Vowels.me

Daily List of Free Kindle eBooks for Foreign Language Study

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:29:12 -0700

Daily List of Free Kindle eBooks for Foreign Language Study:

Earlier this week I published a list of free Kindle books that were related to language learning. I’ve decided to make that a thing, and I’ll be updating the list every day. Today there are materials in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Hindi, Indonesian, and English. Go check them out and download them ASAP. Most of them are free for today only.

How do you become fluent in 11 languages? [BBC VIDEO]

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:42:51 -0700

How do you become fluent in 11 languages? [BBC VIDEO]:

This 20-year-old is fluent in English, Greek, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Hebrew, Catalan, and Italian.

Today's Free Language-Related Kindle Books (2/19/12)

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 10:32:59 -0700

These ebooks from Amazon may be free only for today (and only in the US), so grab them while you can. They can be read on Kindles, in a web browser, on a Mac or PC, on an iPhone or iPad, and on Android devices.

Every day there are new free Kindle books in or on a variety of languages. If this type of list is something you’d like to see more often, please like it or reblog it so I know.

SPANISH

Spanish Verb Conjugations

CHINESE

HINDI

ENGLISH

The Big Book of Phonics: The Alphabet

Dotsies: An Alphabet Designed for Reading, Not Writing

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 20:13:47 -0700

Dotsies is a font/alphabet designed to help us read more efficiently. Its letters look like this:

As the Dotsies site says:

Since latin letters (a, b, c, etc.) are optimized to be written by hand, they take up a lot of unnecessary space. Your eyes have to move at a frantic pace from left to right to read. Use screen space more efficiently! Have a more relaxed reading experience!

So in other words, these letters are all narrower than the Latin letters we currently use. This means that more letters and words can fit on a line, meaning that we can read faster and not have to move our eyes as much.

To illustrate how much screen space this saves, here’s a comparison of a regular paragraph with its Dotsies equivalent below it:

The Dotsies site has a bookmarklet that lets you convert any regular text online to the Dotsies font.

The whole thing makes sense and sounds interesting. I don’t think it’ll ever catch on beyond a few geeks and early adopters, but it is still a neat idea. I’d love to see some people study this and then do tests to see how much faster/easier it really is to read this way.

“Do you long for a world where linguistics is a popular...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:56:44 -0700

“Do you long for a world where linguistics is a popular sport? Here is a chart of hand signals used by syntax referees in that better world.”

[Cascadilla Press via Book of Joe]

Language-conscious Fry.

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 21:01:57 -0700

Language-conscious Fry.

Do You Need to Know a Foreign Language to Major in Linguistics?

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:49:21 -0700

Someone asked me this question recently:

Hello! I’m interested in pursuing a degree in Linguistics in the near future. Would you have any advice on the usefulness of knowing a second or third language (and to what degree - how would four years of GCE ‘O’-level German stand)? Did your course focus on English or were you to choose a specific modern language to study (e.g. French)? Thank you!

It really all depends on your university, but I think most university linguistics programs require a degree of proficiency in at least one foreign language. Some require you to go to a certain level in one language, others require a couple languages. Some schools also have stipulations about the languages that you learn (e.g., the main language cannot be an Indo-European language).

For my bachelor’s degree in linguistics (from BYU), the foreign language requirements were like this:

Complete 15 credit hours (to a 200-level or higher) of university-level course work (or the equivalent) in a single foreign language (American Sign Language also qualifies). Students intending to pursue graduate studies in linguistics are strongly encouraged to study a non-Indo-European language. Non-native speakers of English may elect to use English to fill this requirement. [Source]

I ended up taking 8 credits of Chinese (Mandarin) and then had something like 35+ credits of Russian and Ukrainian because I was able to take a proficiency test and get credit for what I already knew.

For variety’s sake, here are the requirements of a couple more schools. Here’s Harvard’s:

Basic concentrators must demonstrate knowledge of one foreign language by the end of junior year. This can be done in the following ways:

by being a native speaker of the language;

by obtaining at least a B grade in a full-year, second-year language course;

by passing a Harvard College language placement exam; or

in some cases, by passing a special departmental reading exam.

[Source]

And here’s UCLA’s (I know the page is old, but I couldn’t find the requirements on any newer page):

[Students must complete] the equivalent of the sixth term of one foreign language and the third term of a second foreign language. You are required to complete at least the equivalent of the third term in a language other than those in the Romance, Slavic, or Germanic families. [Source]

It’s worth noting that if you’re a native English speaker and want to study the English language, some schools have an English language degree. Mine did. This degree studies the English language itself, as opposed to an English degree, which studies English literature. A fair number of the English language major requirements overlapped with the linguistics major requirements.

If students at other universities want to send me their school’s requirements, I can collect them and put them in a followup post. Or if you have any further questions, ask away.

Hundreds of company name etymologies

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:06:31 -0700

Hundreds of company name etymologies:

Very cool Wikipedia stating the origins behind hundreds of companies’ names.

Language experts to help identify internet 'trolls'

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:42:21 -0700

Language experts to help identify internet 'trolls':

From the BBC, so it’s legit.

Why You Should Always Keep Learning Vocabulary

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 10:50:09 -0700

Why You Should Always Keep Learning Vocabulary

The original pronunciation of words in Shakespeare’s...

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:42:45 -0700

The original pronunciation of words in Shakespeare’s works. Fascinating.

Urban Dictionary: Herro

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:21:43 -0700

Urban Dictionary: Herro:

Definition: The standard greeting of Engrish, as in, “Herro! How are you?”

Etymology Man!

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:44:18 -0700

Etymology Man!:

A fun comic on xkcd.com about word origins. If you like this site, you’ll like this comic.

Commas in action.

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:40:05 -0700

Commas in action.

List of the longest monosyllabic English words

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:18:42 -0700

List of the longest monosyllabic English words:

The longest one-syllable word is 12 letters long!

Are You Learning Chinese?

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:19:41 -0700

So my brother loves studying Chinese and he loves programming. Put those together and you get his new iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch app.

It’s called Trevor’s Chinese Memory Game. It’s a matching game where you match similar-looking Chinese characters together. But it’s much more powerful than that; you can focus on sets of random characters or sets of similar-looking characters. You can also sort the levels by difficulty.

Here’s the app in iTunes. Go check it out!

You can also learn more about it at the app’s website, LingoSpring.com. He’s also got a free web app called Trevor’s Chinese Reader that’s really cool.

Linguistics Micro Lesson: Tautology

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 12:02:00 -0700

Tautology is the unnecessary or unessential (and sometimes unintentional) repetition of meaning, using different words that effectively just say the same thing.

Examples:

added bonus - “bonus” is an added extra, so “added bonus” is actually “added added extra”
first introduced - “introduced” generally implies that it is the first time that someone or something has been presented
free gift - “gift” is, by definition, something given without charge
new innovation - “innovation” is defined as something new
safe haven - “haven” is, by definition, a place of refuge and safety
pre-book - “book” already contains the idea of reserving in advance, so “pre-” is redundant

What does "et cetera" literally mean?

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:51:05 -0700

Good to know: The literal meaning of the Latin phrase et cetera is “and the others.”

List of the world's languages by number of native speakers

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 08:46:34 -0700

List of the world's languages by number of native speakers:

Whoa. Cool.

Using a Kindle or Kindle Fire for foreign language learning

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 23:52:36 -0700

Using a Kindle or Kindle Fire for foreign language learning:

I run a blog about Amazon (the company, not the river) and wrote this article last week about using my Kindle and Kindle Fire for language study.