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BBC: Last speaker of ancient language of Bo dies in India
The last speaker of an ancient language in India's Andaman Islands has died at the age of about 85, a leading linguist has told the BBC.
Professor Anvita Abbi said that the death of Boa Sr was highly significant because one of the world's oldest languages - Bo - had come to an end.
She said that India had lost an irreplaceable part of its heritage.
Languages in the Andamans are thought to originate from Africa. Some may be 70,000 years old.
The islands are often called an "anthropologist's dream" and are one of the most linguistically diverse areas of the world. Current Mood:  sad |
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Dec. 23rd, 2009 @ 02:54 pm
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Could any German-speaking linguafags check this naughty sentence I tried to compose in German?
"Aktive Männer, die nicht verstanden haben, dass Arschlecken zu den Aufgaben eines aktiven Mannes gehört, gefallen mir nicht."
I think it's correct, but not sure. Also, is there a way to say it without turning Arschlecken into a noun... like could you include "zu Arsch lecken" in some way? |
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Kalender creates a dodecadehron PDF, regular or rhomboid, which you can print out and put together yourself.
They've got 49 languages and 7 writing systems. Of note are some of the minority languages available including Albanian; Basque; Breton, Irish, & Welsh; Catalán, Galician, Occitan; Esperanto; Estonian; Faroese, Icelandic; Latvian, Lithuanian; and Luxembourgish.
(N.B.: I have no connection whatsoever with the programmer or program other than as a user who thinks it's cool.)Current Mood:  geeky |
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When I'm listening to my favorite Lebanese singers like Nancy Ajram and Nawal Al-Zoghbi, I'd love to know which Arabic they're using. Are they using Modern Standard Arabic, or Levantine Arabic, or Egyptian Arabic (which I'm told is frequently used for media even outside of Egypt or its vicinity), or some other Arabic entirely? I want to study popular music in Arabic and am wonderful what I'll have to arm myself with in order to carry out these studies. Thanks! |
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How would you say "to lead on" in Spanish? I mean it in the context of a romantic relationship, like when a person makes you think that they like you before telling you that they don't.
Muchas gracias
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| » Typography, typesetting, proofreading, and so forth... |
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So, I hardly ever post actual entries on here; usually I reserve my two cents for commenting. But! I require some input if anyone has some to give...
For work, I'm putting together a proofreader "style guide" for when we do desktop publishing/layout of translated documents. However, it's a pain in the you-know-what to find decent resources for different languages, or at least I haven't had much luck so far. What I'm asking is if anyone knows of any websites that deal with typesetting/style rules for different languages, or books, or any other resources. The kind of stuff I'm looking for is:
- when you have a line break, where in a word is it OK to stick a hyphen?
- how do you do date/time/units of measurement format?
- what are the language's punctuation/quotation marks, and the rules that govern it?
- same deal, for spacing, or capitalization? (if the language doesn't capitalize, what would be an appropriate substitute?)
- are there cases where it's not okay to break a line? (ex. separating a word from its case-ending particle)
- can you tell me some common abbreviations?
- any other peculiarities or conventions that I should know about?
That kind of thing. Right now, I'm especially concentrating on European, East and Southeast Asian, and Indian languages, but any and all feedback is welcome. You can either shoot me an email at zepooka@yahoo.com or I guess comment here if you know of any convenient resources, or if you just feel like clueing me in to a rule. Thanks very much in advance for your help. :)
(x-posted to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif?v=92.2) linguaphiles)
Jun. 20th, 2009 @ 07:40 pm
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| » Backgrounding |
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Good morning, fellow language-lovers. I'm in the process of starting my own business to do translations (among other things), and came across Translators Base.
Anyone have any experience with the site? Is it legitimate? Worth spending the money on a membership? If you'd rather say your piece privately, you can write me at my LJ mail (lovecraftienne@livejournal.com).
Crossposted to translateplease, linguaphiles, translators.
May. 15th, 2009 @ 10:18 am
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| » Crash course in Italian? |
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Hey folks. I'm going to be spending a week and a half in Italy visiting my sister and her fiance's family, many of whom don't speak English, and I was hoping for some advice on a 'crash course' in Italian. I speak passable French and Spanish, which helps a LOT in understanding Italian (I can read Harry Potter-level books without too much trouble), but listening comprehension varies hugely from region to region; when I visited my uncle in Verona I had very little trouble following the conversation, but last time I visited my sister in Florence, her friends/family were WAY harder for me to understand. I can generally make myself understood to the ones who don't speak english with a shoddy mix of Spanish and my VERY limited Italian but... this is less than idea. I'm basically wondering if anyone has advice for a way to get a crash course in Italian, especially speaking, that can make use of my background in Spanish and French to speed up the process. It's not desperate, as there are plenty people among the group who are bilingual and can translate if necessary, but as the resident linguageek in the family I feel I should make an effort. Thoughts?
(Crossposted to Linguaphiles)
Feb. 22nd, 2009 @ 08:49 pm
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| » Happy belated birthday |
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A happy belated birthday to linguafags. I just noticed, when I discovered the term WoWfag that we all may have had something to do with the use of fag to mean 'fanatic'. linguafags was created in January 2005, and look at what it's grown into!
So, happy birthday linguafags, and (someone may need to confirm this, but...) congratulations everyone for pre-empting 4chan and /b/ in adopting 'fag'. For bonus browniefag points: can anyone identify when /b/ and anonfags started using -fag?
Feb. 9th, 2009 @ 08:10 pm
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| » American Sign Language - Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay & Trans |
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As a follow-up to my last post asking about the sign for "Trans," here's a video with all the signs demonstrated.
( LBGT in Sign )
The trans sign seems to be a very regional thing.
( Responses I've recieved )
Feb. 5th, 2009 @ 06:25 pm
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