July 18, 2009
Do you know any Single-word oxymora?
Beside QUIET!!...
(Add your suggestions in the comments)
July 18, 2009 in Languages | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBack
January 14, 2009
The impotence of of proofreading
Taylor Mali is a poet who lives in New York City. (From a 3 Quarks)
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Type as Image is a collection of typographic experiments where the words are treated as images that speak about their own meaning
Some German Adjectives
Russian alphabet with sounds
Re-post from 2003: Always look on the bright side of life...
Also: Crazy, with Diana Krall, Elvis Costello & Willie Nelson (YT)
A Huge Depository of Unusual Language Links Here
January 14, 2009 in Languages | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 29, 2008
Ambigram Logos
Ambigrams by nagfa
Ambigram flickr pool
From “15 Ambigram logos”
Ambigram logo above from Tina Roth Eisenberg’s blog
(Previous ambigrams on grow-a-brain here and here and here)
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Un-related: Railroad tattoos
A Huge Depository of Unusual Language Links Here
December 29, 2008 in Languages | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 17, 2008
Misleading Euphemisms
“Bio-Solids”, “Extraordinary Rendition” & “De-population”….
If You Didn't Know Better, you would think that "Non-operative Personnel" is some kind of - hospital jargon? Personnel that aren't qualified to perform a medical operation? That can't be operated on? A person who isn't "working," like a broken stereo or something?
What it Actually Refers to is - Dead soldiers.
We could spend the rest of the day doing military euphemisms ("collateral damage," "friendly fire"), they seem to have entire buildings full of people who think these up full-time. So, personnel that is not relevant to military operations because they've been killed get a term that sounds like it should apply to a non-working carburetor
11 other Misleading Euphemisms
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Another example: I was going to comment on this reddit thread, but I just finished my morning coffee and I need to visit the bathroom and take a Rove
(.gif above from Mother jones)
A Huge Depository of Unusual Language Links Here
December 17, 2008 in Languages | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
November 08, 2008
A plate of ubiquitous
…My mother tends to go through phases of making a particular dessert a lot. After a few nights on the trot of having trifle, and being a particularly snotty/precocious teenager who read a lot, I declared 'Ah, the ubiquitous trifle!' when it came out again. And promptly spent 5 minutes explaining what it meant, and that it wasn't an insult.
Nearly 20 years later, trifle is now universally offered in the family as 'Would you like a plate of Ubiquitous?'…
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What are some examples of "Family Slang"? For example, a friend's father once told a joke to his family that poked fun at the French. He concluded by saying, "Don't tell anyone from France." Now, within their family, "Don't tell anyone from France" means "Let's keep this between us"--and they say it even if the secret has nothing to do with the French
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Eunoia is the shortest word in English containing all five vowels - and it means "beautiful thinking". It is also the title of Canadian poet Christian Bok's book of fiction in which each chapter uses only one vowel
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November 8, 2008 in Languages | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack
August 28, 2008
¡Ay, caramba!
One Sentence is an experiment in brevity. Most of the best stories that we tell from our lives have one really, really good part that make the rest of the boring story worth it.
This is about that one line.
This is about telling the most interesting or poignant story possible in the least amount of words
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Also, Things to say (and not say) during sex
A Huge Depository of Unusual Language Links Here
August 28, 2008 in Languages | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 13, 2008
Word Time
Members of Word Time share the variations in our pronunciations with weekly lists of words. (From flickr blog)
The color of the bikeshed is a proverbial phrase referring to the apparent ease with which one can get agreement on building a large and complex project (such as a billion-dollar atomic reactor) compared to the difficulty of reaching consensus on building something conceptually simple — because everyone involved actually has an opinion and wants to add it. (Related to & found on wikipwdia’s Lamest edit wars page)
How can you otherwise reach consensus without losing every time?...
Tilting at windmills - Stay out, Don Quixote
Unrelated: Color Palette Generator. (From Apfelblog)
A Huge Depository of Unusual Language Links Here
July 13, 2008 in Languages | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 06, 2008
Indian thriller
"Lucifer's Lexicon" (updated)
Bollywood stars Radha and Chiranjeevi present: idhi oka idi le (YT)
Top word that was voted hardest to translate: ilunga - Tshiluba word for a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time
Engrish contest on Worth1000
Homemade Semicolon dress. Also, Elisabeth Lecourt’s Map Dresses
A Huge Depository of Unusual Language Links Here
May 6, 2008 in Languages | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 29, 2008
Truisms
Jenny Holzer got a Way with Words
73, 2dA, HAND, 4get, and much more at Texting Term Of The Day blog
Longshot: Halloween 1972, You were dressed as a hippie
Coquille St. Jacques, Free Trampoline and many other Missed Connections ads from the people that brought you SkyMaul
Whose cauling me homophonic? A list of British-English homophones
Re-post from February 12, 2006: The Wand
(KKK Babes photo above from Table of Malcontents)
A Huge Depository of Unusual Language Links Here
March 29, 2008 in Languages | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 02, 2008
Emergency Spanish Phrases
¿Dondé está el baño?
Where is the bathroom?
Tu hija es muy bonita.
Your daughter is very beautiful.
¿Cuanto cuesta esa cosa?
How much does that thing cost?
Tú eres un pendejo chingado.
You are not a very nice person.
Tengo una caja roja de las lapices.
I have a red pencil box.
Me gusta tu cabeza y tu estamago.
I like your head and your stomach.
¿Cinco doláres? ¿Por esa cosa?
Five dollars? For that thing?
No comas esa. No sabes donde esa ha pasado.
Don't eat that. You don't know where it has been.
No, guardia. No tengo marihuana.
No, officer. I have no marijuana.
Es como matar un toro con una pistola.
It is like killing a bull with a pistol.
Sólo Nixon podía ir a China.
Only Nixon could go to China.
No, no, piedo unos huevos.
No, no, I ordered eggs.
Lavase, y conduce a mi.
Bathe her, and bring her to me
(From The Foundation for Neo-cognitive & Ontologoical Research and Development, F.N.O.R.D., previously responsible for Table of Condiments That Periodically Go Bad)
Italian hand gestures explained (YT)
Yes We Can Has - LOLcatz for Obama
(Photo above from London photos)
A Huge Depository of Unusual Language Links Here
March 2, 2008 in Languages | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack
January 29, 2008
How to Learn Any Language in 1 Hour
Before you invest (or waste) hundreds and thousands of hours on a language, you should deconstruct it. During my thesis research at Princeton, which focused on neuroscience and unorthodox acquisition of Japanese by native English speakers, as well as when redesigning curricula for Berlitz, this neglected deconstruction step surfaced as one of the distinguishing habits of the fastest language learners…
So far, I’ve deconstructed Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, German, Norwegian, Irish Gaelic, Korean, and perhaps a dozen others. I’m far from perfect in these languages, and I’m terrible at some, but I can converse in quite a few with no problems whatsoever—just ask the MIT students who came up to me last night and spoke in multiple languages. How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour
Mother Tongues of Computer Languages. (Click to biggify)
False friends (or faux amis) are pairs of words in two languages that look and/or sound similar, but differ in meaning
The web’s first Shaggy Dog Story Archive. (From Neatorama)
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January 29, 2008 in Languages | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 04, 2008
Skin Alphabet
Skin Alphabet by Thijs Verbeek
One of the craziest oddities of the English language is that there are so many different collective nouns that all mean "group" but which are specific to what particular thing there is a group of: a herd of elephants, a crowd of people, a box of crayons, a pad of paper, etc. There is great diversity of collective nouns associated with animals, from a sleuth of bears to a murder of crows. The following is a list of the correct terms to describe groups of various types of animals. (More nouns of assemblage)
Drooping Ambigram pumpkin from this flickr set of ambigrams
Ampersand pool on flickr
A Huge Depository of Unusual Language Links Here
January 4, 2008 in Languages | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 01, 2007
Enigma machine
Enigma machine in flash. (A lengthy wikipedia article about the Enigma machine)
The object of the Word Sandwich game is to guess the mystery five letter word. Your guesses will float to the top if they are too “high” alphabetically, and they will float to the bottom if they are too “low” alphabetically
Near the Old Summer Palace, poetry with a very short life: the new phenomenon of Water-writing in Beijing, suddenly popular in the last ten years. (Photo from my trip to China last year)
In the fields of Internet discussion and forum moderation, Disemvoweling is the removal of vowels from text either as a method of self-censorship (for example, either "G*d" or "G-d" for those whose religious beliefs preclude writing God in full), or as a technique by forum moderators to censor Internet trolling and other unwanted posting
Find dictionary words for crossword puzzles, code words and word games like Scrabble at More words. (Found at What’s my name?)
How Chinese Students Are Learning the English Language
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December 1, 2007 in Languages | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 11, 2007
“…um…” “…you know…” “…like…” “…ah…”
“Pisan Zapra”, in Malay: the time needed to eat a banana. Other Weird and wondrful foreign phrases
The following message was composed to show "that it would be possible to write a technically grammatical sentence, which would be almost unintelligible
How to Cut Crutch Words When Giving a Speech
How Babel Fish almost caused a diplomatic incident between Israel and The Netherlands
A Huge Depository of Unusual Language Links Here
November 11, 2007 in Languages | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 17, 2007
Longest word
The longest word in the English language
There once was a man from Nantucket… (Scroll down nearly to the bottom). Naughty Limericks
Jokes from the Sixteenth-Century
From the “Thumbs-Up” to The "Fig" - The top 10 hand gestures you’d better get right
From Aglet to Philtrum - Ten Whatchamacallits And Their Real Names
A Huge Depository of Unusual Language Links Here
October 17, 2007 in Languages | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack