10 of the best words in the world (that don't translate into English) One of the many great things about languages worldwide is the sizeable number of words for which there is no real English translation. Often they tell us about concepts and ideas that we are missing out on in the anglophone world. As the northern hemisphere heads abroad in the coming holiday season, here are a few to be looking out for: SPAIN: sobremesa You may have witnessed the ritual, knowingly or not, while on the hunt for a coffee or a cold beer towards the end of another long Spanish afternoon. Sitting clumped around tables inside restaurants or spilling out on to their terrazas, are friends, families and colleagues, preserved in the post-prandial moment like replete insects in amber. Lunch – and it is more usually lunch than dinner – will long since have yielded to the important act of the sobremesa, that languid time when food gives way to hours of talking, drinking and joking. Ask Mariano Rajoy. PORTUGAL: esperto/esperta If you understand it, you probably are. ITALY: bella figura
Cordial en ligne, correcteur gratuit d'orthographe et de grammmaire pour vos textes en français 11 phrases only Argentines understand 1. Ser Gardel | To be Gardel You are Gardel when you are the way you wanna be, when you don’t need anything else. This expression means “to be on the top,” like Carlos Gardel, the most famous tango singer in history. Being Gardel is attaining a supreme level of self-sufficiency and privilege. You are Gardel if, in summer, you get a canvas pool to put up with Buenos Aires’ heat. 2. On June 30, 1994, Diego Armando Maradona’s World Cup in the USA came to an end when he was marched off the pitch by a nurse, having failed a drug test. 3. Don’t be alarmed if an Argentinian asks you to hit him with a tube; he’s simply saying “call me.” 4. Magoya is the first name of a being whose origin, life story, location, and other biographical data are totally unknown. 5. Sometimes, recognizing and accepting love is really hard. 6. Argentinians are used to being worried about (or in) trouble. 7. 8. “There’s no way to do it, bro. The “atutía” was a substance derived from copper smelting. 9. 10. 11.
In the beginning was the word, and the word was embodied If you don’t speak Japanese but would like, momentarily, to feel like a linguistic genius, take a look at the following words. Try to guess their meaning from the two available options: 1. nurunuru (a) dry or (b) slimy?2. pikapika (a) bright or (b) dark?3. wakuwaku (a) excited or (b) bored?4. iraira (a) happy or (b) angry? The answers are: 1(b); 2(a); 3(a); 4(b); 5(b); 6(a); 7(a); 8(b); 9(b) 10(a). If you think this exercise is futile, you’re in tune with traditional linguistic thinking. Yet many world languages contain a separate set of words that defies this principle. How and why do ideophones do this? Their results pose a profound challenge to the foundations of Saussurean linguistics. This understanding of language as an embodied process can illuminate the marvel of language acquisition during infancy. Updates on everything new at Aeon. How should we define an ideophone? Ideophones are more prevalent in some languages than others. That observation is significant in itself.
Correcteurs orthographiques et enseignement du français Les traitements de texte récents possèdent souvent un correcteur intégré et tout utilisateur recourt, à un moment ou à un autre, à un tel outil, surtout lorsque cette correction peut s'effectuer "à la volée", et que les erreurs sont décelées et signalées dès que le mot est saisi. Pédagogiquement, la question se pose alors de savoir si ce type d'aide à l'écriture peut bénéficier ou nuire à l'apprentissage des compétences orthographiques en classe. Peut-on permettre aux élèves de s'aider de ces outils pour produire un texte "sans fautes"? Dans ces pages, le terme " correcticiel " servira à désigner l'ensemble des outils logiciels qui aident à la correction d'un texte (correction orthographique ou grammaticale). 1.1 Les correcticiels intégrés dans les traitements de texte 1.2 Les correcticiels indépendants 1.1 Les correcticiels intégrés dans les traitements de texte 1.2 Les correcticiels indépendants 2.1 Les principes de fonctionnement des divers types de correcticiels
How language can affect the way we think Keith Chen (TED Talk: Could your language affect your ability to save money?) might be an economist, but he wants to talk about language. For instance, he points out, in Chinese, saying “this is my uncle” is not as straightforward as you might think. In Chinese, you have no choice but to encode more information about said uncle. The language requires that you denote the side the uncle is on, whether he’s related by marriage or birth and, if it’s your father’s brother, whether he’s older or younger. “All of this information is obligatory. This got Chen wondering: Is there a connection between language and how we think and behave? While “futured languages,” like English, distinguish between the past, present and future, “futureless languages” like Chinese use the same phrasing to describe the events of yesterday, today and tomorrow. But that’s only the beginning. Featured illustration via iStock.
TuneTranscriber. Ralentir la lecture d’un passage. Article mis à jour le 29 septembre 2014 par Fidel Navamuel TuneTranscriber est un outil en ligne qui permet très facilement de jouer avec des fichiers audio. Un outil qui privilégie la simplicité mais qui peut transformer votre ordinateur en véritable laboratoire de langues ou encore en un répétiteur infatigable pour apprendre la musique. TuneTranscriber propose un lecteur de fichiers audio qui offre entre autres options de ralentir la lecture d’un son ou d’une vidéo. Avec toute ces options, TuneTranscriber ne révolutionne pas le genre mais réussit cependant à proposer un service souple et simple qui trouvera de nombreux terrains d’application en classe. Le plus évident intéressera sans doute les enseignants et élèves en langues. Pas besoin de s’inscrire pour utiliser TuneTranscriber, la contre partie c’est que l’outil ne garde rien en mémoire d’une session à l’autre. Lien: TuneTranscriber
Lojban/Numbers The numbers zero to nine in Lojban: 0=no1=pa2=re3=ci4=vo5=mu6=xa7=ze8=bi9=so The hexadecimal numbers from A to F: A=dauB=feiC=gaiD=jauE=reiF=vai Numbers 10 to 999 are constructed by combining these digits without spaces: pano is 10, vore is 42, binoso is 809, and so on. Numbers 1000 onward may have a comma or period in them. When there is a three-zero sequence (000) after the comma, ki'o may be used to represent it preceded by the comma. Decimals are handled with pi, which is quite simply a decimal point in the form of a word. cipivo is 3.4, sopixa is 9.6, etc. pi is actually a unit point. The constant Pi (about: 3.14159), is expressed in Lojban as pai. To use numbers as sumti, the article li is used.
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