We were in Spain the last two weeks, and while we were there, we bought the Franklin TES-120 translator for spanish / english pictured above. It cost 39 Euro, and claims to translate 800 000 words (the screenshot shows part of its “boot” sequence, which repeats this claim every time you switch it . . . → Read More: Useless technology
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The answer is far too few. For a population of 60 million, it’s sad to see that only 602 people chose to study German at university in 2008 – down from 2288 ten years ago. It’s not only at the higher levels that an interest in foreign languages has declined in the . . . → Read More: How many chose German university courses in the UK in 2008? Short video illustrating some of Otlet’s ideas Paul Otlet (1868 – 1944) proposed many of the ideas which have been implemented in the world wide web – including the idea of a library of information much like Wikipedia – and actually implemented his ideas in the form of the Mundaneum, back in 1910. The . . . → Read More: The Mundaneum – the forgotten precursor to the internet All languages evolve, even French, despite the efforts of the Acadámie Française to freeze their language. If you are interested in how languages have evolved in the past, then take a look at The Loom of Language by Frederick Bodmer, which despite having been written over 60 years ago is still one of the . . . → Read More: How English might evolve According to AutoBild, the full-page advertisement they ran a couple of weeks ago for Cin King was viral marketing for a German car manufacturer. Normally, viral marketing increases in brand awareness by getting people talking about or linking to the ads. I’m not sure how running ads for cars nothing like the ones . . . → Read More: Viral marketing? Unfortunately, the Brits don’t write communiques like these any more – if they ever did: Dear Citizens of America, In view of your failure to elect a competent President and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. Her Sovereign Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, will resume . . . → Read More: How to treat uppity ex-colonies The British education system has been hopeless at teaching foreign languages for years and the number of pupils taking a foreign language at school has dropped by around 10% since the government in its wisdom decided to make it optional to study languages in school last year. Now, the BBC reports that: Oral tests . . . → Read More: British language exams may drop oral tests While I was at University, I had the chance to work in Umeå in northern Sweden for 13 weeks, which was long enough to get a taste for learning about a different culture and to find learning a foreign language actually useful. Although I did pick up enough Swedish to get by, it has . . . → Read More: Talar du IKEA? Bookpedia – you can also, of course display the catalog as a list! Until now I have for many years used Readerware to catalog our (1100+) books and (800 or so) CDs, and Delicious Library to catalog our much smaller collection of DVDs. The rational behind that was that Readerware is cross-platform (Windows, . . . → Read More: Good software to catalog books, CDs and DVDs Merriam-Webster has named the word of the year for 2007: w00t! If you need an explanation of the meaning, they are kind enough to provide one here. |
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