United States language map

Mad Minerva told me about a language map that shows the percentages and numbers of language speakers in the US. You can view the entire United States or any individual state, and you can do a search of a wide variety of languages wherever you want. It also gives a breakdown of languages spoken in each of the states. Such nerdy fun!

Learn French at the BBC

The BBC site is excellent for lots of info and educational resources. Recently someone asked me about a good site to learn French, and while there are a lot of good resources out there, I highly recommend the BBC French site because it contains video, text, and audio. I've been sick for the past few days, so I haven't been able to do much, but once I get better I'm going to digest as much as I can of this site! Check it out.

I have a podcast

I've recently created a podcast called Radiogirl, and I post a new episode each week. Each pod is around 10 minutes, so it's easy to digest :D

A recurring "guest" is Simon Badinter, an interesting French guy who I interviewed this past summer. I met him at a Chicago radio station and we got along, so I took a risk by asking him to join my podcast, and he agreed.

I also talk to other interesting folks, including some snowboarders I met at another Chicago radio station. In my most recent podcast, after I talk to Simon about breakfast in Paris, the snowboarders explain what some snowboarding words mean in plain English. I also read an email from the seemingly nice translator and language blogger Sarah Dillon, who complimented me on the podcast and has even subscribed (thanks for that!).

In the future, you might see some posts here relating to my podcast if I cover language-related stuff over there.

My podcast is on iTunes and you can also subscribe to get free updates.

Enjoy and feel free to let me know what you think.

Invented languages

I found an online artificial language lab with a list of invented languages and various data and commentary. There's no "about" section, so I don't know why the guy set up the site, but it's interesting and he really seems to love language!

There's also a faq page, including explanations on why artificial languages are "useful and interesting".

I just ate some Indonesian bread

A friend came over whose parents are visiting from Indonesia, and they gave him some Indonesian bread, which he graciously shared with me. It was very good, though had zero fiber, I'm sure, and was tasty enough to be considered dessert, because it was totally soft and a little sweet. It actually tasted like challah, which is so good, I have to refrain from getting a loaf lest I eat it for every meal until it's gone.

When I think of Indonesia, I don't think "bread", and I've even been there and bread is not what I saw all around. I remember eating a lot of things that aren't common in the West, and it never occurred to me to even look for bread.

The bread I ate was from Saint Anna bakery, and I even found a description of it, though it's in Bahasa Indonesia, which looks cool but I can't understand.

Hebrew site

A guy living in Israel set up a Hebrew site called Milayomit that includes a word of the day and other info. There's one page in English that contains an introduction, including an explanation of the site:

What if it were possible to subpoena the internet to the task of reforming language not in the Orwellian vein of a higher authority dictating prescriptions from above but in a collective, interactive spirit encompassing all levels of society? The goal of milayomit.co.il is to do just that: to harness the vast capacity of the internet with a mind to make Hebrew a richer language, to allow Hebrew speakers to contribute and share innovations relating to their language, and in so doing to make communication between Hebrew speakers both more intelligible and more intelligent. It is a more ambitious goal than that of word-of-the-day websites in other languages in that milayomit endeavors to serve as a communal, collaborative nexus, an organic, user-driven interface between language and the people using it.

When I was growing up, I studied Hebrew and ended up knowing it well enough to actually be able to speak it when I visited Israel when I was a teenager. Before I went there, I had no idea that I could speak it until one day I was talking to a guy in Hebrew about trees and other stuff, and then I thought, "Hey, I'm speaking Hebrew!" But now, I can't speak it at all! I can only read it with the vowels, but I don't understand what I'm reading. I guess my speaking ability was a tiny blip on the radar within my language history.

If you like this blog, then vote

Click here to vote.

I keep getting emails and notifications (even within the comment section of another post) about how this blog was nominated for one of the "top" language blogs. If you'd like to vote for it, click on the image or hyperlink above, then scroll down the list to "Metrolingua" (it's in alphabetical order, so it's down there), and vote if you think it's the best one. Thank you and have a nice day :D

More people hate working at home

Almost four years ago, I did a post about working at home. I'd been working at home for a while before I did that post, but I was really starting to hate it. I liked working independently and still do, even though my primary work isn't at home, but I hated waking up and being alone in my place and never hearing other people talk, unless I went to a cafe, where I felt alone anyway, since it was just a place full of individuals not interacting with me.

And I'm not one of those people who finds online interaction fulfilling--it can actually be creepy and very dissatisfying because people are anonymous and the online scene is superficial. There seem to be a lot of people online who make "friends" at sites or interact a lot online with their real-life friends, who they barely see offline. So they use social apps, IM, etc., to connect, but I've realized that nothing beats seeing someone in person or even talking with them on the phone.

When I was primarily working at home, I did a search online to see if anyone else out there didn't like working at home, but it was hard to find articles or blogs that talked about it. So I started to think I was even more alone, and wondered if I was weak for not really liking the isolation or such byproducts of a more technological world.

Well I did another search online today, and now I see more posts about not liking working at home, including a good one by a software developer who bluntly says that he "absolutely hate[s] working from home" and "working from home permanently is like being locked away in solitary confinement."

I'm surprised his employer doesn't mind him writing about it, but apparently they don't care. I'm glad he's honest about it, and I like how his post is written. I've found a lot of other blogs and articles online, but I think he expresses himself well.

ESL videos

Someone told me about a site called ESL Basics where they have created videos to help people who are studying English as a second language (or "foreign" language as they say in England, I believe) learn vocabulary and phrases at various levels. They also offer support for teachers as well.

What strikes me about the site is that it's not only practical, but the creators seem to be genuinely interested in helping people and enthusiastic about English teaching. Since they seem sincere and intend on keeping the site free, then feel free to ask questions because they really want to help people.

Yeoman blog

Recently, I've been reading American history because our country is currently going through economic problems (though they're not as bad as most countries on earth). For some reason, I'm fascinated with yeoman farmers because sometimes I wonder where the people in the more isolated parts of the country came from (their ancestors, actually).

So I ended up reading about yeoman farmers, but because they didn't record much of their lives, it's hard to find good historical information about them. So I did a search online, and found a blog by a modern-day yeoman farmer.

He doesn't come from that background, and actually had no idea about farming, but apparently he's quite successful at it now. Also check out his about page where he describes how he arrived at such a lifestyle.

Good online Arabic sites?

A friend of mine (who is a German translator) has been studying Arabic, but the book they've been using in the class is absolutely horrible (I forgot the name of it). He asked me if I know of any good sites to learn Arabic, and I had no idea, so he had the bright idea of posting the question here.

So if you're reading this blog, and you know of good sites to learn Arabic, where there are word lists and good exercises, then let me know! He really wants to find some good resources, but they're very hard to find.

Chicago media site

If you're wondering what kind of drama exists in the Chicago media, then check out Chicagolandradioandmedia.com. I didn't start reading it until media columnist Robert Feder left the Sun-Times (which has just declared bankruptcy), and I didn't take it very seriously until I heard my co-workers talking about it and often saw the site on their computer screens.

It's a place for information but it's also a message board, and I wouldn't be surprised if I knew some of the people posting there (under pseudonyms, of course).

Watch anime and Korean dramas for free!

If you want to improve your Korean or Japanese, go to Crunchyroll. There are lots of Japanese anime (don't know if I should add an "s" because Japanese doesn't have plurals) and Korean dramas with English subtitles. I think there might be Japanese dramas but I couldn't find any in the recent list. You can also subscribe to bypass advertising and get access to even more anime.

I'm not into anime, but since they have English subtitles, they'd be hard to resist because it's a good way to improve my diminishing Japanese skills.

(thanks to Lumpy for the heads up)

Sounds desperate and niche

I found an independent publisher that serves a total niche:

...professional development books for adjunct, part-time, full-time temporary and visiting college faculty...[and] include professional development titles for a wide cross-section of faculty who hold temporary appointments, as well as graduate students and distance educators...books [that] are designed to meet the professional needs of Academe's almost 700,000 non-tenure track faculty.

I don't have a problem with niche publishing, especially because the PIC (Publishing Industrial Complex) is crumbling after dominating the publishing industry for years, and other publishers are stepping in to satisfy more specific interests.

But what seems desperate about the market they're serving is the huge amount (700,000!) of faculty who are qualified but will never get full-time jobs with benefits.

Even the publisher's tagline "Your product source for adjunct and part-time faculty excellence" sounds desperate--not that the publisher is desperate, but the "industry" or profession is, and there are a lot of highly educated people running around, wanting a regular professor gig, but not able to get it because schools are stuffing themselves with adjunct faculty.

Actually, I'm a part-time instructor, but I don't want to teach full time anyway, so I'm not writing all this to complain about my situation. It's just something I've noticed and heard about--people want to teach in universities and colleges, but they can't because the full-time jobs are disappearing.

New language site wants feedback

Jason, a language fan, contacted me to ask me about my language pursuits, and he told me about a language site that he's developed (still in the beta stage, I think) called Sanbit which has lots of stuff going on: essays, vocabulary, games, audio, etc. He wants people to try it out, and he's open to feedback and ideas that will help him make the site better.

He's really into language--he's learning Cantonese and Mandarin at the same time (!) and when he said he was Chinese-American, I assumed he had some exposure to the language already, but he said his parents don't speak any Chinese. So he's had to start from scratch, just like the rest of us struggling Americans.

So if you want to help shape an interesting site, check it out. I've posted the introductory video below as well.

I joined a German social site

I was chatting with the Multilingual Teen, and I asked him if he's on Facebook. He said he's on Studivz instead, which is a student social site. It's all in German, but its sister site, Meinvz, which is for non-students, is in German and English (the British version because they use UK spelling).

At first, I was scared to join because my German now is AWFUL! And occasionally the Multilingual Teen will leave a message in German (even though he knows English perfectly) probably to help me practice German. So I've attempted to type something in Gerglish (my German and English hybrid), and it's fun.

What I really need is a German version of my favorite Japanese-learning site Popjisyo, where you can paste Japanese text to be translated for you. That way, I wouldn't have to dig deep into my dusty head to pull out the few German words that remain.

Swedish Lebanese drinking song

The singer is from Lebanon, and a Swede made up some Swedish lyrics to go along (he doesn't know what the guy is really singing about). The Swedish song is about drinking and hats. You can see the story and translation at the site (click on "Explanation in English").

Splades

Somebody mentioned splades in my spork post, and I found a site that explained them with this simple diagram. I guess it's a British and Australian thing, because I've never seen them in the US.

International font conference

This is neat--the personification of the fonts that we take for granted.

Lots of French informational videos!

When I discovered a French video for tying a tie, I went back to the site to see what other instructional videos there are, and there are a lot!

So check it out if you want to learn new things while practicing your French at the same time: Netprof.fr

Right now, I'm interested in the history of Paris (and would love to go there someday), but I might do something crazy and watch the computer how-to videos, because they have stuff there that I want to learn. Of course, I can do that in English, but I really need to improve my French, and what better way than to do that through topics I'm interested in.

Bottom line: this is a great site!

About sporks

I clicked on a commenter's link, and saw their oddly interesting blog, which included a a post about sporks:

Sporks are mainly a tool for good, for the betterment of mankind, but apparently a bane to most females since sporks are the antithesis of the overwhelming need to have even the most utilitarian tools of living to convey one’s social status via being as expensive as possible. However, as noted below, sporks ARE a multi-purpose device, a must-have in every man’s cache of tools.

Someone out there is having a lot of fun online with their "Old Coot" alter.

How to tie a tie in French

This is something ordinary that's been made more interesting because it's not in English :D Sounds like the guy enjoys his cigarettes--he has such a voice.

It's gone!

My favorite "blog" (I put it in quotes because it's really a journal, and he doesn't call it a "blog") has been discontinued! Jon Konrath's Rumored journal is gone! All that's left is an explanation of why he decided to pull it, and even that is a good read.

I discovered Rumored when I was at a temp job with a lot of downtime. I was reading a lot of stuff online, and I did a search for a very specific phrase--I honestly don't remember what it was, but it had to do with how I was feeling at the time. Then I found his journal, and I spent like a few hours reading it. I loved the honest writing and the down-to-earth style. Even though there's a lot of writing online, it's hard to find good writing that's intelligent yet personal. It seems that the people who have been trained in writing are too formal or have some kind of agenda. Rumored didn't have that--it was expressive and communicative.

Unfortunately, he removed the archives too, but you can see some of his writing at his site. I've never met him, but I felt like I got to know him somewhat through his posts.

I can't believe this guy has a radio show

I got an email from an interesting guy (Michael Sheehan) who taught at a City College in Chicago for over 25 years (which is a feat in itself since education can be rough, for various reasons that I might do a post about another time) about his English blog Wordmall. He's retired and lives in Michigan, where he writes, is involved with various organizations, and has a language-related radio show--and it's not on NPR!

The reason why I'm making a big deal out of the fact that he's not on Public Radio is because commercial radio stations usually don't cover such obscure topics as language. His show is on just once a week for an hour, but still--if I were to suggest a similar show where I work, they'd laugh and remind me that people aren't interested in such subjects.

I looked at the station's site, and I couldn't find his show, but there were some other things I noticed: the station is owned by a shockingly small company, not a huge media corporation (which is extremely rare in today's radio world), and the station has mostly syndicated programming, which isn't surprising, because most radio is syndicated now. So it makes the presence of a language show even more amazing!

I told him what I thought, and he ended his friendly email with these positive words:

Since retirement in 1994, I have had an unbelievable life. Way leads unto way, but this has been one heckuva ride.

UPDATE: There are now podcasts of the show available. Go to wtcmradio.com and click on the Ron Jolly Show. Scroll down for a list of podcasts, and look for "Words to the Wise with Professor Mike Sheehan," then click to listen.

Funny office memo

My husband works for a British company, so he works with several Brits who I hope are enjoying our fine country, and recently, a new president arrived from the UK. I guess he was concerned about intercultural communication in the office, so he sent everyone in the company a link to The Best of British: the American's Guide to Speaking British. Now the employees can become bilingual in English :D

Multilingual IM chat!

Someone sent me info about an IM program that is multilingual (!) which is very cool, especially if you want to communicate with people all over the world: Meglobe.

It's brand new, and I tried it, and it's easy to use. I also like the design--tastefully simple. All you do is type in your own language, and it will translate whatever you say into the other person's language. So for instance, if I choose English (which is easiest for me to communicate in) and the person I'm chatting with chooses Spanish, then what I type will be translated into Spanish, and visa-versa. It shows both languages at the same time, so you can try to learn some new words as well. You can choose from like 15 languages, and they might add more.

I tried using Japanese, and the translations of what I was saying were sort of odd, but you can add to the translations, which are kept in a database.

So it's nerdy fun that is educational and handy, and it's free--I even asked someone from the company if they're planning to keep it free, and they said yes.

I think I'm gonna be sick

I was just reading Mary Beard's blog and saw that she mentioned mine, which is unbelievable, not only because not many people link to me, but because she's part of one of the most prestigious schools and publications on the planet, and she thinks my little blog is "excellent". Actually, we met a couple days ago when she was doing a lecture in Chicago, and she's really nice and interesting, and open-minded, especially because I don't have a "title" or a byline or whatever "matters" to successful people.

I've been lucky to meet some well-known people, and I currently work with someone who was quite popular on Chicago radio for years. In fact, when I mention his name (not to be a name-dropper but just because I work with him and see him every day), people smile and some are "impressed" though that's not what I'm going for.

One time I met someone whose stuff I'd read for a while, and it was the kind of content that made me laugh out loud and lifted my spirits, especially when I was doing tedious work. They're too well known for me to mention them here by name, but their success has gone to their head for sure. I sensed they could care less about me, so I didn't say much and was very polite, but that didn't matter--I was a nobody and didn't have hot looks to make up for it, so they were quite snobby and distant, and I don't read their stuff anymore. And there are other people I've met who are either successful and don't want to interact with non-successful people, or there are non-successful people who only want to meet people who "matter" to boost their image or whatever.

Anyway, Mary Beard is not like that at all, even though she's achieved a lot more than most people, and she also has a comfortable career that doesn't "require" her to be friendly or curious about anything outside her elite world.

Strange Closets

I know a nice guy here in Chicago who's interesting and smart, and he's created a design blog called Strange Closets. He's not a designer, but

In my dreams, I'm a world-renown taste-maker, sought after for public appearances and too busy with my successful blog to take on any new clients.

He's very enthusiastic about his new blog, so I wanted to mention it here.

Kipling online

I found an Australian site called Words that contains various writers' works, including Rudyard Kipling. It looks like all, or at least most of his writing is there, including fiction and non-fiction. His American Notes seems quite interesting to me, especially because it was written in the late 19th century.

Taiwan pics

I've never been to Taiwan, but I'd like to visit sometime. Luckily, Mad Minerva has some pictures of Taiwan from her recent trip (her family is from there) to give me some idea of what that place is like.

Jive translator!

This is totally weird and funny: Gizoogle, which translates webpages and text to jive! You can paste in a URL to transform it to jive, or you can paste in text to "tranzilate" it.

I tried it with my homepage, which made the quotes look funny :D

Great site!

Here's a really great website that Language Hat, aka The Great One, mentioned at his blog: Digital Dialects, which has "interactive activities for learning languages and links to study resources" for over 50 languages! You can spend many hours having lots of fun building up your language skills! This is very exciting for language lovers, which is why I'm using exclamation points!

Some funny blogs

Here's a blog that was lucky to be chosen by Blogger as a "blog of note," which also deserves it (instead of some others that are pitched by powerful PR agents and movie studios): The "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks. It contains photos of incorrectly used quotation marks on signs. I've seen many of them, and I'm glad there are folks out there who are documenting it all.

Through there I also found some other blogs:

One blog keeps track of Passive Aggressive Notes with "passive-aggressive notes from roommates, neighbors, coworkers and strangers."

Another blog has a tagline that made me totally laugh out loud: lowercase L, which cries, "Ever notice hand-written signs with letters in all-caps, except for the letter L? It looks like an uppercase i ... WHY DO PEOPlE WRITE lIKE THIS?"

It is so funny, I'm laughing again while doing this post!

And then there's a blog that covers something that I've written about before, which is the misuse of the word "literally." Actually, the blog is literally called Literally, "An English language grammar blog tracking abuse of the word 'literally'."

And here's another blog about something I've mentioned before, which many people throughout the English-writing world notice again and again: Apostrophe Abuse.

Have fun reading all those!

Worksheet generator

I came across a worksheet generator that creates sorting and matching worksheets. You can set up two- to four-column exercises or a "spaghetti exercise" where the "students draw lines between matching items." It's a quick way to test people's knowledge of information, vocabulary, verbs, or whatever else would fit within that simple format.

Geography game

Somebody sent me a link to a very cool geography game that I'm horrible at, though it sounds simple: just drag a bunch of countries onto a world map.

What makes it difficult is that the world map is just a gray blob, so you have to know exactly where each country goes, and all you have to go on is the shape of the country and the "country code top-level domain" (ccTLD).

You can get hints, and if you're wrong (which I usually am), it will show you where the country goes. Needless to say, I needed a lot of help :)

By the way, I had no idea what a ccTLD was, and it sounds quite nerdy and technical, though necessary:

A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country or a dependent territory.

ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all two-letter top-level domains are ccTLDs. Creation and delegation of ccTLDs is performed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and with certain exceptions noted below corresponds to the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes maintained by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency.

Scary stuff

Someone sent me a link to a blog that discussed some very nerdy endeavors, including a search engine that can "take advantage of the structure and nuances of natural language."

But I found something seemingly nerdier when I followed a link to a Parallel Grammar Project:

The Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) ParGram project is a collaborative effort involving researchers in industrial and academic institutions around the world. The aim of the project is to produce wide coverage grammars for a wide variety of languages (see participating sites below). These are written collaboratively within the linguistic framework of LFG and with a commonly-agreed-upon set of grammatical features.

Ok, if anyone thinks I'm a linguist, then the fact that I don't know what those people are talking about should prove that I'm just a simple-minded language lover. Even the diagram is baffling, and even sort of scary.



But this might be scarier:



In case you're wondering, here's an explanation:

XLE consists of cutting-edge algorithms for parsing and generating Lexical Functional Grammars (LFGs) along with a rich graphical user interface for writing and debugging such grammars...One of the main goals of the XLE is to parse and generate with LFGs efficiently. This is difficult because the LFG formalism, like most unification-based grammar formalisms, is NP complete. This means that in the worst case the time that it takes to parse or generate with an LFG can be exponential in the length of the input. However, natural languages are mostly context-free equivalent, and one should be able to parse them in mostly cubic time. XLE is designed to automatically take advantage of context-freeness in the grammar of a natural language so that it typically parses in cubic time and generates in linear time. This lets grammar writers write grammars in an expressive formalism without necessarily sacrificing performance.

Ok, I don't know what they're talking about. Which means that the folks who've developed that technology are very smart. And scary.

Times blog

Mary Beard, who has a blog at the Times Online contacted moi to let me know about her interesting posts over there. She's a Times editor and professor at Cambridge University, so I'm quite "honoured" (note British spelling) that she's come across my humble blog. Actually, if I knew she was going to stop by, I would've categorized more of my posts, which I still haven't done. It's hard to be motivated to do that when I have lots of French to translate.

Online dictionary and thesaurus

Someone from LookWAYup sent me a link to their free English online dictionary and thesaurus. They also have European language dictionaries (for translating words), but you can only look up 10 to 20 words a day because you have to purchase the product to get all the features. You can also get other features for the dictionary including "concordance, phonetic information, extended usage information, and customization" if you purchase it.

I'm not a fan of the site's design, which isn't as straightforward as Word Reference (which is all free), and the text seems to be quite small. But a nifty feature is their "word of the second" (instead of the typical "word of the day").

Oklahoma info

A long-time Metrolingua reader and online pal has set up a site with a lot of info about Oklahoma: you can get tourism information and Oklahoma links.

He's also going to set up a Japanese-English bilingual blog, which is quite an ambitious project--right now it's still under construction, so when it kicks off (like in the fall), I'll mention it again.

Lojban

When komfo commented on a previous post, I looked at his blog, which is in English and Lojban. I'd never heard of Lojban before, and other people probably haven't either, so here are some features:

culturally neutral
grammar based on the principles of logic
unambiguous grammar
phonetic spelling
simple
the root words can be easily combined to form new words
regular, no exceptions

Sounds like an ambitious project. And the fact that komfo writes a blog in both languages means that he probably emits a lot of brain energy. Which I don't have. I have enough trouble with Japanese kanji as it is.

Online word and text translators

I was doing a search for a French word, and came upon a bunch of online dictionaries that translate words from or into French, Spanish, German, Russian, Chinese, and Portuguese. They also have an English Dictionary & Thesaurus.

You can enter a word to be translated, or you can go to each language to look up a word. I don't know how extensive the dictionaries are because they're trying to sell translation software and other language products, but still, it's better than nothing. Plus, it's hard to find a decent Portuguese dictionary online, so theirs should be helpful.

What's quite cool is that they also have a text translator that translates short passages from or into French, Spanish, German, and Italian.

Italian art blog

I came upon an art blog by Alessandro Andreuccetti, who's from Italy. The only problem is that even though I studied Italian a while ago, and even translated a bit of it, my Italian is quite lame now. So I can't understand the text that goes with his great sketches.

Acronym Finder

I found out about a nifty application at Linguistics & Languages: an Acronym Finder:

...the world's largest and most comprehensive dictionary of acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms...contains more than 4 million acronyms and abbreviations...

It covers several categories including Information Technology, Military & Government, Business & Finance, Science & Medicine, Organizations & Schools, and even Slang & Pop Culture. This is definitely worth a bookmark.

But that's not all! "You can also search for more than 850,000 US and Canadian postal codes."

They have so much there, I'm wondering if they're able to squeeze in anything else there.

Text to speech

Arrogant Polyglot found a nifty text-to-speech application for the following languages:

Catalan
Chinese
Dutch
English
French
German
Greek
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Polish
Portuguese
Spanish
Swedish

And each language has different voices to choose from. It's an incredibly cool application that is also practical: someone today asked me what the pronunciation of Aegean was, and I used the application to verify it. It's also fun to try out the different voices and English words in different accents if you choose a non-English language to voice them.

Language chick

My husband came upon a cute language site, Jennifer's Language Page, which lists greetings and phrases in hundreds of languages. There's no bio information there (unless I didn't look carefully enough), so I'm assuming she's just really into languages. She has a very long list of contributors, so maybe she set it up and people kept sending her more and more translations.

Many translations have come from people who have seen these pages and sent me comments, suggestions, additions, and corrections by e-mail from all over the world, as well as people I know who I have asked for translations. These people have provided a lot of the translations on these pages and also have verified (or corrected) translations I have found from other sources. Other translations have come from my own research in libraries and online, from dictionaries, phrase books, travel books and Internet language resources.

Her language resource list seems quite comprehensive. She also offers her email address, in case you want to contribute.

Online Canadian phrasebook

Via Languagehat (aka The Great One), I found out about A Canadian Phrasebook which is in progress, so if you have any additions, feel free to contact them.

The Phrasebook started life more than ten years ago as a goofy comparison of regional terms in four Canadian places...Before long, readers from all over the country—and beyond—were sending in their ways of saying things, and the letters have never stopped coming. Like Canadian English, the Phrasebook clearly has a life of its own. We’re working on a more interactive version of it for www.geist.com. Send all Canadaspeak from anywhere—we love it!

Canadaspeak--neat word :)

Online picture dictionary

This is incredibly neato: an internet picture dictionary in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

Each dictionary has flashcards, fill-in-the blanks, word scramble, spelling, and straight recall based on the pictures. And there are various helpful links there, too.

Temperature converter

It has been very cold here, and since this blog's readership is international, I wanted to use both Fahrenheit and Celsius to describe the temperature: it's been around 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit, which is -15 to
-12 degrees Celsius.

How do I know what the temp is in both forms? From the Fahrenheit to Celsius Converter. You can convert either way--just enter the temperature you know in its respective box, and it'll do the rest. Very nifty and handy!

Language tools

My husband found a site called iTools Language Tools which has:

**several English dictionaries

**VoyCabulary, where "you can change the words on any webpage into links, so you can look them up with just a click--in a dictionary of your choice"

**terminology dictionaries

**several thesauruses

**a crossword solver

**Babylon, which translates words "to and from Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish"

**a Text Translator from English into Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian and Norwegian or the other way around"

**a Web Page Translator from English into Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian and Norwegian or the other way around

That's a a lot! Though I don't think Babylon is the best translation tool, but still--that place looks packed.

Online multilingual keyboard

Language Hat (language blogger extraordinaire) mentioned an incredibly cool site that is an online onscreen virtual multilingual keyboard emulator that "enables you to write in your language wherever you are in the world."

You can type in the following languages:

Albanian (Shqip) / Arabic (العربية) / Armenian (հայերեն) / Azeri (Azərbaycan) / Belarusian (Беларуская) / Bengali (বাংলা) / Bulgarian (Български) / Chinese (中文) / Croatian (hrvatski) / Czech (Česky) / Danish (dansk) / Devanagari (देवनागरी) / Divehi (ދިވެހި) / Dutch (Nederlands) / English (English) / Estonian (eesti) / Faeroese ( Føroyskt) / Farsi Persian (فارسی) / Finnish (suomi) / French (Français) / Gaelic (Gàidhlig/Gaeilge) / Georgian ( ქართული) / German (Deutsch) / Greek (Ελληνικά) / Gujarati (ગુજરાતી) / Hebrew (עברית) / Hindi (हिन्दी) / Hungarian (magyar) / Icelandic ( Íslenska) / Irish (Gaeilge) / Italian (italiano) / Japanese (日本語) / Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ) / Kazakh (Қазақ) / Korean (한국어) / Kyrgyz (Кыргыз) / Latvian (Latviešu) / Lithuanian ( Lietuvių) / Macedonian (Македонски) / Malayalam (മലയാളം) / Maltese (Malti) / Maori (Māori) / Marathi (मराठी) / Mongolian (Монгол) / Multilingual / Norwegian (Norsk) / Polish (Polski) / Portuguese (Português) / Punjabi (ਪਜਾਬੀ/पंजाबी) / Romanian (Română) / Russian (Русский) / Serbian (Српски) / Slovak (Slovenčina) / Slovenian (Slovenščina) / Spanish (español) / Swedish (svenska) / Syriac / Tamil (தமிழ்) / Tatar (Tatarça) / Telugu (తెలుగు) / Thai (ไทย) / Turkish (Türkçe) / Ukrainian (Українська) / Urdu (اردو) / Uzbek (Ўзбек) / Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt).

Learn Hebrew

My husband likes to study Hebrew in its various forms, and found a Learn Hebrew site that has audio files and a flashcard-type set up for different languages, including English, French, Spanish, Russian, and Dutch. There's only audio of the Hebrew words, but the written translations of the words are in those languages. Each "card" offers the Hebrew word, transliteration, and translation into whichever language you need. Simple but nifty site.

Like swords

Bruce (who can speak Cantonese) sent me a link to this rapoff (freesyling battle) between two rappers. Definitely check it out--Jin (a Chinese-American guy who also speaks Cantonese) totally blows the other guy away. Impressive.

As I was watching it and reading about these types of battles, I was wondering why people do it. It seems dumb. But then I realized that it's really the lastest incarnation of an old activity: sword fights. They're just using words as weapons.

Online foreign language stuff

Mad Minerva mentioned a huge online library of books, including foreign language resources. They also list a lot of English stuff.

It will take a while to wade through all of that, but I want to take the time to check it out. Just another detour that moves us away from paper books.

Phonics

Someone asked me if I know about any resources that explain the sounds of English, and I found Phonics on the Web that has good explanations of the different types of sounds. It really breaks down individual sounds more than gives a lot of rules, but helps clear up some issues, such as C and G and R-controlled vowels (never heard it put that way before).

Media burn

If you are into the visual media, I highly recommend going to Media Burn.org, "the first website of its kind, created entirely from progressive nonfiction videos and television programs." I'm still using a computer that's six years old, so the videos I view there aren't downloading so fast for me. However, I ordered a new computer, and when I get it, I'm going to view a bunch of stuff there.

I went to the site's launch party--not only was I alone, but I didn't know anybody there. It seems that most of the people were from the visual arts and video/TV/film world, which I'm not a part of. But I ended up meeting a few cool people, including a couple of guys who helped set up the site. I also met some locally well-known people who were surprisingly friendly, and some others who allowed me like 10 seconds to talk to them, because they probably figured I'm not "important" enough.

But it didn't matter, really, because I ended talking with a big-time major person in the media who was very friendly and encouraging. I was so shocked that they actually wanted to talk to me, even though I'm pretty much a peon in that world, and it's not like I'm some successful lawyer or other type of professional--I'm just working my way through life. I'm often impressed when successful and/or well-known people will spend time with me, even though I'm barely at their level of accomplishment. I am still totally psyched that I met them, and am amazed that they have even responded to my follow-up emails. It sounds pitiful, but if you have ever tried to accomplish certain things and came upon folks who have made it, then you know what I'm talking about: they can either be jerky or be surprisingly friendly. And usually it's the former.

Moving vocabulary

I found a site with lots of stuff going on, including daily Japanese-English quizzes.

They have really a cool feature: moving flashcards. There are two columns of words: on the right is Japanese and on the left is English. Just drag each Japanese word on top of the corresponding English word, and it lets you know if you're correct (through cool sound effects!). There are different quizzes like this--just "Enter a number between 1 and 343" or click the "Load Next Quiz" button.

There's lots more at that site--I'll need to explore it more to find other cool stuff.

Hebrew alphabet chart

Even though I studied Hebrew growing up (and eventually spoke it when I went to Israel, though now I can't even put two words together), I recently had a brain freeze on how to write some of the letters in cursive. So I found a good chart to help me. It's straightforward, and provides the pronunciation, print version, and cursive version of each letter, which is a lot more helpful than the typical charts that usually just have block letters.

Chat instantly

Here's a cute and portable chat program that doesn't require installation or downloading: Gabbly. All you have to do is paste 'gabbly.com/' in front of any URL and a chat window will pop up where you are--you can chat instantly. And if there are any spammers or obnoxious folks harassing you, you can "mute" them by clicking on their name.

Update: I have been using it to chat with a friend, and it's really great--we're across the country from each other but can chat in real time, as if there's no space between us. Gabbly also has an audio feature, though we haven't been using it. I've emailed other folks to participate, but they're too busy to jump in.

French building words

I was searching for a French term and found the definition I was looking for in a French Building and Renovation Jargon Guide. It's from a site that helps English speakers survive in Languedoc-Roussillon, which is in southeast France.

So if you want to know various terms that have to do with building or renovating anything, or are just curious about what household words are in French and English, check it out. I've never been to France (though I want to go), but even if I do go someday, I doubt I'll need to know all these words. But they're handy.

the Odge

Here's something that I came across when I was looking up a French phrase online: The Odge, which stands for Online Dictionary German-English. It has more than 400,000 entries. All you have to do is enter the word that you're looking for, and it will provide the translation.

You can also add words, so if enough people participate, maybe the dictionary will exceed a million words by the end of this year.

They also offer you a way to enter letters with umlauts (ä ö ü) and an esszett (ß), so you don't have to worry about digging it up from your computer's keyboard. Just click on the letter, and it's entered into the search box. Handy!

It was odd to discover the site on the way to translating a French phrase, but hey, Europe is more united now, so it makes sense. However, I stopped at this detour long enough to forget the French phrase I was looking for. Oh well.

Word hawk

When I was looking up the word faux hawk, I came across Word Spy, a site that's "devoted to lexpionage, the sleuthing of new words and phrases. These aren't 'stunt words' or 'sniglets,' but new terms that have appeared multiple times in newspapers, magazines, books, Web sites, and other recorded sources."

If you're into the provenance of words, it's a good site that's easy to read and understand (ie, not full of linguistic-speak packaged in a complex writing style).

Irregular plurals

Arrogant Polyglot provided a link to an Irregular Plurals List that should be helpful for English learners, and interesting for language nerds.

They give two options for the plural of formula: formulae and formulas. I doubt many people use the plural "formulae" version, except for persnickety folks who understand the minutiae of spelling.

They have the same options for antenna: antennae and antennas. I can see people using "antennae" for insects, but not for such items as radios and televisions. "Antennas" is a more democratic (though pedestrian) spelling which seems more appropriate for "common" objects.

This was news to me: the plurals for bureau are bureaus and bureaux. Only the French-Aware would understand the use of an x at the end of a word. What were they thinking? Yes, bureau is a French word, but not many people understand French spelling, and even more don't care.

They also have the word tableau there--why? It's not an oft-used word. And they have the same French option there, too: tableaux/tableaus. That word is more obscure anyway, so I'll give them a pass on the French spelling because not many people dig that deep.