- Chessnut - one who is crazy about playing chess
- Carpet - A pet you keep in your car
- Infantry - A baby tree
- (Add a letter) Diepole - a pole you tie the prisoner to when he is shot.
- Safety - Tea that's OK to drink
- Kilowatt - To murder ole Mr. Watt
- Nullifly - 1. To put someone on a no fly list 2. To kill a fly
- Detailed - a dog that's had its tail removed
- (change one letter) Defeeted - Having had one feet amputated or cut off accidentally
- Storage - The number of years it has been since the store was first built.
- Woofer - In German it is a synonym for "ein Barkenpantensnifferfer"
- Curtail - the tail of a mongrel (I suppose it could also be to shorten the tail of a mongrel.)
- Recur - A mongrel that reincarnates as a mongrel
- Friday - The day you fry something
- Hostage - The age of your host
- Napkin - a relative you take a siesta with
- Ratify - To increase the rat population
- Season - one's son who is born at sea
- Seasoning - Giving birth to a son at sea
- (Add a letter) Electrick - vote for Rick and put him in office
- (Change one letter) Incarmate - to have sex in an automobile
- Steward - the man who prepares the stew
- (Remove a letter) Cabage - how old a taxi is
- Flippant - an ant that performs somersaults
- Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
- Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
- Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
- Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
- Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
- Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
- Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
- Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
- Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
- Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
- Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's, like, a serious bummer.
- Decafalon (n.): The gruelling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
- Glibido: All talk and no action.
- Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
- Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
- Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
- Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.
- coffee, n. the person upon whom one coughs.
- flabbergasted, adj. appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
- abdicate, v. to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
- esplanade, v. to attempt an explanation while drunk.
- willy-nilly, adj. impotent.
- negligent, adj. absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
- lymph, v. to walk with a lisp.
- gargoyle, n. olive-flavored mouthwash.
- flatulence, n. emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
- balderdash, n. a rapidly receding hairline..
- testicle, n. a humorous question on an exam.
- rectitude, n. the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
- pokemon, n.. a Rastafarian proctologist.
- oyster, n. a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
- Frisbeetarianism, n. the belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
- circumvent, n. an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.
Showing posts with label words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label words. Show all posts
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Word Definition Puns
These words and/or their definitions are made up and humorous.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Changing foreign policy (Leader-Telegram)
Changing foreign policy
Spanish language program beginning in kindergarten
By Keighla Schmidt with comments by PLS
Leader-Telegram staff
"Bienvenidos a la escuela!" In English: "Welcome to school!"
When I was growing up (I'm now 31), foreign language (Spanish, German, and French) was only available to highschoolers. I have been greatly encouraged by hearing that many middle schools are offering foreign language courses. Who knows where you will be living or traveling when you grow up?
I grew up on a farm in northwest Iowa. I would not have been able to guess that I'd be living in Mexico city (since Jan 1, 2001). American schools have been slow to adjust to the fact that traveling is much easier than it was before, and the American economy isn't that strong either, so there is less reason to say.
The following article is about a Catholic school in Wisconsin. They are starting a program to teach Spanish to children from Kindergarten. Before they had classes from 3rd to 12th grades which would have been amazing when I was growing up. Although it would be a far cry from a true bilingual school, it is very encouraging and I hope more American schools will follow their lead.
----------------
Catholic Area Schools of the Eau Claire Deanery have started a Spanish language program for children in kindergarten through second grade.
It will be a jump-start to foreign language programs the school offers in the third through 12th grades.
CASE President Cindy Hofacker said the program started after reading research indicating young minds are open to learning languages. The importance of introducing other cultures and the success of pilot programs in the school system also motivated school officials.
"We realize the world is getting smaller," she said. "Not everyone will stay in Eau Claire for the rest of their life."
Lynne Larabee, who will teach the classes, said children respond better to a new language if they are introduced to it at a young age.
"The window for language learning is open while children are young," Larabee said. "We're laying the groundwork."
Both Hofacker and Larabee said they don't expect children to be fluent in the language after two 15-minute sessions a week, but they aim to familiarize students' minds with Spanish.
Children will learn basic Spanish to introduce them to the language and the culture. Hofacker said students will be taught the Spanish words for colors, numbers, common words and phrases, and comparisons between American culture and the cultures in Spanish-speaking countries will be emphasized.
Larabee plans to use music, games, puppets and prayers to help the children connect to the language.
"If it's integrated into daily lives, then the probability of it being used is much higher," she said.
Hofacker said there is a deeper connection to the language: The ties that Spanish, a Latin-based language, has to the Catholic faith will help children integrate both the language and religion into their daily lives.
The students' full-time teachers will stay in the classroom during the Spanish session, Hofacker said, and find ways to integrate the language and culture into the day-to-day curriculum.
Elementary Principal Joseph Eisenhuth said he is excited about the addition of a foreign language program when many other institutions are removing them.
"It's exciting to see, especially in young children, how quick skills are picked up," he said.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Invented languages take on a life of their own / Once the province of a few, new tongues flourish through Net (San Francisco Chronicle)
In any language, Sonja Elen Kisa was depressed. The world was overwhelming, and the thoughts that swirled through her mind in French, English, German or Esperanto echoed that. So Kisa, 28, a student and translator in Toronto, decided to create her own...
In any language, Sonja Elen Kisa was depressed.
The world was overwhelming, and the thoughts that swirled through her mind in French, English, German or Esperanto echoed that.
So Kisa, 28, a student and translator in Toronto, decided to create her own language, something simple that would help clarify her thinking. She called it Toki Pona - "good language" - and gave it just 120 words.
"Ale li pona," she told herself. "Everything will be OK."
Kisa eventually sorted through her thoughts and, to her great surprise, her language took off, with more than 100 speakers today, singing Toki Pona songs, writing Toki Pona poems and chatting with Toki Pona words.
It's all part of a weirdly Babel-esque boom of new languages. Once the private arena of J.R.R. Tolkien, Esperanto speakers and grunting Klingon fanatics, invented languages have flourished on the Internet and begun creeping into the public domain.
The Web site Langmaker.com now lists more than 1,000 language inventors and 1,902 made-up languages, from Ayvarith to Zyem.
The language inventors have, of course, created a word to describe what they do - "conlang," short for constructed languages.
Created languages may have no hope of supplanting the real thing, but for most conlangers, that is hardly the goal. Hobbyists such as Kisa find it a fun or therapeutic practice. Linguists can use conlangs to dissect how real language works. For a select few who write fiction or work for Hollywood, conlanging can even be a moneymaker.
But to the majority of linguaphiles, conlangs are simply art. Their palette holds not paints but the buzz of the letter "z," the hiss of an "s," the trill of an Italian "r."
And sometimes the howl of a Klingon scream: "Hab SoSlI' Quch!"
"Your mother has a smooth forehead!"
In this realm of art, Toki Pona is white canvas with scattered brush strokes of primary colors.
Kisa created Toki Pona as an exercise in minimalism, looking for the core vocabulary necessary to communicate. With only 120 words, a Toki Pona speaker must combine words to express more complicated ideas. For example, the Toki Pona phrase for "friend" is "jan pona" (the "j" sounds like a "y"), literally "good person."
Kisa, who is studying speech language therapy, tried to focus Toki Pona's vocabulary on basic, positive concepts.
"It has sort of a Zen or Taoist nature to it," Kisa said.
Tolkien liked to call invented language his secret vice. He spent hours at the solitary hobby, designing grammars and modifying words from Latin, Finnish, Welsh and others for his languages.
Eventually, his languages needed tongues to speak them, and those speakers needed a place to live. And thus Middle-Earth was born, with Tolkien's languages becoming the Sindarin and Quenya of the Elves, the Khuzdul of the Dwarves, and the Black Speech of the Orcs.
In the 12th century, the nun Hildegard of Bingen developed a rudimentary conlang she called Lingua Ignota, Latin for "unknown language" No one knows its purpose. All that survives is a short passage and a list of 1,012 terms arranged from the highest form, "God," to the lowest, "cricket."
Esperanto was created in the late 19th century by Polish doctor Ludovic Zamenhof. His dream was to give humanity a common international language that would be simple to learn. Esperanto's vocabulary is small, word order does not matter and there are no irregular verbs.
"Gi estas iom lingvo idealisma," said William B. Harris, director of the central office of the Esperanto League for North America, in California. "It's somewhat of an idealistic language."
Today, as many as 2 million people speak Esperanto, which conlangers call an "auxlang," or auxiliary language.
Learning is the easy part. Actually creating a language is a task only for the very tenacious. It took Kisa a year to put hers together, and her language was built to be basic.
It is not enough simply to replace existing words with invented ones. To a conlanger, such a construction would be a mere code.
The conlanger considers many factors, starting with the sound of the language. Linguists call it phonaesthetics; Germans call it Sprachgefuhl - "speech feeling."
Tricky to define, it's that certain quality that makes French the language of love and German the language that "makes you want to conquer Poland," said John Quijada, a Web site developer in Sacramento who created Ithkuil
There are rules to this game. Human languages - known as "natlangs," for natural languages - follow universal linguistic patterns. For example, few human languages use the raspberry sound, but all have an "ah" sound. To create a pseudo-natlang, the conlanger also should follow those rules.
Of course, there are instances when one doesn't want to follow the rules. In creating Klingon for "Star Trek," Marc Okrand, 59, said, "I looked at all those kinds of rules and then violated them on purpose."
If a conlang is to be a language for nonhumans, the conlanger must consider their biology - if they lack teeth or vocal cords, the language's sounds will be constrained accordingly.
The conlanger also must ponder the grammar. For example, will the word order be subject-verb-object, as in English, or perhaps object-subject-verb, following the example of Yoda?
Okrand chose the rarest of grammatical structures, object-verb-subject. A Klingon would say, "The Enterprise boarded I." He purposely picked sounds that never would be found together in the same human language.
All this has added up to one alien manner of speech.
The challenge has not deterred serious Klingonists, who number perhaps a few hundred worldwide. Djorn X. Oqvist, 33, a Swedish linguistics student and founder of the Klingon Academy, said you must be creative with Klingon's 2,600 words.
For example, he said, there is no way to say: "Park the car." No problem. Klingon speakers "dock" their vehicles.
The difference between "park" and "dock" illustrates how languages can talk about similar things but conjure subtly different images.
The phenomenon was noted by early 20th century linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. They proposed a theory that language had the power to broaden or constrain a speaker's thoughts. That is, it is hard to think about concepts without the specific words to express them.
In 1955, sociologist James Cooke Brown came up with an idea to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. He would train students in a new language, and look at how their thinking changed.
He knew he could not use a natlang - it would be impossible to separate language from the influence of culture. So Brown invented a cultureless language, Loglan - short for "logical language."
Just as scientists use mice as a model for the human body, Loglan would be a model language for his laboratory of thought.
Brown borrowed vocabulary from English, French, German, Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, Russian and Japanese - the eight most widely spoken languages at the time.
Loglan was designed to be free of irregularity and ambiguity. The Loglan lexicon, containing more than 10,000 words, is made up of five-letter root words and short, one- or two-letter modifiers. The roots can be combined to make new six-letter words.
He included words for the mathematical Boolean variables such as "and," "or inclusive" and "or exclusive" to encourage clear, logical thinking.
As it turned out, creating the language wasn't the hardest part. Like many successful conlangers, Brown struggled to maintain control over his creation.
He founded the Loglan Institute in San Diego in the 1970s to bring others into the project, but then was upset when they didn't agree with his ideas.
"In 1984 there was a knock-down, drag-out battle over this," said Bob LeChevalier, 53, who was a member at the time. The institute fell apart and Brown was never able to conduct his great experiment.
LeChevalier and others developed Lojban, a language built on identical principles as Loglan. LeChevalier estimates there are between 500 and 1,000 Lojban speakers.
Kisa, too, has wrestled with the growing pains of her creation.
Once a language is released from the notebooks and index cards of its birth, other speakers might use it for purposes its creator never intended.
Since Kisa let Toki Pona loose on the Internet in 2001, it has spread from Toronto to speakers all over the world.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology routinely offers a seminar about the language. Kisa has received e-mails from Russians learning Toki Pona and a Finnish therapist who wants to teach it to his depressed patients.
Occasionally these correspondents offer criticism as well as praise. Some want to express complicated thoughts in Toki Pona, running counter to its design.
Kisa has given in to a few complaints. It's only natural for language to evolve, she said.
"Tenpo ni la toki pona li kama suli. Jan mute li kepeken e ona," she said. "It's like a living thing now."
In any language, Sonja Elen Kisa was depressed.
The world was overwhelming, and the thoughts that swirled through her mind in French, English, German or Esperanto echoed that.
So Kisa, 28, a student and translator in Toronto, decided to create her own language, something simple that would help clarify her thinking. She called it Toki Pona - "good language" - and gave it just 120 words.
"Ale li pona," she told herself. "Everything will be OK."
Kisa eventually sorted through her thoughts and, to her great surprise, her language took off, with more than 100 speakers today, singing Toki Pona songs, writing Toki Pona poems and chatting with Toki Pona words.
It's all part of a weirdly Babel-esque boom of new languages. Once the private arena of J.R.R. Tolkien, Esperanto speakers and grunting Klingon fanatics, invented languages have flourished on the Internet and begun creeping into the public domain.
The Web site Langmaker.com now lists more than 1,000 language inventors and 1,902 made-up languages, from Ayvarith to Zyem.
The language inventors have, of course, created a word to describe what they do - "conlang," short for constructed languages.
Created languages may have no hope of supplanting the real thing, but for most conlangers, that is hardly the goal. Hobbyists such as Kisa find it a fun or therapeutic practice. Linguists can use conlangs to dissect how real language works. For a select few who write fiction or work for Hollywood, conlanging can even be a moneymaker.
But to the majority of linguaphiles, conlangs are simply art. Their palette holds not paints but the buzz of the letter "z," the hiss of an "s," the trill of an Italian "r."
And sometimes the howl of a Klingon scream: "Hab SoSlI' Quch!"
"Your mother has a smooth forehead!"
In this realm of art, Toki Pona is white canvas with scattered brush strokes of primary colors.
Kisa created Toki Pona as an exercise in minimalism, looking for the core vocabulary necessary to communicate. With only 120 words, a Toki Pona speaker must combine words to express more complicated ideas. For example, the Toki Pona phrase for "friend" is "jan pona" (the "j" sounds like a "y"), literally "good person."
Kisa, who is studying speech language therapy, tried to focus Toki Pona's vocabulary on basic, positive concepts.
"It has sort of a Zen or Taoist nature to it," Kisa said.
Tolkien liked to call invented language his secret vice. He spent hours at the solitary hobby, designing grammars and modifying words from Latin, Finnish, Welsh and others for his languages.
Eventually, his languages needed tongues to speak them, and those speakers needed a place to live. And thus Middle-Earth was born, with Tolkien's languages becoming the Sindarin and Quenya of the Elves, the Khuzdul of the Dwarves, and the Black Speech of the Orcs.
In the 12th century, the nun Hildegard of Bingen developed a rudimentary conlang she called Lingua Ignota, Latin for "unknown language" No one knows its purpose. All that survives is a short passage and a list of 1,012 terms arranged from the highest form, "God," to the lowest, "cricket."
Esperanto was created in the late 19th century by Polish doctor Ludovic Zamenhof. His dream was to give humanity a common international language that would be simple to learn. Esperanto's vocabulary is small, word order does not matter and there are no irregular verbs.
"Gi estas iom lingvo idealisma," said William B. Harris, director of the central office of the Esperanto League for North America, in California. "It's somewhat of an idealistic language."
Today, as many as 2 million people speak Esperanto, which conlangers call an "auxlang," or auxiliary language.
Learning is the easy part. Actually creating a language is a task only for the very tenacious. It took Kisa a year to put hers together, and her language was built to be basic.
It is not enough simply to replace existing words with invented ones. To a conlanger, such a construction would be a mere code.
The conlanger considers many factors, starting with the sound of the language. Linguists call it phonaesthetics; Germans call it Sprachgefuhl - "speech feeling."
Tricky to define, it's that certain quality that makes French the language of love and German the language that "makes you want to conquer Poland," said John Quijada, a Web site developer in Sacramento who created Ithkuil
There are rules to this game. Human languages - known as "natlangs," for natural languages - follow universal linguistic patterns. For example, few human languages use the raspberry sound, but all have an "ah" sound. To create a pseudo-natlang, the conlanger also should follow those rules.
Of course, there are instances when one doesn't want to follow the rules. In creating Klingon for "Star Trek," Marc Okrand, 59, said, "I looked at all those kinds of rules and then violated them on purpose."
If a conlang is to be a language for nonhumans, the conlanger must consider their biology - if they lack teeth or vocal cords, the language's sounds will be constrained accordingly.
The conlanger also must ponder the grammar. For example, will the word order be subject-verb-object, as in English, or perhaps object-subject-verb, following the example of Yoda?
Okrand chose the rarest of grammatical structures, object-verb-subject. A Klingon would say, "The Enterprise boarded I." He purposely picked sounds that never would be found together in the same human language.
All this has added up to one alien manner of speech.
The challenge has not deterred serious Klingonists, who number perhaps a few hundred worldwide. Djorn X. Oqvist, 33, a Swedish linguistics student and founder of the Klingon Academy, said you must be creative with Klingon's 2,600 words.
For example, he said, there is no way to say: "Park the car." No problem. Klingon speakers "dock" their vehicles.
The difference between "park" and "dock" illustrates how languages can talk about similar things but conjure subtly different images.
The phenomenon was noted by early 20th century linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. They proposed a theory that language had the power to broaden or constrain a speaker's thoughts. That is, it is hard to think about concepts without the specific words to express them.
In 1955, sociologist James Cooke Brown came up with an idea to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. He would train students in a new language, and look at how their thinking changed.
He knew he could not use a natlang - it would be impossible to separate language from the influence of culture. So Brown invented a cultureless language, Loglan - short for "logical language."
Just as scientists use mice as a model for the human body, Loglan would be a model language for his laboratory of thought.
Brown borrowed vocabulary from English, French, German, Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, Russian and Japanese - the eight most widely spoken languages at the time.
Loglan was designed to be free of irregularity and ambiguity. The Loglan lexicon, containing more than 10,000 words, is made up of five-letter root words and short, one- or two-letter modifiers. The roots can be combined to make new six-letter words.
He included words for the mathematical Boolean variables such as "and," "or inclusive" and "or exclusive" to encourage clear, logical thinking.
As it turned out, creating the language wasn't the hardest part. Like many successful conlangers, Brown struggled to maintain control over his creation.
He founded the Loglan Institute in San Diego in the 1970s to bring others into the project, but then was upset when they didn't agree with his ideas.
"In 1984 there was a knock-down, drag-out battle over this," said Bob LeChevalier, 53, who was a member at the time. The institute fell apart and Brown was never able to conduct his great experiment.
LeChevalier and others developed Lojban, a language built on identical principles as Loglan. LeChevalier estimates there are between 500 and 1,000 Lojban speakers.
Kisa, too, has wrestled with the growing pains of her creation.
Once a language is released from the notebooks and index cards of its birth, other speakers might use it for purposes its creator never intended.
Since Kisa let Toki Pona loose on the Internet in 2001, it has spread from Toronto to speakers all over the world.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology routinely offers a seminar about the language. Kisa has received e-mails from Russians learning Toki Pona and a Finnish therapist who wants to teach it to his depressed patients.
Occasionally these correspondents offer criticism as well as praise. Some want to express complicated thoughts in Toki Pona, running counter to its design.
Kisa has given in to a few complaints. It's only natural for language to evolve, she said.
"Tenpo ni la toki pona li kama suli. Jan mute li kepeken e ona," she said. "It's like a living thing now."
Young Expressions: Language learning (Radio Singapore International)
Find out how someone has learned to speak several languages fluently. When we have the need and the desire we discover that we can learn another language quickly. Typically we don't learn because we don't practice enough.
If you are wondering if those words were spoken by four different people. The answer is no.
his young lady from Malaysia has picked up not only her mother tongue, but also other Chinese dialects like Hokkien and Teochew, and even Thai, Bahasa Malaysia as well as English through the course of her growing up years in Kelantan.
This is Young Expressions and I am Shereena Sajeed. Recently, Loretta Foo made a trip to Malaysia and caught up with Ng Wan Choo , a 25 year old Malaysian law student who is able to understand and speak five different languages.
And she shares with us what these languages are.
Chinese, English, BM (Bahasa Malaysia), Malay, Cantonese and Hokkien are languages that I can understand and I can speak. I can only understand a bit of the Thai language because I watch a lot of Thai drama, other languages like Teochew, I can only understand but I cant’s speak.
You can hear the podcast at the original site.
If you are wondering if those words were spoken by four different people. The answer is no.
his young lady from Malaysia has picked up not only her mother tongue, but also other Chinese dialects like Hokkien and Teochew, and even Thai, Bahasa Malaysia as well as English through the course of her growing up years in Kelantan.
This is Young Expressions and I am Shereena Sajeed. Recently, Loretta Foo made a trip to Malaysia and caught up with Ng Wan Choo , a 25 year old Malaysian law student who is able to understand and speak five different languages.
And she shares with us what these languages are.
Chinese, English, BM (Bahasa Malaysia), Malay, Cantonese and Hokkien are languages that I can understand and I can speak. I can only understand a bit of the Thai language because I watch a lot of Thai drama, other languages like Teochew, I can only understand but I cant’s speak.
You can hear the podcast at the original site.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
171 terms officially enter Chinese lexicon
You can read the original article from Yahoo News.
Here are the new terms mentioned in the article:
More related to a previous news post, A father tried to register his child as the symbol @.
I have to wonder what they were thinking. I think I'll adopt a newborn and name him semicolon or how about '< less than symbol'. *sarcasm* What do you think? It reminds me of the time I heard that someone in central america had been named e-mail or email.
Cultural and political changes have caused many new terms to come into being for the Chinese.
Here are the new terms mentioned in the article:
- "fang nu," or "house slaves." - People who have a mortgage for their home.
- "Semi-honey couples" ("ban tang fu qi") - Married couples who live separately to keep things romantic.
- 'duan bei', with a literal meaning of 'brokeback' - Gay men, the reference coming from the movie, Brokeback Mountain.
- "ding chong jia ting," in Chinese, or "DINKS with pets," DINK is supposed to mean 'double income no kids' therefore a DINK with a pet would be a couple with two income sources and at least one pet, but no children.
More related to a previous news post, A father tried to register his child as the symbol @.
I have to wonder what they were thinking. I think I'll adopt a newborn and name him semicolon or how about '< less than symbol'. *sarcasm* What do you think? It reminds me of the time I heard that someone in central america had been named e-mail or email.
Cheyenne and Arapaho students learn language, legends and stories at language camp
You can read the original story at Native American Times.
In a world where only about 10% of the Cheyenne and Arapaho population nationwide still speak their languages fluently, events like the language camp that was held Friday, August 3rd at the Concho Community building (no mention of where that building is located) become more important.
The participants learned Cheyenne words for the parts of the tipi. They were also told the story of the tipi and how different rope wrappings on the tipi represented different Cheyenne societies.
The article didn't mention anything at they camp having to do with the Arapaho. It does mention the opportunity to learn Cheyenne and Arapaho at two places in El Reno, Oklahoma, so if you live in El Reno or nearby you might be interested in contacting them.
I am glad that they are wanting to preserve their languages but they will need to get more people involved and have more regular courses to make it sustainable. People need to practice language on a regular basis (at least once a week) to learn to communicate effectively.
I am more concerned with their stories, history, art, and traditions. The languages will probably disappear in a few generations but they don't have to let all traces of their culture go along with it. They could video record and document everything, and continue with programs such as the language camp. They could publish books online.
Storysofa.com and other sites could publish their books, poems, and stories online. Perhaps they could contact language teaching software companies and work together to make interactive courses to teach vocabulary?
In a world where only about 10% of the Cheyenne and Arapaho population nationwide still speak their languages fluently, events like the language camp that was held Friday, August 3rd at the Concho Community building (no mention of where that building is located) become more important.
The participants learned Cheyenne words for the parts of the tipi. They were also told the story of the tipi and how different rope wrappings on the tipi represented different Cheyenne societies.
The article didn't mention anything at they camp having to do with the Arapaho. It does mention the opportunity to learn Cheyenne and Arapaho at two places in El Reno, Oklahoma, so if you live in El Reno or nearby you might be interested in contacting them.
I am glad that they are wanting to preserve their languages but they will need to get more people involved and have more regular courses to make it sustainable. People need to practice language on a regular basis (at least once a week) to learn to communicate effectively.
I am more concerned with their stories, history, art, and traditions. The languages will probably disappear in a few generations but they don't have to let all traces of their culture go along with it. They could video record and document everything, and continue with programs such as the language camp. They could publish books online.
Storysofa.com and other sites could publish their books, poems, and stories online. Perhaps they could contact language teaching software companies and work together to make interactive courses to teach vocabulary?
Friday, August 17, 2007
Some Chinese name their children with English letters and transliterated words
Some Chinese name their children with English letters and transliterated words according to an article published at Yahoo News.
"In one of the strangest names, parents tried to call their son "Ã ", while other people have used transliterated English names to make their own sound more western, The First newspaper reported. "
I knew that it was common in many countries including China and Mexico to have English nicknames but I'm surprised how much of an effect English speaking cultures are having on Media-limited China.
"In one of the strangest names, parents tried to call their son "Ã ", while other people have used transliterated English names to make their own sound more western, The First newspaper reported. "
I knew that it was common in many countries including China and Mexico to have English nicknames but I'm surprised how much of an effect English speaking cultures are having on Media-limited China.
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