When we experience a sensation, we feel it; when something “makes sense” we get it; when we “get a sense” of something, we understand it; and when something is entirely senseless, it is stupid, out of touch with reality. The...
Many a quarrel has ended with a search for the nearest dictionary. The answer to a question of connotation versus denotation, implied or explicit meaning, and historical, social, or academic understanding of a term finds an ending point with a...
Over the past year or so I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon: people are showing up in cafeterias and break rooms carrying tiny plastic boxes or tins filled with elegantly arranged or cutely flourished lunch items. Their sandwiches may look like...
Today marks the first unofficial day of Fall and where I am, at least, the weather is starting to cloud up and cool off a bit and the kids are back in school. To celebrate the close of summer, the...
It’s that time of the year again, the application cycle for graduate programs across the nation is about to start. Applying to any program is a daunting task, whether it be a certificate program or a PhD. Simply finding the...
One of my favorite web comics is Anders Loves Maria by Renee Engström. The comic follows the story of Anders and Maria, two artists living in Stockholm. I love the complexity of the storyline—it jumps between past and present—and Engström’s...
Irish speakers will now be able to use Google’s online translation tools to translate web documents into Gaeilge. In addition to translating specific pages and text, the tool allows users to search English webpages with Irish keywords. “Web results about...
This summer feels like it has been, the summer of food. Between the premiers of movies like Food Inc. and Julie and Julia, the buzz around New York Times food critic Frank Bruni’s retirement , and the usual food and...
Four hundred years ago today (August 25), Galileo Galilei (Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de’ Galilei) demonstrated the use of a telescope to the Venetian senate. His telescope, a simple leather tube with lenses at either end (it magnified objects by...
Over the past few days I managed to pack up all of my belongings into cardboard boxes, meticulously arrange them in a U-Haul truck, drive almost five hundred miles north, unload the truck, and then unpack everything. If nothing else,...
Malaysia, the South Asian country straddling the Malay Peninsula and the South China Sea is home to over twenty-seven million people. Malaysia was, until recently, one of the more stable economic powers in the region, even given its tumultuous history....
The current debate over health care has some people in a panic, and many of the concerns being voiced (such as the concern over granny-killing government death panels), are unfounded and irrational. Judging by the news coverage of recent town-hall...
David Barnett posted a lovely etymology of the word “hack” in today’s UK Guardian Book Blog. In it he chronicles the rise and fall of the word, with all its connotations from a horse to a paltry writer to a...
As soon as I wrote the post, A Note on Arab Literacy and Translation, a number of issues arose in my mind, some in relation to the UN’s Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) and some in relation to my own...
Like most of our readers, I look forward to the weekly “On Language” columns in the New York Times—if only for the reason that it’s one of the places I actually enjoy reading political news and commentary. So, last week...
I’m fascinated by invented languages. When I was younger I remember my mother telling me the story of our family friends who met in college and fell head over heels in love. Their method of communication: Elvish, as in J.R.R....
Greece annually translates five times more books from English than the entire Arab world, and currently, 65 million Arab adults are illiterate. These sobering statistics are thanks to the U.N.’s first Arab Human Development Report published back in 2002 which...
Here’s to Friday, and to making it on the Lexiophile’s list of the Top 100 Language Blogs of 2009! Thanks to everyone who voted. Since it’s customary to raise a glass and toast in celebration, here is a language lovers...
During summer, I can’t say no to a scoop or two of ice cream. So when Mark Dow’s latest Happy Days blog post, No Choice about the Terminology: On pleasure, perception and the language of ice cream came to my...
The other evening as I was watching Werner Herzog’s latest film, Encounters at the End of the World, I was struck by an interview about half way through. In the scene, Herzog and his crew enter a greenhouse at around...
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