Paraskevis Linkebi

Posted on October 12, 2012 by panoptical

It’s Friday again (seems to happen every week) so it’s time for another links round-up! Forgive the title of this post, but here at the TLG blog we’re devoted to cultural exchange, and what’s more exchangey than mangling two languages together?

Don’t blame me for this – Georgians have actually analyzed several words from social media as if they were Georgian word stems, leading to words like “loginebs” (“he logs in”) or “dalogineba” (“log in”, imperative). While some Georgians are appalled by this sort of thing, it is just this kind of linguistic innovation that makes my linguist’s heart beat just a little faster. And the “log” in “log in” has the same etymology as the “log” in “blog” – that is, it comes from a literal log that sailors used to throw into the sea to check the speed of their ship relative to the water. Words have such interesting lives.

Speaking of which:

A Call for Spelling Standardization (or Is That Standardisation?) – if you’re having trouble navigating some of the quirkier differences between British and American English spellings, this article will tell you who to blame.

Ten Concepts That Are Surprisingly Difficult to Translate – a fun look at some words and phrases in one language that are tough to express in another.

And here are some other links we found interesting this week:

Georgian Folk – a resource for Georgian folk music. History, songs, music, pictures.

A Lively Mind: Your Brain On Jane Austen – The human brain processes pleasure reading and academic reading in strikingly different ways, even when reading the same text.

Free K-5 Resources – a huge collection of resources for teaching English to young learners.

InterNations Expat Magazine – tons of articles about living in a new country. (Requires free registration.)

ESL Games, Quizzes, and Classroom ESL Activities – Just like the title says, with printable materials. Warning: site contains Comic Sans.

Education vs. Schooling – When schooling is over, education has just begun.

Octopus Steals Food and Casually Wrestles Shark – And last but not least, a fun little nature video. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I do believe the narrator said “pajama cat shark” several times. Here at the TLG blog, we didn’t know there was such a thing.