Hi Thanks both of you for your quick replies! Would it be 'wrong' to use the kanji throughout for my list? ('wrong', 'right', i mean, it has to be understood by the 'average' non-glott/sso-maniac Japanese.) It would make my job slightly easier: i don't always find the version in hiragana, and i can ...

Hi all, I'm currently working on a list of (English) grammatical terms in various languages, and i'm a bit stuck with the Japanese terms / scripts. The purpose of the list is to provide the "easiest" term, the most known term, but for most of them i find two versions. For example: Japanese...

STEVEDORE ETYMOLOGY: Spanish estibador, from estibar, to stow, from Latin stipare, to pack. Just amazed how the third consonant has migrated from /p/ to /b/ and then to /v/. Hi, Intervocalic -p- becomes voiced before stressed vowel. Intervocalic -b- becomes voiced fricative, which sounds like -v- (...

Our shameless willingness to invent, play with, and assimilate other languages are part of the reason for English's wide appeal, influence and distribution. Don't forget the sometimes brutal colonisation of big parts of this world, the post war Anglosaxon, but especially American entertainment indu...

I am always fascinated when an etymology traces a word or syllable back to Proto IndoEuropean. While there are some resources on the Web (according unto the Great Google), I have never been able to find anything approaching a PIE glossary or dictionary -- something approaching a complete vocabulary...

Portuguese is a Slavic language, right? :wink: :-), reminds me of my first visit to Lisbon. I overheard a few people on the table next to me and i was wondering which Slavic language they spoke. It turned out, indeed, to be Prtgs. Even after a slightly longer stay in Portugal, i found Spanish easie...

Hi all, My apologies for x-posting this one... Yesterday i was talking with a student from Chili, in Dutch and in Spanish. He hardly made the "typical mistake" of putting an /e/ before the word initial clusters /sp-/, /st-/. The majority of my hispanophone (yes?) students produce something...

Hi all, I've recently come across some people from Fujian and i find it very hard to understand them when they're talking Mandarin. E.g. their /n/ (both in initial as in final position) comes very close to an /l/, to name the clearest difference. Is anybody here familiar with the variant of _Mandari...

A friend of mine once reminded me: "Never attribute to malice what could be explained by sheer stupidity." Or both together... The attempts to implement creationism into the science curriculum (which is almost as absurd as teaching French in the German courses] shows that ignorance (aka s...

I am surprized you say that, BD, but I agree. There is nothing wrong with Spanish, but if a person wants to get somewhere here in the US, English is a must, and just speaking Spanish is not going to be an advantage if you leave your barrio. Out of curiosity: is there an official languages / officia...

The Old English diminutive of man, mannikin "little man", was borrowed by French as mannequin , which English then recovered but only after the meaning had changed to "dummy". I'm afraid that this statement is hardly defendable. French mannequin is found back in texts around 145...

...
What surprises me a bit is that the name seems to be pronounced as [shvāke] (?)

Frank, that's because his name is not written «Svejk» but rather «Švejk». My favourite book....

Oh, what surprised me is not the s with, erm, hasek, but the vowel sound...

F

A great novel - I remember nearly splitting my sides reading it when it first appeared. But as good as Heller's novel is, it pales before its predecessor of four decades - Jaroslav Hašek's Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války . It's been a long time that i read that one. Ah, where is the ti...

Hi,

My apologies for x-posting this one.

Does anybody here have experience with teaching FL/SL to blind people? Or can somebody point out some articles/publications about this.

Thanks in advance,

Groetjes,

Frank

Oops, I wrote: (2) or the Flemish way: /x2:s/ x=voiceless gutural spirant (in Flanders <g> is different from Dutch Dutch <g>) It should be voiced of course!!! I guess this helps exlpain the saying ' having a case of the geux' meaning a rebel or malcontent, but i wood rather have a case of gueuze, wi...