are only recently coming to the table in language learning and seeing the benefits of speaking other languages. A study in the 1950s showed that bilingual people actually scored lower on intelligence tests. But research in the 1960s proved the opposite. It’s no wonder people are confused — and monolingual! Now it has come to light that bilingual people …read more
That Virgin Can Sure Shake Her Booty
That got your attention, didn’t it? Just further proof to the fact that there’s always more than one way to translate a word, I’d like to point out that the latest edition of the New American Bible, coming out on March 9, is going to change “booty” to “spoils” (because “booty” is generally now reserved for shakin’ and callin’) and “virgin” to “young woman” (because the source word in Hebrew, “almah”, doesn’t necessary mean that the girl is a virgin). The former is semantics. The latter could have interesting repercussions. Never a dull moment in this field, I say!
There’s an App for that!
Maybe only someone like me would be excited by this, but now there’s a terrific app for the Android platform: the Oxford Dictionary of English. You can amaze and dazzle your friends about the common usage of a word as it is used today, the etymology of the word, what it used to mean and multiple examples of the word in use. It even has “Laodicean”, the winning word from the 2009 National Spelling Bee. Fun!
Six Degrees of Watson
For those of you who haven’t seen or figured it out, I was on Jeopardy!. Won twice and made a tidy sum (enough to buy the dining room set my husband told me pre-show was too expensive, put some hardwood floors in, and go to the Inn at Little Washington, plus put an equal amount of money from these purchases into the bank). Having said that, Watson — and Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter — would have smushed me. Like a bug. Apparently, though, New Jersey Congressman Rush Holt managed to survive against Watson for quite a while (though he …read more
Crowdsourcing Gone Right
Here’s an excellent example of where “crowdsourcing” (delegating a task to a large diffuse group, usually without monetary compensation) has gone right. In Taiwan, the public was asked to report any incorrect signs they found in English. As a result, 72 signs with strange wording or grammatical mistakes have been fixed. Things like “steamed pork bun” had been translated as “hot meat package”. Yikes!
