I thought I would share with you some of the things that stood out for me, using a few quotes from the book which made me think even more about the power of language.

Talking about the tower of Babel:

But the most interesting part of this story is what it shows about the power of language in the eyes of its authors. God worries that with one common language for human kind, “nothing will be restrained from them”. This, remember, is God: He can flood the world, rain frogs on the Egyptians, turn rivers to blood, and raise the dead. Communication through language must be mighty indeed to worry the Supreme Being into doing something about it. (2011:4)

The idea that “rules” were more important than history, elegance, or actual practice – a zombielike prescriptivism that mindlessly sought out so-called mistakes – held writers and speakers in terror of making them. (2011:34)

Let the meaning choose the word and not the other way around (Orwell)

Have you read this book?

A couple of months ago I stumbled across this website offering free university level courses on almost any category. It’s a great website and if you have the time, you get to listen to lectures from world famous professors from Ivy League Universities.

Lately I’ve been expanding my horizons in the fields of finance and sociology.

Most of the courses require no prerequisites however some of the computer courses need a background in programming or something similar.

You can learn more about them here.

I do know that these hidden Skype emoticons aren’t from the official Skype website, however, if you want to type one of the standard emoticons in the standard Skype emoticon box without clicking on the image, you still have to know the English word in some cases e.g. (beer). (No, I’m not drinking on the job). Maybe this is good for language learning but who knows.
So what do you think?

This month my blog turns 1!!! It turned 1 on 14 May 2012.

Yes, it’s been a year! Yes, get out your tissues and your red pens for your my sentimentality and clichés which are about to come.

I can’t believe it and it’s all thanks to you dear readers for your comments and your own blogs which have inspired me to keep writing. I’ve also been nominated for the “Top 100 Language Lover’s” competition which I couldn’t have imagined last year. I have still to start on my list of New Year’s resolutions but I hope to cross at least one off my list before the end of the year.

To celebrate my blog turning one, I thought I would first share with you some stats and then some of my favourite blog posts that have appeared over the last year.

Stats:

-To date, there has been 58 posts and 8955 views.

-The most popular blog post was: How not to translate with 624 views. (I think I skewed the results a little with this one naming it this.)

-The month with the most views was November 2011 with 1 366 views.

-My audience, from third place to first place, is Spain, Germany and United States. Germany? I’m still wondering about that one.

-The most popular Browser to view my blog is Internet Explorer. (So it’s not dead yet.)

-The most popular Operating System is Windows.

-45 posts in 2011

-18 followers!

Posts:

Here I have compiled a list of my favourite blog posts. Some have been written in haste, some of them have been written without thinking too much (these have normally been the ones with the most comments or caused the most stir) and some of my very first blog posts which I don’t think have ever been viewed. Enjoy !

Disclaimer: I take all responsibility for the spelling and grammar mistakes and sometimes the pedagogical tone. It’s best to scroll to the ones further down on the list-those are “better”.

The problem with learning another language

Vocation

PJs or no Pjs  

Story of a rapper

South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Translation

One for the introverts

Nelson Mandela and translation

Verbling (It’s a fantastic website and it has undergone some fantastic changes since I wrote about the first time)

Myths

Do languages have personalities

Fright night

Why I love translation and languages  

My top ten apps for translators

Going through the emotions of translation

How not to translate

The lives of others

Good company URLs

Does translation run in the blood?

Laughter truly is the best medicine

Yesterday I received some good news that I’ve been nominated for Top 100 Language Lovers 2012 competition hosted by Bab.la and specifically for the category Language Professionals’ Blogs.

I do have to admit that I do feel quite surprised as a very naïve, sometimes overly enthusiastic new comer to the world of blogging. However, this nomination has lifted my spirits and encouraged me to keep blogging as I could really identify with Jill Bonn’s post, ‘Musings from an underworked translator’.

Here’s how the competition works. You can nominate you r favourite language blog from 2 May – 13 May. There are four categories:

• ·         language learning blogs
• ·         language professionals’ blogs
• ·         language Facebook Pages
• ·         language Twitter accounts

Then you can vote 15 May – 28 May for your favourites.

To all the other people who have been nominated, good luck!

I recently received an email notifying me that Routledge Language and Linguistics will make available three of their most wanted issues from their special issues from the Languages and Linguistics Portfolio from the last two years.

All you have to do is vote for your favourite issue hereand once the survey is complete, they will offer free access to the top 3.

German Coastguard Trainee

Today’s post is a fun one seeing as Easter is coming up and recently there has been a lot of talk surrounding polyglots.   

My question today is: If the Easter bunny really existed (sorry for the spoiler if you still believed in this mammal creature who brings eggs) would he be a polyglot?

Let’s think about it for a moment. Supposedly Mr Bunny visits  a lot of countries, leaving presents of Easter eggs. There have sometimes been sightings of him. If this is true, he would definitely need to speak to the children. What happens when Mr Bunny encounters a child who can’t speak English? Or in the case of South Africa, where many children speak different African languages as their first language. Mr Bunny would obviously, out of politeness, have to change to the child’s first language.

I would like to cautiously say that Mr Bunny is most definitely a polyglot but only in the sense of a conversational polyglot. He would not necessarily need to be fluent in 20 languages but he would need to know the specific terminology related to Easter, chocolate eggs and children’s slang. I would like to possibly add that he might even have a smart phone at the bottom of his basket with the Google Translate app installed for those surprise moments when the child strays from the expected vocabulary.

In my opinion, Mr Bunny definitely is a polyglot because back in 1950, before Google Translate, he would have needed to be able to communicate with children on the one chance they caught him in the act of hiding eggs.

However, one bad thing to have come with the invention of Google Translate, is that it has opened a door for more fraudsters posing as the Easter Bunny.

What do you think? And how many languages do you think Father Christmas speaks?