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Link roundup for 19 June 2013

2013-06-20T07:50:00.001+09:00

Google Drive is now available in 18 more languages, up to a total of 65. The new ones are: Afrikaans, Amharic, Basque, Chinese (Hong Kong), Estonian, French (Canadian), Galician, Icelandic, Khmer, Lao, Malaysian, Nepali, Persian, Sinhalese, Spanish (Latin America), Swahili, Urdu, Zulu. A video by the late Claude Piron discussing Esperanto in French is just as interesting for the Italian

Moldovans that don't know any Russian: 1%

2013-06-18T09:25:00.000+09:00

This is from two years ago and the numbers were a bit surprising to me - I had thought the number would be around 25% but it turns out it's just 1. Results of the latest CBS-AXA survey show that 62% of Moldovans can freely speak, write and read in Russian. According to the same study, 18% of the population can speak and read Russian, but write it sometimes incorrectly, and only 1% of the

PIE and kind of PIE news: a tentative syntax of PIE and Gospel of Matthew

2013-06-16T11:49:00.000+09:00

I flipped a coin just now and Dnghu's news comes first. In the first update for almost a year, Dnghu has announced a Spanish version of the Modern Indo-European grammar, along with another book called a Tentative Syntax of Modern Indo-European - pdf is here. This latter book is full of examples of Indo-European in use, which is exactly what I wanted to see years ago when Dnghu first created

My newest book

2013-06-13T06:57:00.000+09:00

Nobody seems to know about this book and unlike most of Hesse's books it (as far as I know) can't be found online, so I found it through a seller of rare books on Ebay. It's pocket book-sized, hardcover, and has a few watercolour paintings inside too.

Link roundup: 10 June 2013

2013-06-11T05:49:00.002+09:00

A "translation" of the Bible into Texan. The translation is actually just replacing the word you with y'all when the original is the plural you, which actually makes it more precise. Without the loss of thou English wouldn't have needed all the substitutes we have: y'all, your guyses, etc. Some more research on habitability around white and brown dwarf stars seems to show less possibility for

Number of students learning Portuguese in Macau: 5,000+

2013-06-09T14:38:00.002+09:00

The numbers come from an article in Portuguese here. Macau's small population makes this quite easy to put into perspective: the population of the city is 568,000 and Portuguese speakers (people that speak Portuguese at home) are said to make up 0.6% of the population, so about 3400 people. The article is full of numbers from various language programs that on the whole confuse me, but looks like

Icelandic audio dictionary

2013-06-05T09:33:00.001+09:00

This is news to me, maybe not to you - a very user-friendly Icelandic dictionary with audio. The lookup is very simple: enter a word, and the dictionary will turn up that word as well as any others that start with it. For example, if you search for heimspeki you get: heimspeki [heimsb̥ɛɟ̊ɪ] f heimspekideild [heimsb̥ɛɟ̊ɪd̥eild̥] f heimspekilegur [heimsb̥ɛɟ̊ɪlɛɣʏr̥] adj and if you search for

German speakers in the Czech Republic: 1%

2013-06-03T10:55:00.002+09:00

Radio Praha's German language broadcast has an article from two days ago on the status of the German language in the Czech Republic. There is also ten minutes of matching audio to the article which makes it great for German language learners. Two things to note from the article: --- the current number of German speakers in the Czech Republic is 18,700, or about 1 percent of the population. In

1998 QE2 has a moon

2013-05-31T07:38:00.000+09:00

Tomorrow's flyby of this asteroid just got a lot more interesting. 2.7 km across for the main asteroid and 600 metres for the moon makes this a very interesting system. Since we won't be seeing an approach this close for a few hundred years, a dedicated mission (or a mission to elsewhere that flies by 1998 QE2) will be the only way to truly see this body up close after the relatively better

Washington's interest in the smaller Portuguese countries

2013-05-30T06:49:00.003+09:00

It's not very often that one comes across an article on these countries in any detail, so this one is nice to see. There's a little bit about Macau in there too, but only enough to whet one's appetite for more. Doing a quick search in Portuguese the first results are these papers from 1992 and 1996: http://www.safp.gov.mo/safppt/download/WCM_00388 -- macau, ponte de intercâmbio entre a china eo

Aus dem Leben eines Nußknackers - 50 cents

2013-05-28T09:19:00.001+09:00

Obtained this at the local grocery store for 50 cents yesterday: The book is from 1948 and the physical book itself also seems to be printed that year. I don't see anything on the author Josef Kamp but I do see some search results for the book here and there, and depending on when the author passed away (assuming he did) this book might even be in the public domain in the death +50

Link roundup for 25 May 2013

2013-05-26T07:22:00.000+09:00

A few articles: Zulu is now compulsory in the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban. Stellenbosch University starting in 2014 will have simultaneous interpretation between English and Afrikaans (and vice versa) in order to do away with students having to choose between classes in one language and another. A discussion in Esperanto on the pronunciation of c, plus antaŭ vs. ante, etc. The

Draft law passes Galician parliament calling for stronger Portuguese-language ties

2013-05-22T05:11:00.000+09:00

From here in Portuguese: The Galician parliament unanimously approved the consideration of a draft law of a popular initiative calling for greater weight of the Portuguese language in the Spanish autonomous region. More than 17,000 Galicians signed a petition for more "access to the wealth of the Portuguese language". The initiative now passed puts into consideration the teaching of

May 19, 1913: new Balkan war foreseen

2013-05-20T04:00:00.003+09:00

Thanks to Times Machine it's easier than ever before to get the news from a century ago, and today's paper has a small blurb on page 3: FORESEE NEW BALKAN WAR. Daily Chronicle Says Greece and Servia May Fight Bulgaria. LONDON, Monday, May 19. -- The Daily Chronicle says that the situation in the Near East has gone from bad to worse and that there is great danger of that troubled region

Short story recorded in 19 Arabic dialects (so far)

2013-05-17T09:16:00.005+09:00

Keep an eye on this page and this page on Reddit - it's a short story read in the dialects of any Arabic speakers who want to participate. 19 so far, discussion here, and probably lots more to come.

Portuguese fifth-most used language online, Chinese very close to English

2013-05-17T06:44:00.000+09:00

Came across an article here, apparently referencing data from the International Telecommunication Union, a UN body. After a good amount of searching on the ITU site though it turns out that the numbers do not come from there, they come from our well-known Internetworldstats, a very interesting site to visit but one that updates its numbers perhaps once a year. French at 60 million still seems

Chris Hadfield in Kazakhstan speaking Russian with a robe, lute and doll

2013-05-15T10:21:00.001+09:00

Chris Hadfield is back safe on Earth and this video is exactly what the title says it is: It's dubbed so the Russian can't always be made out but he sounds fluent. Not sure if it's functionally fluent, near-native fluent or completely fluent.

Chris Hadfield's parting music video

2013-05-13T10:57:00.001+09:00

Chris Hadfield has relenquished command of the International Space Station and will be returning to Earth by Soyuz tomorrow. His contribution to space PR all this time has been simply phenomenal, and this final music video may be the best so far: Edit: Also, his final thoughts on the mission one day before returning:

Demian: an interlinear translation now on Scribd.com

2013-05-12T10:37:00.002+09:00

And it only took me nine months to get around to uploading it. The book in paper is still available here, but the online version at $8.99 is less than half as expensive as paper ($17.50) when delivery is included, and it takes but a minute to acquire. The free preview also shows more of the book than could be seen on lulu.com, so even those who don't want to / can't buy it can benefit from

Rare find: Die Verrekening van 'n Tydgees in die Vertaling van die Sprokies van Hermann Hesse

2013-05-11T12:22:00.004+09:00

I think this pdf counts as this week or month's most interesting find on the internet, a 150+ page document on translating Hermann Hesse fairy tales from German into Afrikaans. Translation samples compose perhaps about a fifth of it, showing either Afrikaans or Afrikaans and English. For example: Eine sang das Lila-Lied, eine sang das dunkelblaue Schlummerlied. Een sing die lila lied, een sing

German increasing in popularity in Reunion

2013-05-08T11:00:00.000+09:00

This article in French tells us the number of German students in Réunion and indicates that this is an increase, but doesn't tell us an increase from what...since the number is now 13,000 it's probably up from a former number just below ten thousand or so, but we don't know what that is. 12% of high school students in Réunion choose to learn German, well behind English and Spanish. But there is

Spanish ceding ground in Rio de Janeiro schools

2013-05-05T12:23:00.000+09:00

From an article in Portuguese here: Spanish with its multiple accents is heard daily on the streets and beaches of Rio de Janeiro, home to tourists and thousands of Ibero-american immigrants, but Spanish is ceding ground in schools in the city as of 2014 by a decision made by city hall. The new educational plan makes Spanish no longer mandatory in primary schools, making it an optional subject

Another 'other planets in place of the moon' video

2013-05-04T08:32:00.002+09:00

Another one of these videos just got made: I like this one in particular because of the street below, showing what it would look like to have other planets at the same distance from the point of view of a pedestrian at night. The moon seems unusually small but it's actually correct, and here the street lights also help as the full moon is about as bright. On that note, the only thing perhaps

More on the recent popularity of German

2013-05-01T09:17:00.002+09:00

Another one of these articles on the recent popularity of German, starting with some numbers similar to those we've seen before but also an interesting way to put it. It begins with the pessimistic "English has won, nobody wants to learn our language anymore" view many Germans have had over the past few decades and contrasts it with: In the Munich Goethe-Institut sits a man that can only smile

Most spoken language in Luxembourg: Luxembourgish

2013-04-29T13:30:00.004+09:00

Good news, I suppose: 70.5% of the people in Luxembourg use Luxembourgish as the vernacular in daily life, 55.7% use French and 30.6% speak German at home, school or in the workplace. More than one choice was permitted in the survey. English and Portuguese were spoken by just about as many people, with one in five people using them every day. Nationality played an important role: 96.4% of