English is the one language that can be found in every corner of the world. It is taught and recognized on every continent and its prevalence is much greater than any previous “universal language” (Greek, Latin, French).
One tangential result of that ubiquity is that local cultures, for example those in Papua New Guinea, Nigeria, Singapore, [...]
Archive for July, 2009
English: The New Latin?
Friday, July 31st, 2009The Peritextual Environment
Friday, July 24th, 2009There is a big difference between competence in a field and encyclopedic knowledge.
“Competence in the field” is everything related to the concrete information related to the technical aspects of a field. Technical texts require a technical fluency based on the mastery of a specific area of knowledge and its lexical and terminological aspects.
Encyclopedic knowledge is [...]
The Other United States
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009The official name for Mexico is: the United States of Mexico, as given by its Constitution, ratified on the 4th of October, 1824.
In its strictest sense, and this is really not used much, Mexico implies the City of Mexico, the Federal District, which is the nation’s capital.
There are two theories explaining the meaning of the [...]
Investing in Professional Translation Can Save You Big Time!
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009Professional translation services are there to offer a wide variety of customers an effective way to communicate with people that speak a different language, no matter who they may be. In this vein, one of the primary roles of the translator is to exercise a strong degree of cross cultural awareness, thereby enabling themselves to [...]
New Multilingual Web Search Tool
Monday, July 20th, 2009Consider my mind blown. I was pointed to 2lingual.com the other day by a friend who shares my interest in multilingual information and I am still playing around with it.
The premise is simple: carry out a Google search in two different languages at the same time. Normally if I am looking to do that, I [...]
Demonstratives in English and Spanish
Friday, July 17th, 2009Demonstratives are used to point to another element that they depend on to achieve their full meaning. If they point backwards, it is known as an anaphoric reference; those that point forward are making a cataphoric reference.
In English, we work with two degrees of proximity (“this”, “that”), while Spanish offers three (“este”, “ese”, “aquel”).
Demonstrative adjectives, [...]
The Newest Grammar Hounds
Friday, July 17th, 2009Grammar hounds, and I include myself in this list, are those who are so obsessed with proper presentation of a language that even the slightest mistake or oversight in a sentence invokes a twitchy reaction and a move to whatever “Edit” button is available. The Internet is a bastion of poor grammar and spelling mistakes [...]
How to Abbreviate the United States of America in Spanish
Thursday, July 16th, 2009Let’s clear up a few issues.
The official name is: Estados Unidos de America.
It can be written with or without the article: (los) Estados Unidos de América.
If the article is included, the verb is pluralized: “Los Estados Unidos han firmado un nuevo acuerdo comercial.”
If the article is not included, the verb remains singular: “Estados Unidos firmó [...]
The Baltic Languages: Lithuanian and Latvian
Monday, July 13th, 2009Within the Indo-European language family are to be found the Baltic languages. The two languages of this subfamily that survive at present are Lithuanian and Latvian.
Lithuanian is spoken by approximately four million people, and in ancient Baltic literature all the Baltic languages were referred to as Lithuanian. It is the official language of Lithuania and [...]
Common Features of Languages
Friday, July 10th, 2009To begin with, a characteristic that is shared by all languages is that they are arbitrary, which is in its most elemental form is demonstrated in the absence of a natural relationship between the codes of the common language and the events or properties they refer to, between form and meaning. We associate specific concepts [...]
Armenian: an Independent Branch of the Indo-European Language Family
Monday, July 6th, 2009When the studying of Armenian began in the 19th century, it was believed that Armenian descended from Iranian, an error produced by the vast number of loans from that language. Yet subsequent studies proved that, indeed, Armenian is an independent branch of the Indo-European family.
According to the historian Herodotus, Armenian was a variety of Phrygian, [...]
The World Bank’s Language Policy
Monday, July 6th, 2009I never cease to discover new facts about the world that stun me to silence. Rebecca Harris at Foreign Policy recently published an article addressing problems that community groups in Yemen are having in receiving a translated version of the World Bank’s conditions on a grant they were given. When confronted, the official response from [...]
The Use of the Period in English and Spanish
Friday, July 3rd, 2009The period (full stop) is the punctuation mark that marks the grammatical and logical end of a sentence.
The main difference comes from its greatest use in English. In Spanish, the period generally signals a pause or separation; the relationship is generally expressed with the comma and the semicolon.
English uses the period before conjunctions, adverbs, or [...]
Bloggers Unravelled
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009I’d like to briefly return to discuss the issue of the significant development that took place last month, culminating in the outing of the lauded author under the pseudonym of “NightJack.”
First off, I find it important to emphasize just how fascinating an event this is: to the opinion of many, this is the first time [...]
